It’s hard to make conversation, because Helena and Juliet are virtual strangers and I obviously can’t discuss the subject that obsesses me. But Helena is a talker, and Joe is exerting himself to ease the situation for me, so he starts drawing her out with gentle questions. She prattles away willingly, and even Juliet contributes a few observations. I think maybe she likes Joe, so she doesn’t want to appear too sullen.
As the meal draws to a close, I say, “You two have been lifesavers this week when so much has been going on in town. Can I offer you anything? Pay you a salary? Do you a favor?”
“Oh, heavens, you’ve done us the biggest favor already by letting us use the trailer!” Helena exclaims. “We’re still in your debt! But I do need to take a day or two and go to town and see if I can find a job. And, of course, I need to get Juliet registered for school.”
“What kind of work can you do?” Joe asks.
“Secretarial and light bookkeeping,” she says. “A little website maintenance. I have references.”
“I’ll ask my buddy Mark if he’s heard of anything. He runs a local trucking company, and he knows everybody in town.”
Juliet looks at me and asks a rare direct question. “Where does Alonzo go? Will I go there?”
She’s only met him once, so at first I’m surprised that she’d want to follow him to school. But then I figure she wants an ally. If there’s another shape-shifter on campus, life could get exponentially easier on the days that turn out to be dicey.
“He’s homeschooled,” I reply with a smile. “But maybe Bonnie would take you on as a student, too.”
Her face turns wistful. “Maybe. But I like school. I like being with all the other kids.”
Well, that makes sense, too, since her shifting cycle is apparently under much better control than mine ever was. She can pretend to be normal most of the time, and what’s more normal than public school?
“I think you’ll probably do just fine,” I say, “even if Alonzo isn’t there.”
Helena and Juliet offer to help clean up after the meal, but I’m desperate to have my house to myself, so I refuse all offers of aid and they finally leave. Once Joe and I have loaded the dishwasher and tidied up the kitchen, we head to the living room and collapse on the couch. I sag against him and he puts his arm around me and for a moment—just a moment—the perilously teetering world settles onto a stable axis.
“Day from hell,” I say.
“Week from hell, really.”
“And hell yet to come.”
He leans in to kiss my cheek. “So you’ve got your special injections all ready for Ryan?”
“I have.”
“Tell me again what they do for him?”
“They inhibit his transformation. Ryan normally changes shapes every five days and stays in animal state for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. If he takes the serum, he can hold that off for another few weeks.”
“Hey, maybe you should take some of that potion sometime.”
I laugh softly. “Oh, I take all kinds of drugs, trying to control my shifting. I’m trying to find just the right formula that gets me both a predictable cycle and an acceptable alter ego. You know—trying to find a way to guarantee that I’ll turn into a cat every three weeks. Then my life would still suck, but it would suck in a way that allowed me to make plans.”
He takes my chin in his hand and tilts up my face to meet his gaze. “Your life does not suck,” he says, and he sounds deadly serious. “You have friends who love you. Work that matters. A roof over your head, enough money to live on, and plenty to eat. So many people would envy you.”
“Yeah,” I say on a sigh. “I know you’re right. It’s just—”
“You’re also as cute as can be,” he says, giving me a quick kiss. “And you have a pretty hot boyfriend. I don’t think your life sucks. I think your life is great.”
Now my laugh is more genuine. “If my boyfriend is so hot, why are we just sitting here on the couch instead of making out in the bedroom?”
“Because he was trying to seem like somebody who could be emotionally supportive. Somebody who cared about you, who wasn’t just interested in sex.”
“But he is interested in sex?”
“Oh, yeah.”
I put my arms around his neck and give him a deep kiss, as suggestive and full of promise as I can make it. “So am I,” I whisper. “Let’s get to it.”
* * *
This time it’s almost eight in the morning when the phone rings. Joe and I are still asleep, curled up together in a warm and blissful tangle, when my cell starts pumping out the piano riffs of my ringtone.
“Seriously?” he groans.
“Swear to God, this only happens when I’m with you.”
I grope for the phone, which I’ve left on my nightstand, and feel deep apprehension to see Aurelia’s name on the screen. “What happened?” is my greeting.
“He’s gone.”
“Ryan? How?”
“Sheriff Wilkerson was pretty pissed off about it, because it sounds like it was all his fault. They’d decided to transfer Ryan to the Madison County jail today, so right around seven A.M., Wilkerson takes him from the cell and brings him outside. Ryan’s in manacles, the sheriff says—feet and hands—so he thinks it’s safe to leave him standing by one of the squad cars because it turns out he’s brought the wrong set of keys. Wicked stupid, huh? When Wilkerson gets back outside less than two minutes later, Ryan’s gone. Manacles are on the ground, still locked shut.”
“Ryan saw his chance and he shifted,” I say. That gets Joe’s attention. He’s lying back on the pillows with a forearm thrown over his eyes to block out the sunlight, but now he lowers his arm and gives me a questioning look. I nod.
