He cocked his head. “Wait a second. I know how I know you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You’re that chick that was dating Callum Rutherford. The one who used to be a stripper.”
A sick, cold feeling went through me, like being doused with cold water. He recognized me? How could that be possible?
“You know it seems like you could be real friendly if you wanted. What was your name? Oh, that’s right. Cecily.” He grinned at me.
I turned away from him.
He grabbed me by the arm. “When you were a stripper, were you this much of a killjoy?”
“Let go of me.” My voice was quiet. My teeth were clenched.
“Because, you know, you’ve got a killer body, but that attitude of yours… Well, it could really use an adjustment.”
I dumped my whiskey sour over his head.
He sputtered. “What the hell?”
But he’d let go of me, and that was the important thing.
I squared my shoulders. “Thanks for the drink, Troy.” I walked out of the bar.
* * *
I wandered through the streets of Aurora. Now that I was on my feet, navigating my way through the city, I realized how drunk I was. It was like looking at the world through blinders. I could only see what was right in front of me. Everything else was blurry. It was more difficult than usual to put one foot in front of the other.
I ended up near the apartment that I used to share with Darlene, back when we worked out near the docks, when she first started taking up with Hayden Barclay. I went to the building, and I leaned against a street lamp, and I gazed up, trying to find our window.
One window in sea of windows.
Darlene wasn’t there that much. She hooked up with a lot of guys. Sometimes she brought them back to our apartment, but that was a pretty rare occurrence. Letting a guy know where you lived wasn’t always smart. If things went south, he could come find you.
I spent a lot of time alone there.
But sometimes, we spent time together. I remembered late night conversations, full of laughter. I remembered ordering pizza together and pigging out. I remembered watching movies together on our couch.
It was only maybe six months we lived together.
She was with Barclay after that, and he liked her. He got her some other apartment. Some swank place where she lived by herself. I visited her there a few times, but it wasn’t the same as when we lived together.
It wasn’t the same at all.
I couldn’t handle thinking about Darlene.
I supposed I’d come here to run from what I was feeling about Callum.
Or Vigil.
Or whoever the fuck he was.
I’d known right from the beginning that I was in deep shit. I’d known that I was going to fall for him, and he wasn’t going to fall back.
But it had seemed like I was wrong.
Memories came back to me. Moments of us together.
His lips on the top of my head. His whisper. You’re lovely.
On the balcony, eating breakfast. You and that fucking mask are the best things that ever happened to me.
And his voice rumbling in his chest. I love you.
Did those things mean nothing? Could it really all have changed so quickly?
On second thought, I couldn’t handle thinking about this either.
I needed more liquor. Stronger liquor. There was a store right around the corner from my apartment. I’d get some on the way home.
* * *
The computer screen was too bright. I adjusted the brightness. Again. It was the third time I’d done it. I was sitting at a desk at the office. It was morning.
I was hungover.
It was my own fault. I shouldn’t have spent last evening getting so drunk. I knew that now. At the time, life had seemed too difficult to handle on my own. But now, the effects of drinking so much seemed too difficult to handle.
I grimaced.
I could hardly concentrate on the emails I was trying to read. My head was pounding, and I felt out of it.
I needed caffeine. I needed food. I’d eaten a banana on my way to work here, but it didn’t seem to have been enough. My stomach was making noises at me.
I got up from the computer and went over to a few of my fellow interns. “Hey, I’m going next door, you guys want anything?”
There was a diner next door. They sold lots of greasy food. People were always bringing stuff into The Sun-Times offices from the diner.
A couple of people gave me some orders.
Armed with the knowledge my little excursion would benefit other people besides me, I felt like it was more legit. I went next door and placed our orders.
Fifteen minutes later, I was reading the emails while scarfing down home fries, bacon, and scrambled eggs. I had a tall Styrofoam cup of hot coffee, packed full of sugar and cream. I was feeling much better.
As my stomach went to work on the fat and protein, I began to scold myself.
This wasn’t like me.
I wasn’t the type of girl to go to pieces over a man. I’d had my heart broken before. I knew that it hurt for a while, but that eventually the pain faded.
I needed to pull myself together.
I needed to focus on something else.
And so.
I would.
Henry wanted an article about my past?
Well, I thought I just might give it to him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I stayed late working on the article. It was running pretty long. I found that I had a lot to say about everything that had happened to me. Once I got going on it, the urge to set the story straight was overpowering.
During my breaks from writing, I thought about what I would say next.
And I thought about Callum.
I was beginning to wonder if I should call him.
Now that the late-night bender was over, and I was back at work staying busy, I was beginning to realize that I had no idea what was going on between us.
When I’d run off, he’d said he needed time to process what he’d learned.
He hadn’t actually said that he wanted to break up with me.
