I stood and walked to the door to check on Cookie, but before closing it, I offered Reyes one last chance to come clean. “This is your one last chance to come clean,” I told him, deciding not to mince words.
He sat on the bed, leaned back, and folded his arms behind his head.
“I mean it. If you don’t tell me what you and Angel were talking about, why you were meeting, I can’t take responsibility for my actions.”
He grinned.
I tapped my toes in impatience.
He grinned wider.
“Okay, war it is. I have to warn you—”
Before I got much further into my intimidation process, a pillow slammed into my face. I stood there, eyes closed, mortified while the ball and chain laughed softly.
It was so on.
9
APPLICANTS MUST PASS AN ORAL EXAM BEFORE ADVANCING TO THE NEXT COURSE.
—NOVELTY UNDERWEAR
I went down to check on Cookie. Uncle Bob was still in the city. Working. On his wedding day. I felt so guilty, though I didn’t know why. I had nothing to do with his working. Just Cookie’s.
“Hey, you,” I said, watching Reyes in the kitchen from the corner of my eye. He was making us both a hot chocolate. God bless him. Chocolate had become my best friend in the absence of coffee, which I’d given up for Beep. Come to think of it, I’d given up a lot for her. I’d have to make sure she knew that. Remind her. Daily. “It’s almost ten o’clock, Cook. You have to go to bed.”
There was a small couch in the office, on which Amber and Quentin sat. Well, Amber sat. Quentin slept, his blond hair hiding his face, one arm hanging over the side, the other thrown over his head. He had a massive shoe on Amber’s lap, but she didn’t seem to mind. She sat reading, completely content.
“I’ve been going through everything,” Cookie said, apparently ignoring my prime directive. That happened a lot.
Reyes brought my hot chocolate in. “Anyone else?” he asked, offering his own mug. A true gentleman.
“I’ll take some, Uncle Reyes,” Amber said, her smile flirtatious.
He chuckled and handed her his mug. “What about you?” he asked Cookie.
She was so engrossed in her work, it took her a moment to blink up at him. When she did, she stopped, blindsided by the picture before her. He stood in a pair of lounge pants, black and red plaid, with a dark gray, form-fitted T-shirt. I felt a flush of heat radiate out of her—a feat, considering Reyes’s heat knew no bounds.
When she didn’t answer, he flashed her his famous lopsided grin and said, “Hot chocolate, it is.”
He winked at me before venturing back to the kitchen, and for a split second, I thought I saw odd lines across the back of his shirt, but I dismissed the thought when Cookie came back to earth.
“Did he say something?” she asked.
“He forgot the best part!” Amber said, scuttling out from under Quentin’s enormous shoe and following after her uncle Reyes. “You forgot marshmallows!”
“He’s getting you a cup of hot cocoa,” I told Cook.
“Oh, right.” She shook the fog out of her brain. “That man makes it impossible to concentrate.”
“He does, at that. So, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” She turned in her chair to face me.
“It’s about your pre-honeymoon honeymoon.”
“Charley, really, it’s no big deal.”
“I think it is, but not in the way that you are letting on.”
She shifted in her chair. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like you were relieved that you didn’t get to go.”
“What? There is a missing girl. There was nothing for me to be relieved about.”
“Which is exactly why I’m concerned.”
“Well, don’t be.”
“Hey,” I said, using reverse psychology, “at least when all this is over, you two will get the honeymoon of your dreams.”
That ripple of concern shuddered through her again. “Absolutely.”
“Cook,” I said when she turned back to her computer, “what’s going on?”
Her shoulders lifted as she filled her lungs before facing me again. After a quick glance down the hall, she said, “Robert is not my second marriage. He’s my third.”
A jolt of shock rocketed through me. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that!”
She slammed an index finger over her mouth to shush me.
“I tell you everything,” I whispered loudly. “I even told you about that time Timothy Tidmore tried to use Virginia as a garage for his Hot Wheels.”
“I know.” She hung her head in shame. “I know. But my first marriage lasted all of two days.”
“No way.” I wiggled closer, suddenly very intrigued. “What happened?”
“Well, I was in Vegas with my aunt and uncle. It was my eighteenth birthday and they were there for a trade show. Anyway, my cousins and I had a lot of free time and, well, I met a guy by the pool and we had a really great day and we … um … got married.”
I blinked, unable to reconcile the vision of a carefree wild child and Cookie.
“That night.” When I didn’t interrupt—I didn’t dare—she continued. “So, we’re in his parents’ hotel room later that night, on what we were calling our honeymoon, and his … pants … kind of—” The longer she spoke, the softer her voice became.
“His what did what?”
“His pants caught on fire.”
“Of course they did. He was eighteen.”
“No, I mean, literally.”
“Oh, like, on fire on fire?”
“Yeah. He’d spilled wine on his pants while we were having a candlelight dinner, at his parents’ expense, naturally, and when I jumped up to help him, I knocked over the candle and … well, you get the idea.”
“Oh, man. That had to hurt.”
“I’m sure it did, but he was never the same after that. He was actually quite a jerk. Thankfully, his parents had the marriage annulled as soon as he told them what we’d done.”
