by Rysa Walker
“So you just borrowed the Jeep and . . . ?”
“I drove.” There’s a teasing note in her voice, but also a tiny hint of satisfaction. Kelsey hasn’t driven a car since the accident that killed her husband eight years ago.
“Yes, I saw that. Still not sure I believe it, however.”
“You got me.” Kelsey laughs. “Driving on the beach was fun. No obstacles, just wide-open sand. But I only drove about twenty minutes on the highway. It made me nervous, and Jerome wasn’t very patient with me going ten miles below the speed limit.”
“Jerome . . . Porter?”
Kelsey met Molly’s grandfather when he came to her office to interrogate me and again at the hospital the night Daniel was shot. It’s a bit surprising, however, that they’re now on a first-name basis.
“Yes,” Taylor says. “He and Kelsey called earlier to say they’d meet up with us in Corolla, but we decided to let you be surprised. He rode with Aaron. They’ll be here in a few.”
It’s hard to focus on what Taylor is saying. A furry brown head peeks out of her jacket, accompanied by two paws that are nearly as large as his snout.
Taylor shoves a white plastic bag toward me. “Your lo mein. You’ll probably need to reheat it. Thor and I have to run back down and get his stuff from the Jeep.”
The name is new, but I doubt it will stick. Deo and Taylor have cycled through five different names for the puppy in the past few days. Yesterday, she was calling him Courage, a cartoon reference that Deo had to explain to me.
“Doesn’t your mom need the Jeep for work?” I ask.
“They needed a four-wheel drive, so she loaned it to Porter. He’s heading back home tomorrow. Sam needs him to take up some of the slack at Quinn Investigative since Aaron’s gone. And it’s not like Mom needs the Jeep, anyway, since she’s on a leave of absence from work to take care of Daniel.”
Her eyebrows lift pointedly when she says her brother’s name, and I feel him groan.
You know she’s right, Daniel. You need to let your mom and Sam know. It’s not fair to make Aaron and Taylor keep lying. More to the point, we need to go to Maryland and try to get you back into your own body.
Which could be permanently brain damaged for all we know. At a bare minimum, I’ll be in rehab for weeks. And you need me here. Your body and Aaron’s would have been found on Fort Bragg instead of Grady’s if I hadn’t—
I know.
I also know that his ability is growing weaker, and even though I don’t actually think that out loud, Daniel still picks up on it.
I just needed rest, Anna. I’m fine.
Daniel slides back again, clearly indicating that we should table this discussion for another time. On that point, at least, we agree.
Kelsey’s hand is on my arm. She’s seen me when I’m engaged in inner dialogue enough times to recognize my expression. “Are you okay? Aaron told me there was something you might need to talk to me about.”
“I’m okay. This was . . . something different. But we can wait until tomorrow. You’ve had a long day, and you probably want—”
“Nonsense. As I said, Jerome drove most of the way. Once you’re done with your dinner, we’ll find a spot where we can talk privately.”
“Should be easy enough,” Deo says. “I think this house is bigger than the hotel. How did you find this place?”
“By helping clean it. Can you help me put those groceries in the kitchen?”
Deo glances pointedly at the plastic bags on the counter across from a fridge and dishwasher, and then raises one dark-blue eyebrow. “Aren’t they already in the kitchen?”
I shake my head, pointing toward the double doors on the left. “I guess you’d call this the bar? The kitchen is in there. With a walk-in freezer and three ovens, including one that’s big enough to roast an entire cow. And yes, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.”
Deo scoops up the rest of the grocery bags and follows me into the kitchen. “I got your texts. Are you okay?” He looks down into my eyes and answers his own question. “No, of course you’re not okay. You finally get information about your parents only to find out one of them murdered the other. And I can’t even frickin’ hug you without triggering one of those stupid visions.”
He’s right. I don’t know if it’s because he’s upset, but I can hear the faint humming noise when he reaches out to yank open the fridge. The odd smell is stronger, too, although it could just be that he’s worked up a sweat lugging boxes out of the truck.