But, of course, he hadn’t come after me either.
And he hadn’t called me.
But maybe he was afraid to call me. Maybe he was thinking that I didn’t want to talk to him, and that I was angry with him. Maybe if I called him, we could clear it all up. Maybe he’d take back all that stuff he said yesterday.
I picked up the phone to call him more than once.
But I always stopped.
He was the one who was angry. He was the one with the problem. If I called him, I’d only be bothering him.
He wanted time.
If there came a point in which he didn’t want time, well, then, it would be his job to call me.
I worried that I was being stubborn, that neither of us was calling the other because we were thinking it was the other’s job.
But then I decided that women were the only people who played games in their heads like that. Guys were simpler. If they wanted to call you, they did.
He wasn’t calling.
It was because he didn’t want to talk to me.
It was over.
It was after I had this depressing revelation that I went back to writing and finished the last little bit of the article. I wrote about Callum. Not a lot, but I felt I had to mention him. After all, no one would have found this out about me if it hadn’t been for the fact we were dating.
I found myself fighting tears again.
But I managed to pull myself together.
I finished the article and printed it.
Outside, the summer evening was turning the city into long, long shadows. Everything was dim and tired. It wasn’t yet dark, but it would be soon.
I took my article up the elevator to Henry’s office.
I didn’t think he’d be there. I was just going to leave it under his door.
“I, um, wrote the article about my past. Told my story,” I said. “I was going to leave it for you—”
“Is that it?” he asked, gesturing to the piece of paper I was clutching.
I nodded.
“Well, give it here.”
“Oh, you don’t have to look at it right now, sir. You’re obviously heading home for the night. I can leave it—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ms. Kane. I’m dying to read it.” He snatched it from me. “I’ll have comments for you by the morning.”
* * *
When I got home, Airenne was perched on the couch in the living room, holding her laptop. “Oh my god, Cecily, you’ve got to see this. That jackass hasn’t been broken up with you for a day.”
“Callum?” I said. “You think he’s a jackass?”
“Come here,” she said.
I joined her on the couch, peering over her shoulder at the laptop screen. She was logged onto CallumWatch, which was apparently a website that tracked Callum’s every move. There were several pictures of Callum and Blake coming out of a coffee shop together and getting into his car. He was wearing sunglasses, and he had a little bit of scruff on his chin, like he hadn’t shaved. But it was definitely him. It was Callum.
Blake herself was impossible not to recognize. She looked coiffed and put together. As usual.
There were lots of shots. Maybe ten. In one of them, Callum was helping her into the car, and his hand was resting on her hip.
His hands on her made me feel ill. I knew that they’d been engaged, and they must have touched each other in the past, but seeing it in front of me like that, captured and frozen on film was too real.
I covered my mouth with one hand. “Why is he with her?”
“They look cozy, don’t they?” said Airenne.
“She’s behind it,” I said. “She’s the one who leaked this story about me and destroyed everything.”
“She did?” said Airenne. “That harpy.”
“But why is he with her?” I didn’t understand. “The last time I saw him, he called her a bitch.”
“Looks like she changed his mind,” said Airenne.
I melded into the couch, boneless and defeated. “I don’t see how my life could go from so great to so horrible so quickly.”
She hugged me. “Oh, Cecily. I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve this. You’re the best.”
I gave her a pitiful look. “Really? But you didn’t think so before. You thought I was awful when I stole Callum from you.”
“No, I was being awful,” she said. “I didn’t have any right to be mad at you about that. I didn’t even know him. And you guys were such a cute couple.”
I didn’t know if cute was the right word. Raw. Intense. Something like that, maybe. But cute?
I picked up a pillow and hugged it. “All I want to do is get drunk, but I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again this morning when I woke up with the hangover from hell.”
“Oh, yeah, I found that bottle of vodka,” she said. “You drank half of it.”
I made a face. “I was upset.”
She patted my head. “Well, you don’t have to get drunk. Instead of getting sugary calories from alcohol, you can get it from ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” That did sound good.
She bounded off the couch. “Yes. We’ll put on our pajamas. And I’ll run out and get big tubs of ice cream. And I have the perfect movie marathon of break up movies. High Fidelity. The War of the Roses. New Moon.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her. “That sounds awesome, Airenne. You’re a really good friend.”
She hugged me again.
* * *
“This is really stunning,” said Henry.
“I love it,” said Lauren. The two of them were sitting in Henry’s office, and they were pouring over the article that I’d written about being a stripper. They’d called me in to talk about it first thing.
I kind of had an ice cream coma this morning. It was better than a hangover but not by much.
I was going to have to come up with some kind of healthy way to deal with the end of this relationship. I just didn’t know what that was going to be. Maybe I could binge on carrot sticks or something.