“Looks like it,” Aurelia says. “Sheriff doesn’t know that, of course. He thinks Ryan’s some kind of Houdini who managed to slip the cuffs somehow.”
“Wonder what he thought when he saw the pile of clothes right there by the squad car.”
“I don’t know, and we have more important things to worry about,” Aurelia says impatiently. “Such as the desperate manhunt that’s currently under way. If there’s not a cop at your place now, I’m sure one’s going to show up within a few hours. Your place, our place, Celeste’s place—they’re going to be on us like white on rice.”
“Surely Ryan knows that. Surely he won’t come to any of us for help.”
“Well, he hasn’t exhibited much intelligence so far, so I wouldn’t rule it out. But, yeah, the more likely course is that he’s long gone. On the road to Chicago or Canada or God knows where. Someplace he can start over.”
I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “And we didn’t have to choose,” I say.
She sounds ever so slightly amused. “Our hands are clean.”
“I feel horrible about all the rest of it, but kind of good about that part,” I admit.
“I think Bonnie’s relieved, too. Though, of course, she feels terrible that she feels relieved. She believes she should be strong enough to make tough moral decisions and stand by them.”
I can’t help grinning at that. “But why did they decide to move him so soon? I thought he’d be in the holding cell a while longer.”
“Because you were right. They fed his fingerprints into the system and they got a match. To a crime scene up in Joliet.”
Even though the information is hardly news, it still hits me like a punch in the stomach. It’s a moment before I can draw in any air. “Then he better keep running,” I finally say.
“That’s what we all hope.”
“So is there any reason I need to come to town today? Can I just stay here and live my own life for a few days?”
“I think that would be best. Celeste wants to go back to her own place and we’ve about decided she should. With the cops all over all of us, she’l
l probably be safer than she’s been in years.”
“That makes sense. All right. Good. Thanks for calling.”
“Talk to you soon.”
I switch off the phone, lay it aside, and drop back onto the bed, snuggling closer to Joe. He says, “I take it Ryan managed to get free without any timely intervention from your little band of jail-breakers.”
“Yeah. He was left unattended as they prepared to transfer him to the county jail.”
“Where do you think he’ll go?”
“I don’t know. He’s got a brother somewhere—Seattle, I think—but they’re not close. Has some friends. But surely the cops have frozen his assets. Surely he won’t be able to use credit cards or ATM machines. I mean, when he shifts back to human state he won’t have anything—clothes, wallet, phone, car—I don’t know how he’ll get anywhere. And since his face will be plastered all over the news media as an escaped murderer—” I shake my head, which is just now lying comfortably on Joe’s shoulder. “He might not get very far.”
“Ryan strikes me as someone who cold-bloodedly plans for contingencies,” Joe says. “I wouldn’t put it past him to have set up a cache of clothes and money somewhere in case he ever needed it.”
“You could be right,” I agree. “He won five thousand dollars at the casino a few weeks ago. That could be hiding somewhere in a buried treasure box, just waiting for him.”
“So he gets away with murder,” Joe says. “Until the next time.”
I lift my head and look down at him. I haven’t told him about Alonzo’s father—not to spare Ryan, but to spare Alonzo. Joe already knows how hideous and mangled somebody’s life was. I don’t want him to look at Alonzo and know that was Alonzo’s life. “Why do you say that?”
“Someone who believes he has the right to kill usually exercises that right more than once,” Joe says. “But we’ll hope that this time he doesn’t.”
“Hope hasn’t done much for me the past few days,” I mutter. “But maybe it’ll come through just this once.”
* * *
There’s no chance of falling back to sleep, so we finally drag ourselves up and confront the day. My sleepiness wears off by the time I’m done with breakfast, and I find myself deeply happy to be back in my own world, my own routine, taking responsibility for my own assigned chores instead of relying on the helpfulness of strangers. The puppies and bunnies are fine, but I’ve sadly neglected the birds under my care, and before the day is out I’ve released two of them back into the wild.
Jinx follows me from field to barn to enclosure, trotting along self-importantly with his head held high and his tail straight out. He particularly loves our visit to the puppies in the dog run that used to be his, and he prances around on the other side of the chain-link, barking with smug superiority at the lesser creatures still stuck in captivity. I laugh so hard that I can hardly get the gate shut when I finally emerge.
I even have a chance to do a little honest-to-God veterinary work, since two of the clients who left voice mails for me are able to drive out this afternoon with very little notice. It feels good to be productive, to be useful, to be presented with problems that make sense and have simple solutions.
Aurelia was right about the cops, though—shortly before noon, a cruiser pulls onto the property and out of the car steps an officer who looks like she’s about seventeen. No wonder Sheriff Wilkerson wants Joe to join the force. She’s polite, I’m polite, but we don’t have much valuable information to offer each other. I don’t know where Ryan is and she can’t tell me where they’ve already searched. But I get the point—and Ryan, if he’s lurking out in the fields somewhere nearby, probably gets it, too. I’m under surveillance, and no escaped murderer is safe taking refuge with me.
