“Hey, calm down,” I said, taking her hand. Delilah was so scared about Mendez, she didn’t even recoil at my touch. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
Her eyes narrowed, and the curl appeared again in her upper lip. “Right, my seventeen-year-old stalker is going to protect me from the big bad cop.”
“Dee—”
“Whatever, it’s fine. I’ll be fine.” She took a deep breath. “All right. I’m okay. Let’s go find out what the hell she knows.” She got out of the car and wiped her palms on her jeans.
We walked slowly, the distance from the car to the house stretching impossibly long. Delilah’s anxiety was contagious; I half expected cops to jump out of the bushes and pounce on us.
Delilah unlocked the front door and led the way in. “Mom?” she called out.
No answer. She turned back to me and shrugged, closing the door. “Maybe I was wrong, maybe that wasn’t Detective Mendez’s—”
As though the very mention of Mendez summoned her, there was a knock on the door. We stared at each other, then Delilah frantically motioned at me to hide in the kitchen.
“Why?” I mouthed.
“Just go!” she hissed. She watched as I left and hid behind a corner. Once I was out of sight from the front door, she took a deep breath, brushed down her top, and plastered a halfway-decent smile onto her face. I slunk behind the wall so I wouldn’t be seen.
“Detective Mendez, hi,” Delilah said.
“Hi, Delilah.”
A slight pause, then Delilah said, “Can I help you with anything?” the same time Detective Mendez said, “Is your mom in?”
“She’s still at work,” Delilah said.
“Right. Well, that’s okay. I’d like to speak with you, actually.”
The note of fear was sharp in Delilah’s answer. “Me?”
I closed my eyes. Her voice came out too high, brittle with fear.
“Yeah, we got a call earlier today claiming that Brandon’s death wasn’t an accident, and I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by, see if you might have heard anything…” Detective Mendez’s voice trailed off. It was an old trick that begged the person you were questioning to fill up the silence.
Delilah fell for it. “Oh, wow. Do you know who made the call?”
My hands tightened into fists. I hated having to listen to my Delilah being tricked into making mistakes like this.
“That’s not for me to disclose.” Meaning she didn’t know. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Do you have any idea who might have done anything to Brandon?”
“Well, he was your partner. Your guess is as good as mine.”
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, squeezing my pendant with frustration. Now Delilah sounded defensive. She was really bad at this. Was it just me, or was her distaste for Brandon painfully obvious? If she revealed Brandon had been abusive, Detective Mendez would know Delilah had a strong motive for killing him, and from there, it wouldn’t take long at all for her to piece together what happened.
“Did he tell you what he was working on before the accident?” asked Mendez.
Silence. I could only assume Delilah either nodded or shook her head in answer.
“You were here the day he was killed, right?” Mendez pressed.
“I—yes. I was upstairs. I’ve told the cops everything—”
I closed my eyes. Come on, Dee. She was too rattled, too defensive. I could see the hole she was digging for herself. It was a deep one.
“Do you recognize this?” Mendez said, taking out a photograph from her back pocket. From my vantage point, I couldn’t tell what it was, but Delilah’s face paled visibly. “I found it in Brandon’s car,” Mendez said. “It matches one of the drugs we traced back to Draycott.”
“I—I don’t do drugs, you can ask—” Delilah squeaked.
“I know, Dee, you’re a good kid,” Mendez said. “Tell me, what do you know about what Brandon was looking into before he died? I think you know something.”
Delilah opened and closed her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Let’s go over the day of the accident again. Did you see or hear anything before you came down to the garage? Anything out of the ordinary?”
I didn’t think twice before stepping out from the kitchen. “Hey, do you have any oregan—oh, sorry, am I interrupting something?”
Delilah glared at me like a caged tiger, frightened and angry. Probably wondering what the hell I was doing, why I was out here. Probably thought I’d make things worse. I ignored her and walked up to Detective Mendez and shook her hand.
