Chapter 6 #2
“Okay,” she says, not slowing her gentle movements. “Just because you held a prayer circle with some guy tonight, that doesn’t make you Mom. We have a methodology. We have each other.”
“You’re right.” The awful pressure in my chest loosens. Jennifer Alsop would never have poured hours into identifying, researching, and eliminating one evil man, let alone come up with a system to do it over and over and over again safely as more evil men revealed themselves.
Of course, she never would’ve promised anything to a man who was getting her off. I made a promise and broke it the first chance I got. Yay, methodology?
“Okay,” I say a little too loudly. “Mystery guy’s going to handle Marshall, and Bart and I will be the ones called in to investigate it, so no matter what evidence we find, it’s going to be ruled an accident. That’s the end of it. That’s the new plan.”
Fi nods. “And your boyfriend?”
I drag my hands down my face. “It’s not like I’ll ever see him again.”
“Still,” she says. “He could really fuck you.”
“He absolutely could,” I agree with a slow grin.
Fi glares, but I can tell she’s fighting a smile of her own. “I don’t like this. I mean, I’ve never really liked any of your boyfriends, but—”
“Wait, even Greg? He was a good guy!”
“He was a lawyer,” she says, as if that’s reason enough. “But the anonymous murder man you met in a closet could be framing you right now.” She’s spinning herself up again, walking the room in circles. “I’ll kill him, Rue. I’ll figure out who he is, and I’ll end him before he hurts you.”
Her ferocity makes me grin even wider. “You want your first kill to be my mystery closet guy?”
“Yes!” She slaps a hand down on her desk, knocking over the jam jar she uses as a pencil cup. “I’ve got the footage from Marshall’s place! I can find him from that.”
That wipes the amusement right off my face. “No.”
“I’ll kill him if I think he needs killing!” she yells. “You’re not the boss of me!”
We both freeze for a beat, then dissolve into giggles.
“I think I am the boss of you, actually.” I wipe my streaming eyes. “I’m older.”
“By nine minutes!” Fi protests.
“Those are nine crucial minutes.”
She responds by flinging herself onto the couch again and wrapping her arms around me. I press a kiss to the top of her head and hug her back.
“Not this guy, okay?” I say into her hair. “For one thing, he’s twice our size, and that’s all you’re going to see on your footage: a big guy dressed in black. For another, I truly don’t think he deserves it.”
Imagine if it’d been Fi in that closet tonight, not me. Gomez would’ve had her spun around and out the door in three seconds. Or worse, she’d have been the one he put his hands on, and if he’d made her come the way he did me—
Bile burns in my throat at the thought, and I’m almost entirely sure it’s fear for her safety and not petty jealousy over a what-if my brain just coughed up.
“Fine, I won’t kill him if it’s so important to you.” She straightens and makes a show of pushing her glasses up her nose. “Now tell me, neighbor girl,” she says in a nasally whine, “how did tonight’s felony break-in make you feeeeeeel?”
“That’s a frighteningly accurate Dr. Bore,” I say with a laugh.
“I should hope so. You talk about him enough.” She moves back to her chair and jiggles a mouse, pulling up the security feed around the farmhouse. “I don’t understand why you even bother making nice with the man-sized quaalude.”
“You don’t—”
Fi looks at me expectantly, but no way am I finishing the thought that tried to escape: You don’t know him like I do.
Instead, I say, “He’s just lonely and, like, incapable of being normal about it. Not an unforgivable offense.”
“‘Incapable of being normal’ is selling the virgin next door a little short,” Fi says as she turns back to her computers. “I’m dying to meet him in person someday. Maybe listen in through your tissue-paper walls.”
“Not happening.” My tone is flat and final. I don’t need my too-curious neighbor knowing that I have a sister. If the police ever come looking for me, I want her far, far away from my crimes. When she pulls up an image I’ve seen far too many times before, I leap on the topic change.
“Any updates on your passion project?” More red dots have appeared on her map of the US, one in Boston and a second one in Minneapolis.
“OMG. Yes.” She pulls up a different map, this one with hundreds of teal dots. “Guess what’s in every city with one of the missing people?”
“Hmm.” I pretend to think. “Deep, dark, unexplored forests. Unattended factories with big vats of body-dissolving chemicals. Local chapters of the Killers ’R Us club.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s too excited to stop smiling. “Even better. Every city has a Rowdy’s.”
“A Rowdy’s.”
“Yes.”
“The circus-themed donut and coffee chain.”
“Yes.” She taps the monitor. “I mean, every city in America worth visiting has a Rowdy’s, but the key data point here is that there’s a Rowdy’s within a mile of the last known sighting of everyone in my dataset.”
I blink. “The circus-themed donut and coffee chain is going to provide the connection between eight people who went missing with no rhyme or reason across the country, thereby cracking the mystery that’s consumed you for the past year and a half.”
“Yes,” she says. “It’s also going to let me identify the man who’s doing it.”
Her voice is so certain, I almost believe her.
“Okay then. Let me know when you’ve figured it out, and I’ll kill him for you.”
Her eyes land on the Rowdy’s map again. “Sure. Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I raise a brow. “I offer you my services, and you say, ‘Maybe’?”
She closes the map. “Maybe!” Then she spins her chair in a circle twice and launches herself at me for another hug, giggling all the way.
The only purely good thing I’ve done in my life is make sure Fi got a family after Mom died—lying my ass off and telling her of course it’s fine that the nice older couple that took her in as an emergency foster fell utterly in love with her.
And of course, of course it’s fine that Mr. and Mrs. Mercer only have room for one troubled eleven-year-old in their home and their hearts.
Of course I understand that her fucked-up eleven-year-old twin with the dead eyes and the still-seeping skin grafts was too much to handle.
And of course, of course, of course we’ll see each other every weekend.
Her arms tighten around my shoulders. Around my scars.
I made that sacrifice then, and Felicity got the education and the job and the ergonomic office chair and the capybara posters. Of course I’ll do anything I can to protect her from anything more dangerous than surveillance missions in public places.
“How about staying here tonight?” she says. “Your room’s ready.”
I stiffen. I try not to, but she feels it. “Thanks, but—”
“But you won’t.” She pulls back, her expression dimming.
Felicity’s adoptive parents gave her a place to belong when she needed one, and she used their final act of love—the inheritance they left her—to build a new home for herself here.
But I stopped belonging anywhere after I set her free, and if I spend even one night in the yellow bedroom she keeps ready for me, I might find out what I never had. So I make sure I never do.
She’s probably already guessed this. And she’s probably saving it all up for the epic fight we’ll have when she’s finally sick of my bullshit.
Either way, she shakes off her disappointment and says, “Before you exile yourself to the cot in the barn, do you want to hear what I found out about your stiletto bar-fight guy? It’s bad. ”
“How bad?” I perk up.
Her lips curve. “‘Ready the Chamber of Consequences’ bad.”
My exhaustion flees, and I make gimme motions with my hands.
“Tell. Me. Everything.”