Joe comes out and exchanges a few words with the officer before she leaves. I hadn’t expected it, but apparently Joe has decided to stay out on the property with me all day. I’m not sure if this is because he doesn’t have anything pressing to take care of in Quinville or if he’s worried about what Terry Foucault might do—murder clearly being something in even more dire need of avenging than a barroom brawl. But Joe makes himself highly useful, fixing broken boards in the barn, rehanging a door in the second trailer, and picking up branches and other debris from the central clearing of the property.
“Trying to earn your keep?” I ask him that evening as I make dinner. He’s emptying the dishwasher and setting the table for four.
“Trying to prove my worth,” he answers. “I want you to see how valuable I would be to have around for the long haul.”
My heart starts pounding madly, but I keep my voice level when I answer. “We have a few more hurdles to cross before we can be sure we’re suited for long-term commitments,” I say.
“Yep,” he says. “You haven’t done my laundry yet. Gotta see if you use too much bleach or fabric softener.”
“But I thought you would do the laundry, dear. And the ironing, of course.”
“Do people really iron these days?”
“Well, I don’t, but I thought maybe you would.”
I’m standing at the stove, and he steps up behind me and puts his arms loosely around my waist. “I have to see you through a few transformations,” he says into my hair. “I have to see what that’s like.”
I don’t twist my head around to look at him. “You’ll think it’s freaky. You’ll think it’s weird.”
“Maybe. Or I’ll think it’s cool. Or I’ll think it just is. But no matter what, I want to be around for the next one.”
“Unless you’re on the road.”
“Okay, then the one after that. I want to be here. I want to share it. I want to put myself at the center of your life.”
I don’t even bother setting down the spatula; I turn within his arms so I can kiss him. “And I want to be at the center of yours.”
“Venn diagram,” he whispers against my mouth. “The best part is the part that overlaps.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I’m awake when my cell phone goes off the next morning, but Joe isn’t. Or, well, he wasn’t. He skids from sleep with a start and a curse.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he demands. “What time is it?”
“Six,” I say as I dive for the phone. “Celeste, not Aurelia. That might be a good sign. Hey,” I say into the mouthpiece.
“He’s going to kill Terry,” she says.
I sit straight up in bed. “What? He told you that?”
“No. I just figured it out. He’s going to shift back sometime today, and he’s going to go after Terry.”
I put a hand to my forehead. Why am I having so much trouble thinking these days? Because nothing that’s happening is making any sense.
“Celeste—are you sure?”
“I know how he thinks! Remember? I was just lying here thinking about what assholes the Foucault brothers are and how I still don’t feel all that safe with Terry walking around with a gun license, and then I realized—Ryan will think the same thing. He’ll decide I’m not safe. And he won’t leave Quinville until he makes sure I am.”
Every word she says makes me more convinced she’s right. “All right. Then we—what do we do? Tell the sheriff?”
“No,” she says sharply. “Are you insane? After all the trouble we were gonna have trying to get Ryan out of jail once? We have to take care of it.”
“Take care of it how?”
“It’ll be sometime today or early tomorrow that Ryan shifts,” she says. She’s talking so fast I can tell she’s already come up with a plan. “Probably this afternoon—his past few cycles have been about thirty-six hours. We have to go stake out Terry’s place and wait for Ryan to show up.”
“The junkyard? Where passersby get shot at? I don’t think so.”
Now Joe pushes himself up on his elbow. “What the hell are you two plotting?”
/>
“Is Joe there?” Celeste demands. “Can he hear you?”
“Yes and yes.”
“Then go to another room while we talk this out.”
Instead, I put her on speakerphone and lay the cell phone on the pillow between our bodies. “Hi, Celeste,” Joe says.
“Dammit, Kara!”
“I’m not hatching up some crazy scheme without telling Joe about it!” I exclaim. “I’m not. So either deal with him, too, or count me out.”
There’s silence for a moment while she fumes. “He can’t call the cops,” she says.
I glance at Joe and he shrugs his bare shoulders. “Don’t need to,” he whispers to me. “They’re all over you guys.”
“He’s okay with that,” I say aloud. “So go on.”
“I don’t think we should go to the junkyard. Terry’s in-laws own a farm a couple of miles east of Quinville, and Terry and his wife have been spending a lot of time there. Her mom’s sick and her dad died last year, so there’s a lot of work to do.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know some people who know them, how do you think? It’s a small town.”
“Do you have an address for this farm?”
“Oh, I’ve been there. Ryan and I drove by it last week.”
I look at Joe and shake my head. “After the shootout but before the assault in the parking lot?” I say in a dry voice.
“Yeah, something like that. Anyway, I think that’s where Ryan will go. He’ll expect the cops to be watching the junkyard. And my guess is—well—”
“Well, what?”
“Plenty of places out on the farm he could have stashed Aurelia’s gun. For the next time he’d need it.”
I groan and sink back against the headboard. But of course! Naturally! If you want to use your firearm again, you don’t leave it in your car or your apartment or the scene of your first crime! You plant it on-site where you plan to commit your next murder!