Deo starts slamming groceries into the fridge. I know it’s partly because he’s worried about me, but I’m pretty sure the news about my mother’s death has stirred up a few personal memories for him, too. As a little kid, there were many nights he lay in bed listening as his stepdad beat his mother, worrying that this time Patrick wouldn’t stop. Worrying that this time, he might actually kill her.
“I’m okay, D. Really. This is . . . I mean, it’s not like I even knew them. I’m not even one hundred percent sure I should believe anything Jasper Hawkins says. He could be making this up as a way to . . .” I stop, unable to think of a reason Jasper would lie. Plus, his expression when he first saw me would have been really hard to fake.
“It’s just a lot to take in on top of everything else over the past few days,” I say finally. “But I’m fine, really.”
Deo slides the last item into the fridge a little more carefully, possibly because he knows eggs don’t respond well to anger.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m tired. And . . . you know me. I don’t have nightmares. I mean, not often. But every single time I close my eyes the past couple of nights, I see those kids at Overhills. Taylor said it’s the same for her, only . . . she didn’t have the chance to stop it from happening. If I’d shot Cregg back at The Warren, if I’d found a way to turn that gun back at him, those kids would still be alive.”
“We don’t know that, D. We don’t. And even if it’s true, even if killing Cregg would have saved those kids, the decision is on me way more than you. You were under Cregg’s control. I had a chance to pull the trigger and chose not to.”
The door creaks behind us. We both turn to look, but whoever it was apparently decided not to intrude.
“I probably couldn’t have done it either,” Deo says in a lower tone. “Shooting someone—anyone, even someone like Cregg—when he’s helpless on the floor would have felt like murder. I don’t think either of us is exactly wired for that.” He gives a bitter laugh. “You know how I always said that a lot of the cops we’d encountered treated innocent people worse than the bad guys do? Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe you need a little bit of killer in you in order to stop one.”
Someone stirs at the back of my head. It’s Daniel, and I’m certain that my resident cop is going to defend his brothers in blue. That would be fair, but Deo doesn’t need a lecture right now.
Daniel surprises me, however.
He’s right, Anna. And that’s exactly why you need me here.
I push Daniel to the back so that I can focus on Deo.
“You need to talk to Kelsey, too,” I tell him. “About the dreams, about the whole amp thing, about everything. And don’t be surprised if she gives you a really long hug. From me.”
“I just keep hoping I’ll wake up and we’re back at Bart House. That all of this is the aftereffects of one of Pauline’s miserable cooking experiments,” he says, rubbing his forehead distractedly. “But yeah, I’ll see if Kelsey can work me into her schedule.”
I smile and turn toward the door, but he calls me back.
“Anna? Please don’t think I’m blaming you for any of this. I’m not. And . . . some parts haven’t been so bad. I like spending time with Taylor—although, damn, she can be moody. She’s pissed at me about something again, and I have no clue what it is. And Aaron’s a good guy. It’s just . . . at Bartholomew House, we were doing okay for once.”
“Yeah. We were. But . . . things change, D. We’ve both learned to roll with t
he punches. We’ll get through this. And things will be okay again. Better than okay.”
I take a deep breath, determined not to say, I promise. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, plus I’m less certain than ever of my ability to keep any promise I make. So many things are beyond my control right now, and Deo’s old enough and smart enough to know when I’m blowing smoke.
And despite knowing all of that, I say the words anyway.
“I promise.”
I may not be wired for murder, but apparently I am wired for delivering false hope.
Deo’s phone buzzes with an incoming text as we’re leaving the kitchen. It would be a perfectly normal thing under other circumstances, but anyone who would be texting him, anyone who should have his number, is here in the house.
“Should I check it?” he asks.
“Yeah.” My voice sounds shaky.
And sure enough, it’s Cregg. Five short words.
Unquiet meals make ill digestions.
We both frown, then Deo remembers his quip about Pauline’s cooking.