“I’m Logan. I’m Delilah’s boyfriend.” Delilah’s boyfriend. The title slipped out as easily as an eel wriggling out of a fisherman’s grip. So natural, the way it rolled off my tongue, as though I’d always been her boyfriend.
“I didn’t know you were dating somebody,” Detective Mendez said to Delilah.
Delilah schooled her expression into a smile. Good girl.
“We’re keeping our relationship on the down low,” I said. “Nobody else knows we’ve been dating for months. Detective Jackson—was—kinda protective, so…”
“Gotcha,” Detective Mendez said. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Logan. Would you mind giving me a minute with Delilah?”
“Sure.” I turned around then stopped. “Actually, I sorta overheard your last question and, uh, we didn’t wanna get in trouble with our parents, but…” I glanced at Delilah. “I think we should tell her, Dee.” Sincere, that was what I was going for. Sincerity, tinged by the slightest bit of hesitation, the way any teen would feel.
“Tell me what?” Mendez said.
I ignored Delilah’s frantic, confused face and said, “The day Detective Jackson died, I was upstairs with Delilah. She’d let me in the night before, and we were, uh, you know, um, messing around—”
Understanding dawned on Delilah’s face the same time it did on Detective Mendez’s. Mendez turned to Delilah and said, “Is this true?”
Delilah nodded. “I was scared, I didn’t want to tell anyone because I’d get in so much trouble, and with Mom going through so much already, I didn’t want to tell her I was upstairs with a guy. I kept thinking, Brandon would have a fit. I mean, I know that makes zero sense because he’s, you know, gone, but still.” She lowered her head. “I’m really sorry about lying.”
Detective Mendez gave us both a kind smile. “Don’t worry about it. I know what it’s like to be young and in love.”
To her credit, Delilah managed not to look revolted at the L word. She merely simpered at the detective and took my hand in hers.
Joy pounded through my veins. We were holding hands because she wanted to, and now it was no longer her against the cop, it was Us against the cop.
“This means you were here at the house during the time of the accident,” Detective Mendez said, and now her attention was completely on me.
It was unnerving, to be under that stare. Detective Mendez wasn’t the type to pluck her brows into delicate arches; they sat atop her eyes like two fat, angry caterpillars.
“Yeah,” I said, after a half beat.
“When did you leave?” she asked, and suddenly her notebook was out of her pocket. Then came her pen, shining like a little sword.
I shuffled through my memory of that day, when I’d hid in my usual spot, deep in the backyard, my camera aimed through the gaping back door of the garage. When would have been a good time to leave?
“About eleven, I think?” Delilah said, coming to my rescue, what a champ, what a perfect girlfriend she was. “Brandon called for—” She paused, stumbled.
I didn’t understand why Delilah halted, why she looked like she could burst into tears, but Detective Mendez did.
“Brandon called for you?” she said, the two caterpillars now trained on Delilah. “Didn’t you say you went
down to see if he wanted anything from the supermarket and found him that way?” That way. Even now, even when she was homing in for the kill, Detective Mendez was well-mannered enough to say “that way” instead of dead.
“Yeah, well, it took quite a while for Dee to get downstairs, because we had to, you know, get dressed and stuff, and then she snuck me out, and the accident probably happened then,” I said.
“I’m so sorry for not telling the truth,” Delilah said, and if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve believed her. Everything about her was steeped in regret—her eyes shiny with tears, her mouth twisted with sadness, her voice wavering but brave. “I can’t stop thinking about it. At night I lie in bed and I ask myself, ‘If I’d come down sooner, could I have stopped it? Could I have helped? If I’d learned more about cars and jacks and all that stuff, maybe I could’ve lifted it, maybe…’”
I pulled Delilah close, rubbing my hand up and down her arm soothingly.
“Hey, no, don’t do that to yourself,” Detective Mendez said, all sympathy now. “It’s no one’s fault. It was an old jack, and Brandon hadn’t maintained it well. There was nothing you could’ve done.”
Delilah nodded, tasking a deep breath.
