The Roses of May (The Collector Trilogy Book 2)

by Dot Hutchison

  It’s like I’ve forgotten how to breathe, and someone just poked me in the ribs to make me suck in air.

  I take shots in both black and white and color, making especially sure to catch some good, clear angles on Landon. The only last name I know is Gunny’s, and there’s really not a way to ask around without being very weird.

  Things seem more obvious behind the camera. Like the way Corgi keeps one eye on the game and the other on Happy. The way Yelp’s hands are shaking and his eyes are shadowed, and the way Jorge watches him without seeming to. Jorge usually moves lightning fast, slamming his pieces against the board and pulling his hand back like he’s about to get shot, but today he moves slowly, sliding the pieces so the felt bottoms stay in contact with the polished wood. Nothing sudden, nothing sharp. When Phillip reaches out to capture Steven’s bishop, his sleeve rides up, showing the monorail track of stitches over a long-ago wound, just a thick, pale line with dots running to either side.

  Gunny looks even older, if such a thing is possible. The soft folds of skin look deeper, the scar tissue around his temple more stretched. I get a few shots of Hannah, too, both when she’s up to check on her grandfather and when she’s back in the car with her knitting. She’s got a stack of knit baby blankets on the backseat; when I ask her about it, she says she gives them to the local hospital, for the neonatal ward. So every baby goes home with a good blanket. It’s the first time I’ve ever asked her what she spends so much time knitting, because it’s always seemed like a strange question to ask, but I love the thought of it, someone brand new and innocent going home in something made with love.

  Eventually I head inside to get a drink. For the first time, I actually take it to a table and sit down. They have a new kind of cookie that smells amazing, and I haven’t eaten since the bananas, but I’m not going to, not until Mum is there and I know she’ll tell me to stop if I go too far. I’m still a little too fragile from last night (this morning?) to trust myself.

  I’m barely seated, the notebooks in a stack at my elbow, when I see Landon walk in and look around. Fuck. He’s obnoxious enough when I can just walk past him, but if I’m an easy target?

  “Do you mind if I join you?”

  I glance up to find Joshua standing almost behind me, his eyes on Landon. He was already at a table when I came in, nose buried in a new hardcover and apparently oblivious to the world. We’ve chatted, occasionally, when we’ve crossed paths. He’s nice enough, never pushy or inappropriate. I don’t really want the company today, but . . . I really don’t want Landon’s company. “Sure.”

  He sits down across from me at the four-seater, giving me space, and drops his coat into the chair next to him. I shift mine from the table to the last chair. Oh look, no more room. I eye him warily, not sure if I’m up for casual conversation, but he just opens to his bookmark, wraps his hand around his drink, and goes back to reading.

  All right then.

  Landon sits down a few tables away, with a battered, coverless paperback that’s either the same one he was reading a month ago or one that’s been similarly mistreated. I’m constitutionally incapable of trusting people who treat their books that badly. But he opens the pages, and aside from looking over at me a bit too much, he seems to be stationary, so I lay my keys in easy reach on the table, the trigger for the pepper spray nice and accessible, and open the first notebook.

  The thing about the journals is that there is nothing consistent about them. I write almost every day, but not every day, and the entries could be anything from all is well, nothing to report to pages of infodump. The first time Dad grounded Chavi (for holding hands with a boy in the couples’ skate during her eighth-grade field trip to the roller rink) she went off on an epic rant that took her fourteen hours and a little over half the notebook to get down. We both used it for whatever was on our minds, whatever that might be, so there are drawings and photos and maps, phone numbers or addresses or even shopping lists, to-do lists, test review, all mixed in with the actual commentary of what we were doing or how we were feeling on any given day. It’s possible to skim the entries, but with how quickly thought can jump without any kind of break or segue or warning, it’s not possible to do so quickly.

  As I dive into the entries I remember how, against all odds, and entirely in spite of myself, I was actually kind of happy in San Diego. I had friends there.