“We’re going to need to tell them about this,” he says. “Kelsey and Porter, I mean. And Magda, too, I guess. If that Snoop kid is passing my thoughts along to Cregg, he may already know where we are.”
“He said that he doesn’t tell Cregg everything.”
“Yeah, and then Dacia comes crashing through the woods chasing us down a few hours later. I’m not sure I believe him.”
Porter is tugging a suitcase out of the elevator when we return to the living area.
“Anna! It’s so good to see you.” His smile is wide and genuine, and I can’t help but think how very different that expression is from the one he greeted me with outside his office when I first brought him Molly’s message. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but so very much has changed.
I’m glad to see him, too. Part of that is probably Molly’s memories of her grandfather, but part of it is just me. Molly was right. Porter is a good man, and I’m glad he’s on our side.
The only things I’ve eaten since our predawn breakfast are two of the ice-cream bars Miranda found in the freezer, so I scrounge around in the take-out bag for a fork and dig in to the lo mein without bothering to reheat it. Porter sits by the fireplace, telling Kelsey and Taylor about the wild horses he and Aaron saw on their drive. “Five of them. Ran right onto the beach just a few miles back and followed along behind the truck for about a half mile. Never seen anything like it.”
“Damn!” Taylor says. “Now I really wish I’d rode with you guys.”
“That waiter at the pizza place yesterday said they run wild on this stretch of the island. About a hundred of them.” Deo looks around the room. “What did you do with Loki?”
Taylor rolls her eyes. “Stop trying to make Loki happen. It’s not going to happen. His name is Thor. And he’s asleep, so I put him in his box. Don’t wake him up.”
Deo gives her a confused look and then grabs our backpacks from the corner where he stashed them earlier. “I’ll go pick us out a couple of rooms,” he tells me as he heads for the stairs. “I’m guessing you want one with an ocean view?”
“Mmhmm.” I nod, my mouth too full of noodles for actual words.
Aaron catches my eye and nods toward the kitchen. I leave the take-out container on the counter and follow him.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” he says. “How did it go with Peyton?”
“Okay, I guess. She’s willing to talk to Kelsey, although I didn’t have any idea it would be this soon. Miranda said they’d stop by again tomorrow, but I thought it would just be me talking to Peyton again. And . . . I’m a little worried Jasper will pack them up in the middle of the night and disappear again. You’d think he’d be glad that we’re this close to their house, so Peyton can get help without them having to travel. But it just seemed to piss him off.”
“I think pissed off may be a permanent feature of his personality.” Aaron tips my chin up so that our eyes meet. “Are you okay?”
This is the third time in the past five minutes—the second time while standing in this exact spot—that someone has asked me if I’m okay. I need to find a mirror and make sure I don’t have Walking Wounded tattooed on my forehead.
“Yes. I’m fine. Really.”
Aaron doesn’t say anything for a moment, simply continues looking into my eyes. “I called Sam. He e-mailed me what he could find on Scott Pfeifer and the . . . uh . . . shooting . . . in the local papers. You may not want to look at all of it tonight, but I’m pretty sure Jasper was telling the truth, Anna. There’s a picture of Leah Pfeifer, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn it was you.”
“I want to see it.”
A brief hesitation and then he hands me his tablet.
It’s not a perfect likeness. Her hair is shorter, and a lighter blonde than my own, although the color could be from a bottle. There’s a little dimple at the bottom of her chin that mine is missing, and her nose turns up slightly at the tip. But her eyes, her mouth—they’re almost identical. I even have her widow’s peak.
Maryland man shoots wife during late-night workplace visit.
I can’t focus on the words beyond the headline. My eye moves to a second photo farther down the screen, and I click to enlarge. It’s a much grainier image than the first, clearly taken from security footage. The faces are blurred. All I can make out is that it’s a man, kneeling on the ground, holding a woman’s limp body against his chest. A pistol lies near her feet, and there’s a silhouette of two people standing in the doorway behind them.
My stupid eyes are tearing over again, so I hand the tablet back to Aaron. “Can you sum it up?”