“Well, it was probably just a prank call,” Detective Mendez said.
“People do that? To cops?” Delilah asked, her voice tinged with anger. “About someone who died?”
“All the time,” Detective Mendez said. “Normally I wouldn’t even be here, but like I said, I was in the area and I thought I’d drop by, see how you and your mom are doing.”
“Thank you,” Delilah said. “That’s really nice of you.” She sounded like she meant it.
“All right, I should get back to the station. You kids stay out of trouble now.” She gave us a quick smile and strolled back toward her car, giving the garage a couple of glances along the way.
Once the door was closed, Delilah snatched her hand out of mine and sagged against the wall. “God,” she whispered. Then she turned to face me and I got that jolt again, because her eyes were no longer bright with anger or wide with fear. “You gave me an alibi,” she said.
I resisted the urge to hold her hand. Careful, tread gently, this is new territory. “I was serious when I told you I love you. I won’t ever let anything bad happen to you, even if it means sacrificing myself. Look, Dee, our fates are tied to each other’s now. If you go to jail, I go down with you as an accessory. Doesn’t that tell you how serious I am about us?”
Curiosity flared in her eyes, another new emotion. “What is it you like about me?”
Careful. This was my chance to really get her to see, to understand why we were meant to be with each other. “You know those old couples who have been together forever? When you ask them how they met, they’d say something like, ‘I saw her walking inside the library where I worked and that was it. I knew.’ This is exactly like that. I saw you and I knew.”
“Well, that’s a load of crap,” she muttered, but there was no sting in her voice. There was something else, something dawning, wary, but there. A new understanding.
“It’s how I feel about you.” I took her hand, and she didn’t fight it. I could leap to the skies, I was filled with so many bubbles. Delilah had let me save her. All along, she just wanted someone to save her, someone to be on her side. And I’d shown her I was that someone.
“Feelings change.”
“Mine won’t.”
“We’re seventeen,” she said. “Our feelings change from minute to minute.” She wanted to be convinced, to be courted, to not be an easy kill.
“Mine won’t,” I said, again, pulling her close. I caught a lock of her hair gently, tucked it behind her ear, and leaned in. My lips brushed her cheek, soft, and I whispered in her ear, “I promise.”
Chapter Thirteen
Delilah
As expected, Mom was totally enamored by the dish I insisted on calling Stalketti Carbonara when she wasn’t within earshot. Logan had sighed when I came up with the name while he was cooking it, but then he smiled and told me my sense of humor was one of the many things he loved about me. I had given him the finger, then, in the name of humor.
Dinner conversation flowed so easily, I started to forget to be awful toward Logan and had to go to the bathroom and remind myself what a disgusting creep he was. It was incredible; he’d basically shoved himself into my life, but part of me was beginning to actually enjoy his company. Clearly it was a part of me that needed to be strangled and dumped into a vat of toxic waste, but it was still part of me. Maybe it was a “like attracts like” thing. Who was I to judge Logan so harshly, after everything I’d done, everything I was doing?
“Gosh, Logan, you are really spoiling us!” Mom said after she finished her second plate of Stalketti.
I glowered at her.
“You both deserve it, after everything you’ve been through,” he said.
Ugh.
I stood up and started gathering the plates noisily. “Yeah, thanks for cooking, Logan. You should go back to school. Wouldn’t want to miss curfew.”
“Delilah! Don’t be so rude,” Mom scolded, but the bite in her words was blunted by all the carbs she’d stuffed in her face. “But I agree, Logan, as much as I love having you around, I don’t want you getting in trouble.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, ma’am,” Logan said. He made a big show of looking at his watch. “Still got another forty minutes before curfew, and I’ve finished most of my homework.”
Mom’s eyes widened. “Wow! Dee, this boy is amazing.”
Seriously, Mom?
“It’s so rare to find someone so well-adjusted. Your parents must be very proud of you,” Mom said.
“They’re okay, yeah,” Logan said, smiling shyly.
