Chapter 58
Chapter Fifty-Eight
FINN
Ren is nowhere to be found when we leave Courtney’s home, but Hayato sees me moving briskly down the driveway, and he hops out to open the back door for us.
I’ve gotten so used to carrying J in my arms while I enter a car that I don’t hesitate at the door to measure my steps. Without missing a beat, I duck far enough that my head clears the roof, and I fold myself into the back seat with her in my lap.
The sun is setting on the horizon, blazing orange and red streaks across a fading blue sky. Light from nearby lampposts pops on, exposing the veins straining against J’s temple and the sweat glistening on her snow-white skin.
The front door slams as Hayato climbs inside and gives me an inquiring look.
“The hospital. Quick,” I growl, cradling J’s head. She feels warm to the touch. What the hell is wrong with her? Why is she pushing herself like this?
The crazy girl in my arms groans and says something incoherent.
Hayato starts the car.
“No,” J protests. Flinching with every movement, she sits up in my lap. Her entire face is red, and she’s holding a fist to her heart. Tendrils of her silky blonde hair stick to the sweat on her cheeks.
I pry the blonde locks away from her skin. As I do, my fingers brush her face. It’s not my imagination. She truly is burning up.
“The hospital, Hayato,” I order when the lieutenant hesitates.
“Finn… please.”
A hot, scorching sensation fills my chest. I glare down at her, and she flinches as if I hit her.
“Kelly—I mean Gina—she wants to meet me. I need to know what… what I’m up against.” Even speaking exhausts her, and she flops into my chest.
My eyes drop to the yellow color on her watch. “You can’t even finish a sentence right now, and you want to expose a scammer?”
“Gimme… a sec. I’ll… take my pills.”
My eyes widen when I see that she has an entirely new bag of pills. “Did you finish the last bag?”
She nods.
“J, how many of these have you been taking a day?”
“Water.”
I scowl. Dr. Kenji hasn’t updated me about what’s inside the pills, but even I know that she shouldn’t be treating strong prescriptions like her chocolate bars.
I reluctantly hand her the bottle.
J takes one of the pills and sighs. “One more stop. Just one more stop, and I’ll go to the hospital.”
Hayato glances at me in the rearview mirror.
My teeth clench together. I want to tear someone apart with my bare hands, but I have no target. No sparring partner. How do I punch a sickness in the face until I break its jaw? It’s impossible.
“Do you have directions?” I grind out.
J’s eyes are closed, but her lips form a tired smile.
“Don’t smile,” I order, digging my fingers into her arms to adjust her in my lap. “You have ten minutes to talk to Gina’s parents.”
“Thirty.”
“Five.”
“What?” Her eyes burst open. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Hayato.” I divert my attention to him. “The hospital.”
“Okay. Okay. Ten minutes.” She scrunches her nose and mutters, “Butthole.”
I ignore the insult and take her phone from her.
“Did Courtney send the address?” J asks faintly.
There are two notifications on the screen.
One is from Courtney.
The other is from Kelly aka Gina Codd.
KELLY: I’m waiting for you in the hospital lobby. We need to talk. Please. I’m having a really hard time with Shawn.
I grunt. “Yeah. The address is here.”
J adjusts herself in my lap to a more comfortable position. Her body relaxes, and she starts breathing easy again.
Checking to make sure J isn’t looking, I delete the message from Kelly and rub J’s hair like a stress ball until we get to the Codd’s.
Gina Codd’s parents live in a neighborhood that reminds me of Cadence and V’s old apartment.
We pass graffiti-lined walls, homeless people cooped up in alleyways, and stray dogs roaming. Every school has burglar bars, and every grocery store has their shutters drawn, even though it’s barely seven o’clock in the evening.
The Codds live in a ramshackle home that’s part-trailer and part-shed. Whatever material they used to form the addition on their trailer looks like a light gust of wind can blow it over.
“Careful,” I warn J as she moves up three “stairs” that are cement blocks with rough wooden boards on top of them.
The pill effectively calmed her heart rate and cleared the red stain out of her face, but it’s just covering the symptoms, not the root of the issue. I can’t believe she’s here doing something so stupid.
Not only is she poking at what could be an unsolved murder case, but she’s doing it while her heart is probably the weakest it’s ever been.
I want to simultaneously shake her until she gets some sense and stick to her like a shadow because I know she won’t listen even if I bark at her.
Why are you so bothered by this tiny little thing?
It’s the Jinx Paradox at work.
I need J awake and alert enough to go AI hunting with me, and that won’t happen if she conks out for twenty-four hours again.
“J,” I growl.
