Chapter 12
Annabelle
The en-suite door is locked.
I stand in here like an idiot with the gun pointed at the tiles and my phone clutched in my other hand.
The room is too bright. Too clean. Too small for what is happening outside it.
My heart is pounding so hard it makes my hands shake.
I hate that. I hate that Ethan leaves, and suddenly the flat feels enormous and thin-skinned, like danger can seep through every crack in it.
I lower the toilet lid and sit, because my knees are not entirely trustworthy right now, then set the gun across my lap.
Finger off the trigger. Safety on until I need it.
I stare at the door.
Nothing happens.
That is almost worse.
I look at my phone. No messages. No missed calls.
The wallpaper is still the same dull default photo because I never bothered to change it.
My old life is full of things I never bothered to change.
I think about that for half a second and feel suddenly furious with myself for the years I spent drifting between work and home and grief, as if staying still could keep the world from finding me.
It found me anyway.
“You’re not dying in a bathroom,” I tell myself
My voice sounds strange in here.
I get up again because sitting still is making me worse. I check the lock. Then I check it again. I listen at the door, every muscle in my body tight.
Still nothing.
The phone vibrates in my hand, and I nearly fire at the fucking sink.
Ethan.
My thumb is already on the screen, ready to slide across the cracks when I stop.
“Bennet?” I murmur and answer quickly. “Hello?”
“Miss Harrison,” Detective Inspector Bennett’s voice comes down the line. “Would you be able to come down to the station?”
My blood pounds in my ears. “Why? Have you found something on who killed my mother?”
“I can’t discuss it over the phone. We need you to come to the police station.”
I blink and press my lips together. “I can’t right now,” I say after a beat. “Can you just tell me what it is?”
A pause hums down the line. Controlled. Careful.
“It concerns your mother’s case,” he says. “It is important that we speak in person.”
Every hair on my arms rises. The guys think the police are being paid off. There was that Briggs who cloned my phone. Alarm bells are ringing, but he has dangled the bait.
Ethan will kill me if I move from this bathroom, never mind go gallivanting around town, straight to the police, who may or may not be corrupt.
It takes everything I have to say my next words. “I’m not coming in.”
His tone changes by half an inch. Still polite. Less patient. “Miss Harrison, I really must insist.”
“No.”
“This is regarding new information.”
“Then tell me the information.”
“Annabelle.” He uses my first name too easily. “I understand this is distressing, but if you want answers—”
“I do, which is why I want you to tell me now.”
Another pause.
Longer this time.
When Bennett speaks again, the softness has gone out of him. “I am trying to help you.”
Ice slides down my spine.
“I’m sure you are,” I say, keeping my voice flat. “But I’m unable to come in right now.”
“Tomorrow then,” he says.
I make a snap decision. If I keep refusing him, he is going to know I’m suspicious about him and this entire investigation. Or that I already know who killed my mother. “Fine,” I say slowly. “Tomorrow afternoon.”
I hang up and hope to fuck that Ethan, Aidan and Callan are back by then. My hand is shaking when it rings again.
This time it is Ethan.
“Yes, I’m here,” I say, trying to make my voice sound normal.
“Are you in the en-suite?” Ethan asks.
“Yes.”
“Door locked?”
“Yes.”
He exhales, and I hear traffic under it. An engine. Movement. “Good. Stay there.”
“I was planning on it.” My voice comes out too light. He hears it.
“What happened?”
I tighten my grip on the phone. “Nothing happened.”
“Annabelle.”
Fuck.
“A call happened,” I admit.
His silence turns dangerous. “From who?”
“Detective Inspector Bennett.”
For one second, there is no sound from Ethan at all. Then, very quietly, “Tell me exactly what he said.”
I do. Every word I can remember. The station. My mother’s case. New information. Tomorrow afternoon.
By the end of it, my pulse is back in my throat.
“Did you tell him where you are?” Ethan asks.
“No.”
“Did you tell him you were alone?”
“No.”
“Did you agree to tomorrow?”
“Yes.” I close my eyes. “I thought if I kept refusing, he’d know I knew something I shouldn’t.”
A weighty pause.
“That was the right call.” His voice stays level, but I can hear the steel in it now. “If he calls back, don’t answer. How long were you on the call for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Check.”
I sit back down on the toilet lid and fumble with the phone, trying to pull up the Recent calls. “Forty-one seconds.”
He breathes out through his nose. “Okay, good. You do not leave that bathroom for anyone. Not the police. Not building security. Not fucking royalty. If the fire alarm goes off, you call me first. If someone bangs on the front door, you call me first. If you hear the lift, you call me first.”
My throat feels dry. “Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” I press my palm against my sternum like that will calm the hammering under it. “Did you find them?”
A second passes.
“I found information.”
Something in his voice makes my stomach drop. It is not fear. It is worse. Precision. Ethan, when he has decided on a course, has shoved every other feeling into a locked box. “You’re scaring me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Traffic roars louder for a second, then dulls. “I’ll check in again in a little while.”
“Ethan…”
“Stay where you are, Tinks. I won’t leave you alone much longer.”
The line goes dead.
I stare at my phone for a second too long, then lower it. I let my breath slowly. My hand is damp against the case.
Information.
That is not the same as finding them.
It is not the same as hearing Aidan swearing, or Callan going cold and cruel in that way he does when he is alive and furious. It is not Ethan saying they are fine. He said information like it was something he didn’t want to hand me over the phone.
Forty seconds.
That is all it takes now for my entire body to decide the world is ending.
I look around the en-suite. White tiles.
Chrome taps. A glass shower screen. Clean towels are stacked on the shelf.
Too normal. Too polished. It makes me want to scream.
I lift the gun. The weight of the metal makes my wrist ache.
Fuck this. Fuck Jack, Maeve and the secrets that keep me trapped in a room with white tiles.
My skin crawls with the need to move, to pace, to do something other than wait for the world to end.
I think about the way Ethan looked at me before he left.
The possession in his eyes was the only thing keeping me from shattering into a million pieces.
I want Aidan to walk through that door and swear about his side. I want Callan to tell me everything is fine in that flat, certain voice of his. I check the safety on the gun. I am ready to use it. I have to be.
The silence is a lie. If the door opens and it isn’t a Deveaux triplet, I won’t hesitate. I am done being the victim in everyone else’s story. I am done being afraid. I am a librarian with a gun she has no idea how to use, but I am going to survive this day even if it kills me.
Somewhere, outside the door of this en-suite, outside the door of the bedroom, I hear a phone ring.
I freeze.
It sounds like a landline. It stops after a few rings, but I don’t move.
I stay frozen. My heart is doing a frantic tap-dance against my ribs.
The quiet feels like a trap. I stand up, the gun heavy in my grip.
My palm is slick. I wipe it on my leggings, one hand at a time.
Ethan told me to stay here. He told me to lock myself in.
I want to obey, but the walls are closing in.
Nothing else happens.
No more sounds, no more ringing phones. Just a silence that is making me feel sick.