  Well.

  I had a friend there, and others I was friendly with.

  The flowers started in March, just like now, with a bundle of jonquils, but I had no context for them. No reason to think it wasn’t the boy I was tutoring, who blushed every time I looked at him and could never talk above a whisper. They were just flowers; it was just a boy who might have been sweet if he’d given me the flowers directly instead of putting them at my door.

  After the jonquils came calla lilies, then a crown of baby’s breath, a wreath of honeysuckle, sprays of freesia. The last one was a bouquet of carnations, the white ones with the red tips that look like they’re bleeding. There are pictures tucked in there, the pages fluffed around them.

  The carnations arrived two days before the movers did, and the next week we were in Washington, D.C.

  A week after that, I no longer had a friend in San Diego. The Quantico Three asked me new rounds of questions, looked at me with new shadows in their eyes, and I decided I could research the other deaths myself, rather than ask anything of my agents that would make those shadows deeper. Eddison asked me if I wanted context for their questions, and I said no.

  He looked so relieved.

  Reading how happy I was in San Diego hurts, because it was an anomaly. It hurts, and it pisses me off, and I’ve been so angry since Chavi died, and I just . . .

  I want . . .

  I am so fucking tired.

  I close the last notebook, scrub at my face as if I can peel away the layers of rage and grief. Joshua is long gone, but so is Landon, thankfully. There’s a little folded note where Joshua was sitting, though, with the same phone number that was on the card he gave me a few weeks ago. His friend’s shuttle service.

  I toss the note, because I still have the card in my wallet. It’s a nice gesture for him to make, and he isn’t being pushy about it. I just don’t want to use the service.

  The walk home is freezing, and gets even colder as the last bits of sunset give way to full dark. Mum will probably arrive not long after I do. To keep my mind on something other than the cold, I go over my to-do list for the night: scan the photos from the journals, upload the ones from chess, and pass them along to the agents.

  There’s nothing on the front step. I want that to be a good thing.

  I’m not sure I know how to recognize a good thing anymore.

  He’s never really thought about it, Ramirez’s teasing being a part of the team dynamic nearly since she joined, but he actually misses it when she’s being sensitive.

  Because Eddison knows it’s ridiculous that he’s got his personal cell in or near his hand at all times, that he flinches every time any phone around him rings. He knows he’s twitchier than a long-tailed cat on the front porch of a Cracker Barrel, and it would actually be refreshing for his partner to needle him a little for it.

  But of course, she knows why he’s twitchy. She agrees with it. So she won’t mock him for it, even if he sort of needs it (and how fucked up is that?), because it’s probably taking all her restraint not to tap her pen straight through her damn desk.

  She’s off at lunch right now, an apology sort-of date with the gal from Counterterrorism she had to abandon on Sunday, and Vic is being silent support for Danelle as she goes through her newest round of interviews with the DA’s office. Danelle is fairly stable, all things considered, practical enough to acknowledge the nightmare she’s in, just optimistic enough to wait it out and hope for better.

  His work cell goes off, and he flinches, checks his personal phone even though he knows by the ring it’s the official one. He frowns at the name on the display. “
Hello, Inara.”

  “Eddison. Vic still with Danelle?”

  “Yes. What’s up?”

  “Bliss and I aren’t coming down this weekend like we’d planned.” Under her voice, he can hear wind and car horns, the sounds of the city. She must be out on her fire escape, or maybe on the roof. Outside, anyway, and he’s not surprised she took the conversation away from her roommates. “I left a voice mail for Hanoverian, but he doesn’t immediately check his personal one if there isn’t a second call.”

  “Something came up?”

  “Sort of. Bliss is having A Day.”

  There’s a snarled “Fuck you!” in the background, and it’s on the tip of his tongue to ask how that’s different from any other day, but he’s growing. Or something.

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Some. Her parents are pushing for her to come visit. They don’t like that she’s not ready.”

