Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Rue
The instant I put the car in park on Felicity’s driveway, Quinn bursts from the back seat, her leather duster swirling at her ankles.
She reaches the back steps as Fi steps onto the porch to greet us.
“Hi, guys! How was—”
“Disgusting,” Quinn says as she stomps past her into the house. The red-and-green jingle bell wreath tinkles merrily in the wake of her door slam.
Hugo unfolds himself from the passenger seat and exits the car, Cosmo trotting alongside him with a happy grin.
I’m a little slower, making sure my keys and phone are all in my bag before turning off the engine and unbuckling my seatbelt.
Some might say I’m stalling because I haven’t seen my sister in person since I stormed out to kill Overton a week ago.
They… might not be wrong. But by the time I’ve swung my legs to the ground so I can step out on both feet, my two people are in a face-off.
“Hey, you two,” I call. “Play nice.”
Fi advances on Hugo, and I hurry forward to intervene, although I’m not sure if it’s to protect my untrained sister from my lethal boyfriend or my sweet boyfriend from my overprotective sister.
It’s neither, as it turns out. Felicity gets right up in his face, then breaks into a huge smile and flings her arms around him. “Thank you for saving her,” she says as she squeezes him tight.
Hugo awkwardly pats her shoulder, but he’s smiling as he does it. “I had no choice. She’s my whole world. But she pretty much saved herself.”
My two people. Hugging.
Dammit, I never used to be a happy crier.
“I did, you know,” I say as I walk over to them, my left ankle barely causing me any pain. “All it took was throwing myself out a window.”
Fi grabs me and shouts, “Never! Ever! Again!” directly into my ear.
“Never ever,” I say, wincing at the volume.
“We always have each other’s backs, and we always make plans together.
I promise.” She hugs me tight, and my eyes find Hugo’s over her shoulder so I can mouth the words, You too.
His eyes crinkle at the corners, then he gives a serious nod and mouths, I promise.
Fi, who’s also happy crying, huffs and flaps her fingers at Hugo. “Quit communicating behind my back and get in here.”
His face lights up at the invitation, and he walks over to wrap his arms around us both, rocking us gently back and forth. He’s a good hugger for someone who went without his whole life.
“Oh my god.” Quinn pops her head out of the back door. “It wasn’t enough to spend an hour in the car with these two idiots saying they love each other every two minutes? Now there are group hugs?”
“You can get in on this,” Hugo offers, but Quinn just scoffs.
“I’ll start rearranging the kitchen if this meeting doesn’t start in the next five minutes.” Threat delivered, she stomps back inside.
Hugo gestures after her. “Felicity Mercer, meet Quinn Brady.”
“Is she serious about the kitchen?” Fi asks.
“As a heart attack.” Hugo grimaces. “And I mean that literally. She’s also Pell’s chemist.”
Fi’s mouth drops open, and she looks at me for confirmation. “It’s true,” I say.
“In that case, she can definitely rearrange my kitchen,” she says, turning and taking the steps two at a time.
Four minutes later, Hugo and I join Felicity at her big kitchen table while Cosmo snoozes in the corner on one of the cushions from her plaid couch and Quinn mutters darkly as she flips through a battered pile of baking sheets on the counter.
“How do you get even heat distribution?” She holds up a particularly warped one.
“I don’t!” Fi chirps.
As she does every year, my sister decorated for the holidays with maximalist glee, and Quinn’s pulling out the contents of every drawer and cabinet under an explosion of garland, twinkle lights, bows, and dangling ornaments strung from hooks placed near the ceiling for just this purpose.
I catch Hugo eyeing the abundance with wonder, and I whisper, “The rest of the house is even more over the top.”
“Excellent,” he whispers back. “I’m taking mental notes for our place.”
“Our place.” I smile at him.
“Our place.”
Once we came up for air the day after my brush with death and Hugo’s brush with a police body cam, he placed one phone call.
Twelve hours later, my new condo was sublet to a friend of Pell’s who’s “in town on business,” all of my worldly goods were stashed in my former garage, and Hugo was pulling up schematics to convert a duplex into a single-family house.
I even persuaded him to ditch the khakis in favor of slim-fit sweaters and jeans that mold to his ass and thighs when he doesn’t need to be Dr. Mohr.
It was a really good week.
“Friends!” Felicity claps her hands to call us to order. “We’re here today to plan the murder of Lester Timms for killing his ex-wife’s boyfriend, framing her for the murder, and harassing my beloved twin.”
“Not in that order,” Hugo mutters, and I squeeze his hand.
Felicity pulls up a PowerPoint on her laptop and turns it to face the room.
“Sorry I don’t have a projector,” she says before jumping in and making me love her even more than I already did.