“Okay, so your first honeymoon didn’t go so well. But surely you had better luck with Amber’s father.”
“My second honeymoon was worse.”
“No,” I said, intrigued again.
She nodded. “We lived together a whole year. Everything was wonderful until the day we got married. Everything changed.”
“Cook, what happened?”
“Well, it started out okay. We had the wedding. It was a huge event. All the crazies from my side showed up, and his family numbered in the thousands. It was nice, but not really me, you know?”
“I do.”
“I was so nervous that I drank a little wine before the wedding.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Oh, the ceremony went off without a hitch. I slurred my vows a bit, but other than that, perfection.”
“Okay,” I said, growing wary nonetheless.
“So, we had the reception and I drank some more.”
That was never good.
“And we did the whole rice thing and left in a limousine for the hotel. We were going to stay the night, then fly out the next morning to Cancún.”
“Awesome. Loving it so far.”
“Well, I’d had a bit too much to drink, we both had, and Noah decided to moon the people on the freeway.”
“Wait, who’s Noah?”
“Amber’s father,” she said, suddenly annoyed.
“Oh, right, I knew that. Okay, so he’s mooning everyone.”
“Yes, but I started to get sick.”
“Understandable.”
“And I just reached for the closest door handle.”
“No.”
“Yes. I opened the door while he was mooning everyone. He fell out of the limo on I-25.”
I sat stunned.
“South,” she added.
I still sat stunned.
“Near the Gibson exit.”
“Cookie,” I said at last,
“what happened?”
“He suffered multiple fractures, a ruptured spleen, and a mild concussion.”
I slammed my hands over my mouth.
“I know. Things just changed after that. Even after ten years of marriage, we never found what we had again.”
“I’m sorry, hon.”
“I just don’t have the best luck with honeymoons.”
“No, that’s not true. Those were total coincidences.”
She smiled sadly. “You don’t believe in coincidences.”
I squeezed her hand. “I do now.”
“This is so much better,” Amber chimed as she skipped back to her seat.
“I can’t believe you’re that girl,” I said softly as Amber tried to get back under Quentin’s shoe and balance her hot chocolate at the same time.
“What girl?”
“The one who meets a guy and marries him twelve hours later.”
“Nine.”
I stifled a grin.
“And a half.”
I leaned forward and gave her my best hug. “But now you have Uncle Bob. Nothing is going to change his mind about how unbelievably perfect you are.”
She giggled. “You might be surprised.”
“Never.”
“What are you guys whispering about?” Amber asked, her hair in her face as she shimmied up the back of the couch under the weight of an anvil.
Cookie leaned back and wiped at her eyes. “We’re talking about the boarding school we’re going to send you to if you don’t start earning your keep.”
Amber blew her bangs out of her face. “You have to come up with some new material, Mom. That hasn’t worked on me since I was three.”
“She catches on quick,” I said. “So, any luck with the information Kit sent over?”
The frustrated sigh that escaped her lungs told me everything I needed to know. “Nothing. Everything they have is right. Faris was supposed to go to the park after school, and then she and her friends were going to walk to a party.”
“A party her mother didn’t know about,” I added.
“I don’t get it, though,” Amber said, scanning a handful of pages, and I realized she had been going over the case with Cookie. “Why are the cops so worried about that party or the park?”
“Because according to all her friends, that’s where she was going.”
“Which friends?” she asked as though we’d lost it. “Certainly not the one she was texting that day.”
I straightened and walked over to her. “What are you talking about?”
She pointed to a copy of Faris’s texts that were in the file. “Right here. Did Kit talk to this guy? Nate something or other? Because according to these texts, they were ditching the party and meeting at a skater hangout.”
Cookie thanked Reyes as he handed her a piping hot cup, then stayed to listen in.
“Amber, where does it say that?” I asked.
She pointed again as I dialed Kit’s number. I still didn’t see it. She was pointing to a text that said,
COP at tunnel.
Feeling like an idiot, I said, “I don’t get it, hon.”
Before she could explain, Kit picked up. I put her on speakerphone.
“Okay,” I said, forgoing the pleasantries, “you’re on speaker. Who is this Nate kid that Faris was texting?”
“We don’t know,” she said, sounding exhausted but not sleepy. I hadn’t woken her. “She has a friend named Nathan, but he says it wasn’t him in the texts. Still, there were only a few texts from Nate, and they seemed pretty innocent.”
“Nuh-uh,” Amber said. “There were only a few from him as Nate. He also texted her as Caleb, Isaiah, and Sean. It’s their favorite show.”
“Yeah, we couldn’t find any one of her friends with those names. What do you mean their favorite show?”
“NCIS,” she said as though we were daft. “It’s right here.” She thumbed through the pages and pages of texts. “Back when he was Nate the first time.”
“The first time?” I asked, trying to see what she saw.
She rummaged through the pages until she got to a set of older messages. I’d remembered them talking about NCIS, but how on earth did Amber get the name thing out of it?
“Right here. He tells her if her parents catch on to let him know and he will switch to the next episode.”
This was getting ridiculous. I was still young, for goodness’ sake. I wasn’t that out of touch. Was I? The text read,
If PAW, will start next episode.