She looks over her shoulder to where I’m standing on the bottom step outside the trailer. The light from a nearby lamppost illuminates her pale face. I’m not sure if it’s the lighting or how tired she looks, but her eyes are much bigger than usual.
I tap my watch.
She rolls her eyes and knocks on the door. It swings open to reveal a woman with grey hair, deep wrinkles, and light-colored eyes.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Mrs. Codd? Gina Codd’s mother?”
Mrs. Codd immediately stiffens, and I notice the door inching shut.
“I don’t know no Gina.”
“Mrs. Codd, I’m not here to hurt you or your family. I’m a friend of Gina’s. You can be honest with me.”
Mrs. Codd shakes her head. “I don’t have no daughter by that name. I only have one girl named Elise.”
I see her trying to shut the door, and I slam my hand against it.
Mrs. Codd jumps.
I step forward, my eyes burning through the older woman. “Mrs. Codd, we have limited time. If you want us out of your hair fast, you can answer our questions. If not, I’ll come back with the police.”
There’s no way I can go to the police for anything, but I’m sure Ren and Hayato have posed as the authorities before. We can rent costumes. I can get creative.
Mrs. Codd relents. While she doesn’t try to shut the door, she also doesn’t open it any farther. “Look, I didn’t do anything illegal, all right. Gina wanted to go.”
“Gina wanted to go where?” J steps into the door.
I resist the urge to pull her back and keep a close eye on Mrs. Codd in case she makes any sudden movements.
“With the Porters.” The old woman licks her cracked lips, eyes darting both ways. “She was spending so much time over there. She said they hired her as the dog walker, but it don’t take twelve hours to walk no dog.”
J glances over her shoulder and gives me a pointed look with eyebrows raised. To Mrs. Codd, she whispers, “Are you saying Gina was… sleeping with the Porters?”
“What? No.” Mrs. Codd reels back.
“Then why?”
Mrs. Codd’s eyes flit to me.
I fold my arms over my chest, trying to look as imposing and intimidating as I can.
It works because she shudders and starts singing like a canary.
“It was about six months after Kelly disappeared. Gina came home one day saying she was leaving town with the Porters. That they were her new parents now and she didn’t want nothing to do with us.
She said if anyone asked anything, I should tell them that we only had one daughter. ”
“So, you let a teenager leave with a family whose daughter went missing six months before?” J’s tone holds an undercurrent of accusation.
“You don’t understand. Gina was scary. Since she was a little girl, she could get people to do what she wanted before they even realized it was her doing.”
“What do you mean?”
“One time when she was twelve, she asked me and her father to buy her a whole new wardrobe for junior high. I said no. We couldn’t afford it. And then our trailer happened to burn down.” She gestures to the addition on the back. “And all of Gina’s clothes burned with it.”
J steps back, her mouth forming a perfect “o.” I’m beside her in the blink of an eye, at the ready in case she faints. I don’t like this. Any of this. Her watch isn’t beeping, but if I don’t wrap this up, it’s only a matter of time.
“When’s the last time you heard from Gina?” I demand.
Mrs. Codd glances at the ceiling. “It was about a year after she left with the Porters. I got a call from a psychiatric hospital. It was Gina. She said the Porters stuck her in the nut house, and they were claiming she was a psychopath. She wanted me to come and get her.”
“Did you?” I ask.
Mrs. Codd gives me a blank look. “Of course I did. She’s my daughter. No matter what, she’ll always be my blood.”
Something chirps, and I assume it’s J’s watch, so I close my hand around her shoulder and nudge her back.
I don’t blame J for being unnerved. Mrs. Codd is an extremely strange woman. Even I can sense it. My body is tensing like it does when an attacker is behind me during a sparring fight.
“Thanks for your time, Mrs. Codd.” I steer J toward the car that’s still idling on the street.
“I’d be careful if I were you!” Mrs. Codd yells at our back.
J freezes like someone has a gun on her.
I stop and peer over my shoulder.
Mrs. Codd has the door open wide and is standing in the doorway, backlit by orange light, legs spread apart like a soldier. Her eyes are harder than bullets.
“Gina don’t like when people get too close to the truth about her.”
That’s not a friendly word of advice. It’s a threat.
I get J into the car first.
Hayato drives off while J stares unseeing into the back of the headrest. I slip the seatbelt over her body, and when it clicks, J startles awake.
“Did Courtney text again?” I gesture to the phone. Now that we’ve escaped Mrs. Codd’s chilly presence, I realize the sound that I had mistaken for J’s watch was actually her phone chirping.
J checks the message and her entire body freezes. She places trembling fingers to the power button of her phone and turns the screen off.
“What did she say?” I growl.
J pastes a smile on her face that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Nothing,” she lies through her teeth. “Everything is fine.”