“First, the prosecutor who took over Angie Timms’s case from the late Greg Whitfield plans to reopen the investigation. Thank you, Rue, for that.”
“What can I say?” I raise my hands with a flourish as the woman’s face and LinkedIn bio appear on Fi’s screen. “I’m a jobs creator.” At Quinn’s confused look, I tell her, “I killed Greg. He deserved it.”
“He more than deserved it.” Hugo’s expression turns murderous.
“So it’s good news for Angie,” Quinn says.
“Eh.” Felicity rolls the sleeves of her oversized yellow sweatshirt. “It’s good for Angie, obviously, but it means the person who actually killed Paul Franklin will have an incentive to keep her quiet.”
She flips to the next slide showing Lester Timms’s official police photo alongside his Philosopher Kings username and avatar: Guardian_of_the_Republic and a nude Greek torso statue.
“Since the person who actually killed Paul is protected by his police union and way too many of the people who’d be investigating him…
” I let the thought trail off as my gaze falls on the next image in Felicity’s PowerPoint, a still from a recent local news segment showing Angie leaving a hearing in her powder blue jumpsuit from the county jail, where she’s being held without bond.
Her face is drawn and pale, and her black hair’s been cut short.
“He’ll kill her to keep her from testifying,” Quinn says flatly. “Got it.”
I swallow hard thinking about Lester Timms’s big hands, tatted knuckles, and overt threats. “Last week, he strongly implied that he’ll give investigators my name as a suspect in Greg’s disappearance if I don’t say yes to drinks,” I say with a full-body shudder.
Hugo’s the one squeezing my hand now.
“Hey, y’all. We havin’ a meeting?”
All heads turn to see Pell loping into the room, dressed in black, his backward baseball cap holding down his hair.
“We are meeting,” Quinn says flatly, folding her arms over her faded Diet Coke logo T-shirt. “You are not meeting.”
“And yet.” Pell leans against the wall, putting the big farmhouse table between him and his chemist, who responds by turning her back to bang a pot onto the stove.
“Hey, Fi-Fi,” Pell says. “Barn’s all fixed up.”
“Hi, Peloton. How’d you get past my securit—you know what?” She holds up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”
“Wouldn’t tell ya even if ya did.” His gaze falls on me and Hugo sitting side by side. “Howdy, neighbor girl. I assume this is about that cop who’s been sniffing around you on account of your ex-boyfriend disappearing?”
“Stop calling me that,” I say as Hugo turns to stare at me.
“Pell knows?”
I glare at Pell, who’s watching Hugo with an amused twist of his mouth, then squeeze my boyfriend’s solid biceps. “I asked him to keep his ears open.”
“You asked him to keep his ears open,” he repeats in a dangerously even voice.
“You and I weren’t on speaking terms!” I say, but he’s already stalking to the wall.
“You set up the barn, right?” Despite only having an inch or so on him, Hugo manages to look down at our friendly neighborhood fixer as he bumps him with his shoulder.
“Sure did.” Pell’s unruffled as he bumps him right back.
I glance around to see if anyone else is seeing this, but Fi and Quinn are rummaging around the pantry, maybe talking about Timms or maybe talking about the best placement for Fi’s colanders.
“The same barn where the wiring failed?” Hugo’s fully leaning against Pell’s shoulder now, the opposite of the relaxed guy he was two seconds ago.
A micro expression flickers across Pell’s face—anger, maybe, but it’s just as likely to be boredom or hunger or the mental math on how he’d incapacitate all of us if he needed to make a quick escape.
“Same barn.” Pell presses back just as hard, creating an isometric standoff.
Hugo plants his feet and leans harder. “Yet here we are a week later, and you’re just now getting around to fixing it?”
Pell’s boots start a slow slide across the linoleum. He takes his ever-present baseball out of a pants pocket, tossing it up and catching it, as if he and Hugo aren’t in some weird macho standoff.
“Been out of town.” He tosses the ball again.
“That’s it?” Hugo grunts as his shoulder drops three inches. “She almost died.”
“She’s a smart girl.” Pell’s voice shows no strain, and his feet stop sliding. “She knows to check her equipment first.”
“She is right here,” I say testily. I wasn’t expecting an apology from Pell, but I also wasn’t expecting my boyfriend to go all caveman on him.
Hugo’s starting to sweat. “Can you at least install redundant power?”
“Already done.” Pell palms the ball and adjusts his hat. “The Alsop sisters pay well.”
Hugo’s boots slip a full twelve inches. “The fuck did you sa—”
“Pell!” Felicity snaps. “Quit trying to joint lock my future brother-in-law! And Hugo, quit trying to knock my future prison pen pal on his ass!”