“It’s nothi—”
“We need someone to plant a device on Will Cavanaugh’s computer in order to gather enough data to arrest him,” Vanessa leans in and whispers. “And I heard from Jack that you know Will.”
I expect Isis’s expression to flicker with discomfort and pain, but instead she lifts her chin.
“I do. I hate him.”
Vanessa smiles. “Fabulous. Then I’m sure you want to see him arrested even more than we do.”
“Or killed,” she says lightly. Too lightly. So lightly it’s frightening. “I’m not picky.”
Vanessa smiles wider. Isis cocks her head as if thinking.
“You’re with the government, right?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Isis, you aren’t doing this,” I say firmly. She smiles at me.
“The only thing I’m doing is eating my shrimp scampi and then maybe possibly dessert.”
The waiter drops our food off and leaves. We eat, carrying on a false conversation that leaves me uneasy for some reason. Vanessa is being far too kind to Isis, the two of them looking through pictures of cats on her phone. I won’t allow her to drag Isis into something that might get her hurt, or worse. I realized my mistake by bringing her here, in the direct line of fire.
Now that I have her, I’m never going to lose her again.
Dinner ends, and Isis orders apple pie. Vanessa pays our bill and smiles at me.
“I really need to get going. You two stay and have fun a little longer.”
“Where arsh yew goin’?” Isis looks up with a mouthful of pie.
“I have some business I need to take care of,” Vanessa says, and nods to the both of us. “Have a good night.”
“Bye!” Isis waves frantically, then looks at me. “I like her.”
I wipe pie filling off her cheek. “She’s an operative. She doesn’t like you. She’s just pretending.”
Isis frowns grumpily. “I could do it, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Plant that device. Will likes messing with me. I’m sure he’d let me in his room if I knocked.”
“Isis, no. You’re not going to confront him. He’s already put you through enough.”
“Which is why I need to confront him.” She sucks her finger free of whipped cream thoughtfully.
“You’re not,” I say firmly, “going to plant the device. You’ll leave it to me. This is my job, not yours.”
She stares at me, dark eyes so innocent and wide. Finally she shrugs.
“All right.”
“I’m serious, Isis.”
“As a heart attack,” she agrees. “I promise I won’t. It’s all you, baby. Ugh. Did I just call you baby? You are a baby. A whiny baby. With a nice butt.”
I can’t be mad at her for long, my smile strained but still there.
In the car, I clear my throat.
“If Will ever tries something, if he threatens you, you can always come to me. You know that, right? I’ll take care of it.”
“I know,” she says idly, staring out the window.
“I’ll protect you,” I say. “I swear it.”
“Hush up.” She leans in. “And kiss me.”
Her lips are fire and apple and cinnamon spice, driving all worries from my mind. We never quite make it home. I pull over at a nearby park, and Isis straddles my lap, and we kiss until the sun disappears behind the trees. My hand slides up her dress and her smell and pants cloud the car in a deliriously succulent haze. When she’s on the verge of losing control, she buries her head in my neck and bites it.
“I love you,” she whispers. “I love you, you stupid idiot.”
I stop my ministrations, and she whines. I lock eyes with her, watching her pleasure-fogged expression contort with want. Sweat mists her forehead, her chin, and I kiss it.
“Sorry,” she tries. “I’m sorry I called you an idiot. Please—”
I laugh and resume my work, and she gasps.
“We’re both idiots,” I murmur into her ear.
Later, much later, days later, when we’ve drunk ourselves silly of each other’s bodies and brought each other to the brink and back again so many times I’ve lost count, I return to that restaurant and ask after the waiter. The hostess informs me he quit, and to give a letter to anyone asking after him.
Jack,
I hope you’re enjoying her. God knows I did.
Have you checked in with Belina Hernandez recently?
Yours sincerely,
Will
My stomach goes cold. How does he know about that? Did Isis tell him? No—she never would, and I shouldn’t underestimate his sleuthing skills. Of course he knows about that. I’ve been sending the last of the money to Belina, but I’ve never visited her personally. It was always too painful. I’d sit outside her house in my car sometimes, trying to force myself to go in, but it never worked.
If Will knows about Belina, he knows about that night, and Joseph. If he told her what I did—
My feet fly over the cement. He told her first. He ruined what I’d been working up the courage to do for years. She hates me. She’s called the police, and they’re coming to investigate me. I’ll be thrown in jail. I won’t be able to see Isis, or hold her, or protect her from Will. That’s what he wants. He wants me out of the picture, gone, and he knows a grieving widow would throw her rage at the person who killed her husband, indirectly or not.
He’s using that night to get rid of me.
I break more than a few speed limits driving back to Northplains, the setting sun like blood over the horizon. Belina’s house looks the same as ever, yet this time I can’t let my fears keep me from knocking on the door. But those fears are compounded twice now—she knows what I did. I’m walking up to the woman whose husband I had a hand in killing. I feel like puking, but I tamp it down with long, deep breaths.
I have to do this. If I don’t, I may never see Isis again.
That thought is fire in my brain, the pain forcing my legs into motion, my arms into opening the car door. Every stair feels like I’m fighting against the pressure of a thousand blocks of iron on my back.