“I’m not sure which part I like the best,” said Lauren. “Maybe all the stuff about your mother. Have you really not seen her since you left home?”
“I haven’t,” I said.
“And you don’t want to see her?” said Lauren.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean, maybe if she changed. If she got cleaned up. I know that people can change. She’s my mother, of course, I’d give her another chance.”
“Maybe you should incorporate that into the story.” Lauren turned to Henry. “What do you think?”
“Not at all,” said Henry. “That would be overly sentimental. I like the grittiness of the story. It’s very real, and I don’t think it needs fluffy forgiveness intruding all over it.”
Lauren’s shoulders sagged. “Well, of course you don’t like my idea.”
I stifled a grin. Poor Lauren. She was always trying to impress Henry.
“My favorite part of the piece is when you were so honest about the way you felt about Callum Rutherford,” said Henry.
“Oh,” said Lauren. “Yeah. That was awesome.”
“You manage not to make him look like a bad guy,” he said. “You must still really care about him.”
I cast my glance down at the floor.
“Well,” he said. “Things might still work out, Ms. Kane. Don’t lose hope.”
I looked up to see that he was smiling at me, and that there was genuine fondness in his expression. Holy hell, I’d somehow managed to find the soft, caramel center of Henry Kingston. I never would have imagined this possible the first time I’d met him.
He tossed the article back to me. “Of course, you picked up a lot of bad habits, probably because you were writing about something personal.”
I picked up the piece of paper. It was practically dripping with red ink. There were quite a few corrections.
“Really, Ms. Kane,” he said. “There were about four instances of second person.”
“I was trying to adopt a conversational tone,” I said.
“Oh, I like conversational,” he said. “I don’t like second person. Find another way.”
I nodded. “Got it, sir.” That was the Henry that I knew and loved.
* * *
Back downstairs at my desk, I sat down with the article. I was going to need to get these corrections done, but Henry had been nice enough to give me a few hours on it, which meant I had time to check my email.
Since I’d been pulled into his office first thing, I hadn’t got a chance yet.
I logged into a computer and pulled up my email client.
I deleted three messages right off the bat without reading them. I was getting better at spotting the stuff that I didn’t need to read.
But then there was a message from someone named Yolanda Pritchard. I hovered over it with my mouse. When I noticed her email address was from the Aurora Police Department, I opened the message immediately.
Ms. Cecily Kane, it read. You don’t know me, but I have been following your work very closely ever since you began writing about Vigil. Some of the men that I work with felt that the things that you wrote painted the police in a bad light, but I personally feel as if the articles and Vigil himself have been a positive influence—keeping the department honest. It’s because of this that I wanted to write to you to tell you the identity of the woman’s legs that Vigil brought to us. The ones that you wrote your most recent article about.
Whoa. This was big. This lady was giving me—the press—inside information, and I didn’t even know her. I went back to reading.
I’m doing this for a couple of reasons.
One is that I hope you will share the information with Vigil. He seems to have capabilities that the police do not when it comes to tracking down and saving girls in danger. He can get places that we can’t. I believe that he may be able to find The Phantom before we are able. The second is that the identity of this woman is a surprise to us. She does not fit the pattern for his other victims. Also, we have never recovered her torso, like the other victims.
Hold on a second. She was saying that this was a brand new victim? We’d never found the legs of the original victims. These legs didn’t match any of the original girls?
This is obviously very astonishing information. And I share it with you because I want to make sure that someone is available to hold the department accountable. I’m not blind, and I do realize that the police department in Aurora is infested with dirty cops. I don’t know why someone would want to hide this information, but just in case they do, I’ve made sure to tell you about it.
That was really amazing of her to do that. I felt humbled and honored.
However, I would ask that you don’t write about it quite yet. I’ve been instructed not to tell anyone what we know yet. My superiors feel it could be critical information. I don’t think that telling the public this information is the best thing for the case or for the city. But I’ve trusted you with it anyway, so if you decide to write about it, I certainly can’t stop you. I would only ask that you keep it to yourself for now and focus on trying to bring The Phantom to justice.
I could see why she would say that. And I agreed insofar that I needed to know a little bit more about why she said that this new victim didn’t fit into The Phantom’s patterns. But I couldn’t make any promises. If I thought the story needed to be told, I wouldn’t withhold the truth from the public. It seemed like she understood that.
The legs belong to a woman named Maria Shaw. She was a secretary for the law firm Barclay, Barclay, and Quinn. She was reported missing about six months ago.
A secretary? At Hayden’s uncle’s law firm?
Oh, that was bold of him. That was very bold. To kill a girl like that. The other girls had been strippers and prostitutes. They’d been women that no one would notice. This Maria Shaw had been reported missing.
Vigil Page 20