“Sure. Pfeifer worked as a research scientist with Decathlon Services Group. The Cregg family made the bulk of their money through DSG, mostly in military contracts. And I’m pretty sure Pfeifer was also with Python, the group that took over the Delphi Project once the CIA dropped it. Sam’s going to look back through my dad’s research, but . . . I’m almost positive that’s where I’d seen his name. I think my dad had this article in his files.” He looks at me for a minute. “Sam pulled up some biographical info on your parents. If you’re ready—”
“Can you just e-mail it to me?”
He nods, then gives me an odd look and laughs. “Okay, this is proof positive that our relationship has gotten off to a bizarre start. I’ve woken up next to you for seven consecutive mornings, but I don’t know your e-mail address.”
I think he expects me to laugh or at least smile. And I do try to smile, but his words remind me that for the past few nights he’s kept so rigidly to his side of the mattress that it was almost as if I were sleeping alone. The title of a Death Cab for Cutie song runs through my head—“Brothers on a Hotel Bed.” Aaron’s right. It is a bizarre start. What worries me more, though, is the feeling that we’re moving backward. And relationships that make it generally don’t do that.
This really isn’t the best time for a relationship chat, however, so I focus on the practical. “Forget e-mail, I haven’t checked my messages since we left Maryland. For all I know, Cregg’s people have hacked it. I’ll just look at what you have later.”
Aaron’s brow furrows. He can tell he said something that bothers me, but he has no idea what it is.
“Sure,” he says. “Let me know.”
I leave Kelsey’s room after talking for nearly two hours, and I feel twenty pounds lighter. Kelsey did what she does best. She sat there, mostly silent, and let me vent until there was nothing left to say. Then she began to work at the tender spots, the ones that I circled around gingerly as we talked.
It hurt. But at the risk of a gross analogy, she knows how to lance a mental boil. Anything that’s been festering in my mind has been released. Doesn’t mean I won’t be dealing with it for some time to come, but at least some of the pressure is off.
Daniel hasn’t said anything explicitly, but his grumbles echo back in the peanut gallery. What we tell his mom is his de
cision. What I tell Kelsey, on the other hand, is mine. Only an idiot lies to her therapist. That’s even less productive than lying to yourself. I can count the times I’ve lied to Kelsey on the fingers of one hand, and most of those times have been in the past few weeks.
I’m almost . . . almost . . . to the point where I think I could look over the rest of the information about my parents. But that would probably be a bad idea, given the late hour. No point in winding myself up when I really need to get some rest.
Taylor is in the kitchen when I stop by to grab a bottle of water. She’s digging through the kitchen drawers, frowning, in search of something.
“What’s wrong?”
“Stupid headache,” she says, rubbing her temples. “You’d think somebody who stayed here would have left behind some Tylenol.”
“Check with Deo. He keeps our pharmacopoeia in his backpack.”
Her eyes narrow, but her expression seems more hurt than angry. “Never mind. I’ll do without.”
“I thought you guys were getting along better?”
“We were.” She stands there for a moment, clearly weighing her words, then she blurts it out. “Is he gay, or what?”
Her question raises my hackles instantly, because even though I’m pretty sure Taylor isn’t a bigot, that’s exactly what the two bigots we shared space with at Bart House asked when Deo first moved in. But they had a sneer on their face. Taylor doesn’t.
I still answer a little cautiously, even though Deo has been open about his sexuality almost as long as I’ve known him. “He identifies as bisexual. Why?”
“Nothing. Just needed a little help putting something he said into context.”
After she leaves, I take my water back to the bedroom on the middle floor where Deo stashed my bag earlier. It’s smaller than some of the rooms—there’s barely space for the bed, a dresser, and an armchair. But Deo chose well—it has an exquisite view of the beach.
The light is out, and I’m surprised to see Aaron in the chair near the sliding glass door. Given how early we woke up this morning, I thought he’d have already collapsed. A worn paperback of Watership Down is in his lap.