This might be what I hated most about all of this. Seeing Logan charm Mom into trusting him, unable to do anything about it. And that tiny, traitorous part of me was falling for it, getting charmed, batting its eyelashes at him and going, Gosh, isn’t he just amazing?
“All right,” I said loudly. “Logan may have finished his homework, but I’m far from finishing mine, so…”
“Okay, hon. I get it.” Mom stood up and winked at Logan. “She’s been worrying over her grades ever since she decided to apply for early admission to college.”
“Early admission?” Logan’s voice was totally calm, but I caught the flare in his eyes. Panic pounded through me.
“Yes, to the National University of Singapore. It’s her father’s alma mater, and—”
“There’s no need to bore him with all that stuff, Mom,” I said quickly, my heart thumping out a new rhythm so hard, I could feel my fingertips throbbing: shitshitshitshitshit.
Logan was nodding his head thoughtfully at me. I could practically read what he was thinking: gotcha.
“Pick you up at seven,” he said, standing up.
“You don’t have to,” I said. Still beating the same rhythm: shitshitshitshit.
“No, but I want to.”
And that tiny part of me fluttered. I tightened my lips into a sexless, matronly smile. “Thanks. See you.” As soon as I closed the door, my breath released in a tired exhale. Shit. He knows about NUS. I could cry, I really could. It was too much. Everything was too much. But surely even Logan wasn’t invested enough to change his entire life plan and move to a foreign country for a girl. Right? There was hope. And I’d prepared so hard for NUS. I’d read up on everything I could find on Singapore, and not even just Singapore, but the entirety of Southeast Asia. Plus, it was my dad’s alma mater. I had a better chance of getting in than he did. Things were bad but not catastrophic. I slouched toward the kitchen to start doing the dishes, but I found Mom there, pouring hot water into two mugs. She handed me one when she saw me, and the scent of tea with orange peel wafted out of the mug, sweet and soothing.
Mom gestured at me to take a seat.
“I should go up and get a start on my schoolwork,” I said, not quite meeting her eye, not quite able to forgive her for loving Logan so quickly, for not being wary, for failing me yet again.
“I know, this won’t take long.” She smiled and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I stopped myself from shuddering at the memory of Logan doing the exact same thing only hours ago. “Sweetie, I have to ask, are things between you and Logan okay? I mean, he seems like a nice boy, but you seem a bit…off around him, and admittedly, I haven’t been the best judge of men, so I’m asking you now, is everything all right?”
There it was, my chance to open up the door, my chance to let everything spill out of me. Mom would be able to assess the situation and tell me what to do to minimize the damage. My insides pushed at me to do it, to vomit out the truth that had been festering deep inside me. It would be such a relief to get it out. I opened my mouth, the words teetering on the tip of my tongue.
Mom sighed, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, you must think I’m a hypocrite, asking you a question like that when I’m the one who invited Brandon into our lives. You’re so much wiser than I am, in many ways, and I should give you more credit.”
“That’s not—”
“I just—when I think of how stupid I was, letting Brandon move in and run our lives like that…and to think of how he treated us, how he treated you, I—how could I have let that happen? I used to be so strong, Dee. I believed I could do anything.”
“You can, Mom,” I said. “Look at you, you’re a powerhouse at your company—”
Mom snorted. “I’m a woman working in tech. I had no idea how much that was affecting me. I spent years making my skin thick, so all of the comments and snide remarks about how women are ruining tech wouldn’t get to me, but…it all adds up. And I was so scared of losing yet another man after your dad…” she said in a broken whisper. “I’ve failed you, Dee. I should have been strong. I should—I don’t know what I was thinking, what happened to me.”
“It’s not all your fault, Mom,” I said, tasting tears at the back of my throat. I’d been angry at her for so long, blaming her for Brandon, but now, I realized I meant what I said. “What Brandon did, it’s not on you. He was the perfect gentleman just long enough for us to trust him, and then…”
The Obsession Page 13