Clearly I was. “You’re going to have to explain.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, sympathizing with me. “Okay, this says if your parents are watching, P-A-W, then I’ll start the next episode. I’ll go to the next letter. Thankfully, when the phone company sent a copy of her texts, they sent them in order instead of by user. That’s how we figured it out, because right after that, like ten seconds after, Caleb wrote this.”
She pointed at a text that read,
Starting next episode now.
“Caleb,” I said, realizing at last what they were doing. I’d have to go back completely and find all the transitions and texts from this same guy. “But what about a skater hangout?”
“Right here,” she said, pointing for the third time to the same text,
COP at tunnel.
“Isn’t that just warning her away from a tunnel? That there’s a cop there?”
“No, it says C-O-P. ‘Change of plans.’ And to meet him at the Tunnel. Aka, a skater hangout. Not that I’ve ever been there,” Amber assured her mother.
My jaw dropped open. “How did we miss this?”
Cookie shook her head, flummoxed.
“We missed it, too,” Kit said. “We just thought they were planning a little underage drinking and were trying to dodge the cops.”
“Which is probably exactly what he was hoping we would think,” I said. “This wasn’t a crime of opportunity, Kit. If Amber’s right, he planned this. Got to know her through texts. Spent weeks planning the abduction.”
“And he sent her pictures,” Amber said. “But that’s not him.” She held up one of the shots he’d sent. “I can’t believe she fell for that.”
“Why?” I asked. “Who is it?”
“It’s the Target kid. The one who got famous when a girl snapped his picture and tweeted it to her friend? It went viral?” she said, trying to clue us in. “It was, like, everywhere? And this one,” she said, holding up another, “is a kid who got famous on YouTube for doing ‘Paparazzi.’” When we stared at her, she added, “Lady Gaga?”
“Oh, the song,” I said, finally getting it.
“Seriously, though, they don’t even look alike.” She compared the pictures. “What was she thinking?”
I took the seat at my desk, the one opposite Cookie. “They’d been texting for weeks. She thought she knew him.”
“She thought she could trust him,” Cookie said; then she looked at Amber with a new determination. “That’s it. Where’s your phone? You’re grounded from it for seven years.”
“Mom,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
Kit spoke up then, sounding more energized than before. “Charley, this is it. I think you guys are on to something.”
“Not me,” I said, waving a hand, then pointing at Amber. “Amber Kowalski.”
“And Quentin Rutherford,” she added, gazing at him adoringly. It took true love to overlook drool. “He was the one who caught the NCIS thing. He loves that show.”
“We’ll check out these numbers, see what we can get. I’m sure they’re burner phones, but we might get a hit on one of them.”
“He went to a lot of trouble to get to Faris,” I said. “He had to have known her from somewhere. Became obsessed with her. Maybe a coffee shop she and her friends frequented or even their school.”
“I’ll call Agent Waters, now. We’re on this.”
I hung up and gave Amber a high five. “You may have just saved a life,
Amber.”
She smiled bashfully. “I hope so.”
* * *
After scouring the texts one last time, making notes based on Amber’s keen eye, we scanned them all and sent them back to Kit with our observations before wandering off to bed. I led Reyes to the communal bathroom and insisted he take a long, hot shower for two reasons. One, I wanted him to relax enough to fall asleep. Eight months without a wink? Unfathomable. How was I not married to a zombie? Two, I wanted to get a jump-start on this war.
Because the rooms were so tiny, we’d had to stash Reyes’s clothes in the room next to our bedroom. I’d dubbed it his dressing room. He was a prince, after all. Sure, he was a prince of the underworld, but the title still counted. I hurried inside and carried out my dastardly plan, ransacking his dresser until I found every stitch of underwear he owned. I stuffed them into a plastic grocery bag—ever a champion of recycling—tiptoed back into our bedroom, and hid them in Beep’s bassinet. Then, giggling like a mental patient, I grabbed the book I’d been reading and scrambled into bed.
My insides tingled when I heard him walk down the hall. Open the door to his dressing room. Pull out a drawer. Then another. I wiggled farther into the covers when I heard his footsteps get closer.
By the time he appeared at the door, a playful grin on his face, I lay reading in bed, completely innocent of anything he might accuse me of.
He folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe. “You wouldn’t happen to know where my underwear ran off to, would you?”
I closed the book and thought. And thought. Then I crinkled my nose and thought some more. “Nope,” I said at last. “Weird that you don’t, though, since it is your underwear. This could get really awkward.”
He dropped the towel and my gaze darted to his glorious nether regions.
“Not for me.”
Damn him and his rock-hard body. I tore my gaze away and went back to reading as he pulled on a pair of loose pajama pants, the kind that tied in front, and a powder blue T-shirt, all the while watching me like a panther readying to pounce.
“Going commando?” I asked as he crawled onto the bed. The mattress sank under his weight.
Ignoring me, he read the title of the book I kept firmly between our gazes. “Lover Awakened.” He nestled his head on my shoulder. “Weren’t you reading this book last month?”
Eighth Grave After Dark Page 15