  Bliss was missing for two and a half years. One year into that, her entire family moved when her father was offered a teaching position in Paris. As difficult as it is for the other girls to settle into families that never gave up, how much harder to reforge connections with the family that moved on?

  “And they keep calling her Chelsea,” she continues after a moment, and he can hear Bliss’s swearing getting distant, softer.

  “It’s her name,” he feels obliged to point out.

  “It isn’t. Call me Maya, I won’t even blink. Call me Samira, I’ll cut you.”

  He laughs in spite of himself, not because he thinks she’s joking, but because she’s absolutely serious. She spent years making sure Samira Grantaire didn’t mean anything, the ghost of a little girl left behind long before she was physically abandoned. Inara is the name she chose, Maya the name she accepted because the Gardener gave it to her and she wanted to live, and she’s too pragmatic to stumble over a thing like survival. Maya may be a scar, the ink on her back, but Samira is, in some ways, the wound that can only heal if it’s never, ever mentioned.

  He clears his throat to get rid of the last of the laugh. “But she doesn’t want to go by Bliss forever, surely?”

  “Not especially. For now she thinks it’s funny. She’s got a list of possibilities.”

  “Any contenders?”

  “I’m rooting for Victoria, myself,” she says blandly. “Think Vic will be flattered?”

  Eddison chokes, and then gives up and laughs again. Vic would be flattered, is the thing, but it would never be less than hilarious. “Jesus.”

  “So Bliss is feeling fragile, which means she shouldn’t be around breakable people.”

  “I know you and your roommates have unique definitions of breakable when it comes to each other, but is it a good idea to stay in?”

  “No, which is why we’re going to get a hotel for a couple of days. We already had the nights off from work. She can rant and rave, and not have to feel guilty about shredding innocent people.”

  “I’m not sure we count as innocent. Or breakable.”

  “Vic’s daughters are, and she would never forgive herself for hurting them.” Her voice is soft, probably too quiet for Bliss to pick up. “I know his girls are strong. We both know that. But they are innocent, despite his work, and it’s . . . it’s a bad idea.”

  “What else is going on?” he asks, and receives a sour noise in response. Not that he’s often perceptive, but Inara always seems to hold a grudge when he manages it. “What else is setting her off?”

  There’s a long silence, made staticky by wind and the distant sound of Bliss’s cursing, but that’s okay. Eddison may not be the most patient person in the Bureau, but he does know how to wait when he’s sure there’s an answer on the other end of it.

  When Inara finally answers, her voice is pained, the words slow and reluctant. “I got another letter from Desmond.”

  “A letter from—wait, another?”

  “This is the fourth one. They come to the restaurant, and the return address is his lawyer’s office. I guess that explains how he knows where I work.”

  “What is he saying?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t opened them.” She sighs. “I have them. I’ll give them over. I really did mean to tell you guys at the first one, but that was when Ravenna had her meltdown with her mother, and I forgot. Then the second one, and I meant to, I did.”

  “But you’re used to keeping secrets.” He’s actually rather proud of himself, how evenly and neutral and nonjudgmental that came out. It might even sound supportive.

  “The third one came once Amiko’s suicide hit the news.”

  “Her you call by her birth name.”

  “Her I saw safely lowered into the ground.” It makes more of a difference than it probably should, but he’s sure as shit not going to argue with her about it.

  “And now a fourth one.”

  “The envelopes are thick. They don’t feel like there’s anything but paper, but it feels like a lot of paper.”

  In the least complicated sense of things—and since when has that been his life?—Desmond MacIntosh shouldn’t be contacting Inara because he’s a defendant and she’s a witness and a victim kidnapped by his father.

  “If I give the New York office a heads-up, can you drop off the letters before you hole up in the hotel?”

  Anyone who hasn’t danced with her in an interrogation room probably wouldn’t catch the hesitation before she says yes.

  “Get out to a beach, if you don’t have a place already,” he suggests. “It’s not warm enough for tourists yet. Might help.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Wide open, wild. Endless expanse.”

