30. Janet
JANET
Kylie found out I played basketball in high school, and now she looks at me like I've been hiding a superpower.
Mitch put a hoop up in the yard last spring, and suddenly it's our thing — after dinner, before dark, her sneakers squeaking on the driveway, her hair coming loose, her little face serious every time she squares up to shoot.
She wants me to teach her everything, and God help me, I love how much she believes I can. Thanks, Caitlin Clark.
My phone rings. I stop mid-dribble.
"Higher, Auntie!"
"One sec, honey.” I catch it on the third ring.
“Hey Rosemary.”
"Janet. It’s Mike.”
My stomach drops through the ground.
"I need to talk to you?"
"Where's Rosemary? What did you do to her?"
"She's fine. She's sitting right here."
"What are you doing?"
"I have to talk to you; you're in danger."
"Put her on."
"Janet, listen to me?—"
"Put her on the phone right now."
A pause, rustling, Rosemary's voice, thin and fast. "I'm okay. I'm okay, he hasn't?—"
The line goes dead quiet again. Mike’s back on. “Listen.”
"Did you hurt her?" My hand finds the porch railing. Kylie's still shooting, oblivious. I walk further away. "Did you touch her?"
"No. Janet, I would never?—"
"Did you kill Frank?"
Silence for half a second too long, and I almost throw the phone into the yard.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
I don't know anything anymore, that's the problem. That's always been the problem with him — I never know until it's already too late to matter.
"I need to see you," he says.
"You're holding my best friend hostage and you think I'm going to?—"
"I'm not holding her hostage. She's sitting on her couch drinking a club soda."
"Then let her go."
"I will. Tonight. Come to Nocturne, I'll be there with her."
Kylie runs to me, breathless. I hold up a finger. She frowns into the house.
"No," I say.
"Janet."
"I don't trust you."
"You're in danger."
"How?"
"I'll tell you when I see you."
"He won't find me."
"You have to come home sooner or later, and he will.
"You expect me to trust you."
"If you want to live, you will."
I look at the back porch. Karen's silhouette moves behind the kitchen window, drying a dish, humming something I can't hear from here.
"I will be there with Rosemary."
He knows what he's doing. He's always known what he's doing; that's the whole problem, and I still don't hear it coming until the trap's already shut.
I hang up without saying goodbye. My hands are shaking so hard it takes two tries to get the phone back in my pocket.
"Aunt Janet?" Kylie's holding out a fistful of yellow flowers. "These are for you."
I crouch down and take them, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Thank you, baby."
To law enforcement:
If I am found dead, missing, or seriously injured, investigate Mike Trent immediately.
Mike Trent is holding my friend Rosemary Cannon hostage and has forced me to meet him. I am going to that meeting because I believe my friend's life is in danger.
I met Mike Trent recently and became romantically involved with him. At the time, I did not know he was Ryan Keller's brother. I have since learned that Mike used his access to me to enter my computer system and steal evidence related to the Ryan Keller case, including the video recording.
I am writing this before I leave so there is a record of what I know and who I believe is responsible if I do not come back.
I fold it and put it in an envelope. Lick it closed. I write for Peter McGuire on it.
I hold the nine-millimeter.
It feels heavier than it did at the range.
I hold it the way he showed me, careful and steady, my finger away from the trigger. I check the magazine, draw the slide to see the brass, let it close.
For a second, I stand there with it in my hand, thinking of Mike. Put it in my purse.
I open the door.
Karen is walking toward the door.
"You're leaving," she says. It isn't a question.
"I have to go do something."
"When are you coming back?"
"I don't know. I'll call you." I zip the overnight bag, half the things in it wrong for what I actually need. "I have to go, Karen."
"I'm worried about you. Something's wrong."
She looks at me the way she used to look at me in the year after Joe, like she's cataloguing every piece of me that's still standing, and she pulls me into a hug that lasts a second too long.
"There is something wrong. I can't tell you what it is."
"Be careful," she says into my hair.
"I will."
I'm not sure that's true. We hug.
Mitch drives me to the train station. We don't say a word.
When we get there. I hand him the envelope.
"Don't open this. If you don't hear from me tomorrow by noon. Give this to Peter McGuire, he's the Manhattan DA."
I hug him.
The train from Montclair runs through Secaucus, and I spend the whole ride staring at my reflection in the black window, watching it flicker every time we pass under a light.
Penn Station leads me out into a city that hasn't paused for a second of what's happened to me.
Cabs. Steam off a grate. A man selling roses out of a bucket on the corner like it's any other day.
I get in a cab and give the driver the cross streets instead of the club's name, because I still can't make myself say it out loud.
Nocturne's line is short. The doorman clocks me before I reach him — of course he does, Mike would've told him — and waves me past the rope without a word.
Inside, the bass is low and the lights are lower, gold pooling over booths full of people who have no idea what's sitting two tables over from them.
Nico's waiting past the coat check. He doesn't smile.
"Janet. I need to search you," he says.
Shit. I was never searched before.
I let him check me.
Efficient, impersonal, hands skimming my sides,
He takes the gun out of my purse like it's normal.
"Where's Rosemary?" I say.
"He's in the back booth," Nico says, and doesn't offer to walk me there.
Some of the air comes back into my chest.
Not all of it. Not close.
I see him before he sees me.
Mike.
At the table with Rosemary, drinks in front of both of them.
For one second, all I feel is relief. So sharp it almost hurts. Rosemary is alive. Sitting upright. Breathing. Safe enough to have a glass in front of her.
The rest of it hits.
The fear I carried here. The note I left behind. The gun in my bag. The fact that I was ready to believe the worst about him, and maybe part of me still does.
Mike looks up.
My chest tightens in that stupid, traitorous way it always does when I see him.
I walk to him.