  She hums thoughtfully, and he knows she’s picking up on all the layers in the words: because the Garden was contained, perfectly manicured and maintained, artificial, but the ocean is untamed, big enough to make you feel tiny, and completely itself. There’s no façade, no mask, no glitter.

  It just is, and he thinks Bliss isn’t the only one who’ll find it soothing.

  Even if neither she nor Inara will admit to it later.

  “I’ll let Vic know about the change of plans,” he tells her, rather than make her commit one way or the other to the idea.

  “Text me the name of the agent you talk to,” she says. “I’ll ask for them.”

  He hesitates before signing off, because shit, this really isn’t his thing. “If you need anything . . .”

  “Why, Eddison, are you going soft? What a terrifying thought.”

  Maybe it shouldn’t be comforting, but it is.

  She’ll be okay. Bliss will be okay.

  Someday.

  When I’m leaving the house for chess on Thursday and find the bundle of purple-throated calla lilies on the step, I realize that whatever Mum and I are trying to achieve in Huntington, it’s going to be more complicated than we’d originally planned for. I take the pictures, check the card—just Priya again—and leave them there for the police or the agents or whoever gets sent out in response to my text to Eddison and the email to Agent Finnegan. After giving myself five minutes to wrestle with the decision—mostly to make sure I’ll be able to live with it afterward—I send a second text to Eddison.

  Tell me the rest.

  If the rest of the game is going to play out, there’s not a way to avoid it. I have no doubt he’ll limit what he tells us, and Mum and I can pretend ignorance to the rest. No one has to give away any secrets yet.

  Life did not use to be this complicated.

  Ten minutes later, I get a reply with a time and a flight number, which I forward on to Mum. She’ll offer to pick him up, he’ll refuse because he doesn’t do well as a passenger unless it’s Vic driving, and he’ll probably get to Huntington about an hour before she does.

  Which still leaves me with most of a day to fill, and a little too much fury to risk going to chess.

  Another few minutes, and my phone dings with an email from Agent Finnegan with the names of the two agents he’s sending out to pick up the
flowers. It should take about an hour from Denver.

  They pull in forty minutes later, lights flashing from their black SUV. I’m in the kitchen, sitting in the little nook at the window and poking a spoon into a bowl of congealed oatmeal. As you do. The agents are young, probably not long out of the academy, one of them a pretty blonde who’ll have to fight tooth and nail to ever get respected in her field, the other a broad-shouldered black man with shoulders that suggest he got a football ride through college.

  “Priya Sravasti?” the man calls through the front door after knocking. “I’m Agent Archer, this is Agent Sterling. Agent Finnegan sent us.”

  Through the window, I can see Sterling already crouching by the lilies, blue neoprene gloves on her hands.

  I check the email with the names again, then head to the door. “You guys make good time.”

  Agent Archer smiles, warm and easy but still professional. “Finney—Agent Finnegan—told us he’d consider it a personal favor if we took up as little of your day as possible.”

  Vic has some good friends, I think.

  Archer asks me a few questions—did I touch the flowers, did I see or hear anyone, do I feel safe staying on my own?—all things that I already sent in the email to Finney, but more than most people, I suppose, I understand that this is the job, even when it seems a little redundant. So I answer patiently, even when he purposefully repeats himself to see if my answer changes or if I remember something new.

  As we talk, Sterling examines the bouquet carefully, making sure not to dislodge anything in the wrapping. The tissue paper is that same cheerful spring green, the color sharp, and the folds are still visible from the packaging. When she’s seen as much as can be seen without unwrapping it, she lowers the bouquet gently into a large plastic bag and tapes it shut. Her writing across the bag and seal is a little rough, awkward where the plastic pleats. It seems like it would be easier to label it before the bag is sealed.

  Then again, they probably have to guarantee that what’s on the label is what’s in the bag, which is harder to do if it’s prelabeled.