My hand knocks on the front door in slow motion. The wait is torture, but eventually a round-faced woman answers the door, her hair in a bun and tired lines around her eyes. She wears a dirt-stained apron, as if she’s been cleaning all day. Her dark gaze travels up me, down me with no expression, and then she speaks.
“Jack, right? Come in.”
I blurt the first thing I can. “Mrs. Hernandez, I—”
“Come in,” she repeats softly, holding the door open wider. There’s a thick silence between us, the fire in my head reaching flames into my heart, burning it alive. Is she planning revenge? Is she luring me in just to have me arrested?
No—I’m in no position to suspect her of anything. I took her husband from her. I inhale a breath and walk in, and she closes the door behind me. The house is simple, clean, with yellowing walls and many crosses over the doorframes. It smells delicious, like long-cooked meats, but my nerves are so bad I notice it only faintly. She leads me into the living room with several paisley couches and an ancient TV.
“Please”—she motions to a sofa—“sit. Would you like some water? Juice? I can make coffee, too.”
“I’m fine,” I say quickly. “Mrs. Hernandez, I came because—”
“I know why you came. I saw the video.”
The fire in my body consumes me now, down to cinders. My hands start to shake. Will showed her the video? How does he have it in the first place? It’s over. She’s seen everything, and I’m a monster, solidly and fully. No amount of money can hide that fact. I will never be able to make it up to her, no matter how hard I try.
I feel something in me puncture, deflate. Something I’ve held for so long, so carefully. I bow my head and clench my fists on my knees.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Whatever you want to do, I’ll accept it,” I manage hoarsely. “I won’t run.”
> “I know you won’t,” she says, faintly smiling. “You didn’t run when faced with five grown men with dark intentions against that girl you loved. Why would you run now?”
I flinch, but the feeling of her hand on mine makes me look up. Her eyes are soft.
“Joseph fathered my children. He built this house for me, so many years ago. We loved, for some years, and we hated for others. Then the hating years became more and more frequent. And then one day, he took a bottle to my littlest one.”
I suck in a breath, but her smile grows.
“It was the last straw,” she says. “I began filing for divorce. It drove him further into his darkness, and he began to drink.”
Belina puts her other hand on mine, eyes sincere and pressing.
“When I saw him in that video, harassing that young girl, I knew he wasn’t the man I’d married. And I knew, too, that perhaps it was for the best he disappeared. Before he could hurt my children, or anyone else.”
“Belina, I swear to you—”
“Ah-ah.” She holds a hand up. “I saw it, Jack. I know only two things—you were young, barely a child, and he was wrong. You were scared, and he was still wrong. I don’t want any more apologies from you. I don’t want police or lawyers. I only want the truth.”
So I tell her. Everything. Every bat swing, every dollar sent, every cover-up by Avery’s parents, every ounce of Sophia’s life. Of my life. And when it’s over, she puts her arms around me and holds me close.
“You have been very brave, Jack, for a very long time.”
We sit there, watching the moon outside the window, and I feel a single trail of wetness slide down my face.
Chapter Sixteen
0 Years, 1 Week, 5 Days
“You are fired from being my best friend!” Kayla screams. Even her two-in-the-morning Skype face is Beyoncé-flawless. I want to be her except I don’t, because the idea of dating Wren is almost basically like incest, because he is so little-brothery to me, and also breasts that enormous would make me trip at an inopportune moment, like, say, over the lion’s cage railing at the zoo, and I’d die.
“Stop talking about my boobs! You’re fired!”
“Kayla,” I whine attractively. “Kayla, listen, I am not fired, you are fired up.”
“Hell yes, I am fired up!” She slams her water glass down and it splooshes all over everything. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because!” I blush. “Because. Because I was busy.”
Kayla smirks knowingly, and I yell.
“Shut up!”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Shut up anyway!”
“Finally!” She ignores my request. “God, it took you two forever.”
“A year and some is not forever.”
“You could have a baby in that time!”
“Ugh, no, please. No grubs. Promise me you won’t have a grub.”
“I will have nine hundred grubs just to spite you. Speaking of grubs, you’re using condoms, right?”
“Yes.”
She just giggles. “Aren’t they weird? Like weird little plastic socks.”
“I will put one on your head and suffocate you.”
“I’m sorry!” She throws her hands up. “I’m just happy you finally got what you wanted in life!”
“Jack is not all I wanted in life.” I roll my eyes. “What I want in life is a stable yet satisfying career in the field of my choosing and a giant house made of a single doughnut.”
“And Jack.”
“And Jack can come sleep in my doughnut house sometimes. Yes.”
Kayla stares at me, smiling with increasing amounts of dorkishness.
“What?” I snap.
“You really are in love.”
“Ugh.”
“I’m serious! What other boy would you let sleep in your doughnut house?”
“Heath Ledger.”
“Yes, but he’s dead.”
“Ughhhh. People who are dead can totally sleep in my doughnut house.”
“Wait.” Kayla looks like she’s been struck by lightning and/or has come up with the most brilliant hypothesis this side of teenage girl science. “Is doughnut house a euphemism?”
I groan and roll myself up in a blanket and then roll on the ground like a particularly floral sausage. Skype beeps with another call, and I bolt up.
“Oh, hang on. I’ve got another call coming in.”
I flip over to it, and Vanessa’s face greets me.
“Oh, hi! It’s you!”
“It’s me,” she agrees. She looks different without all her makeup on, and she’s in some kind of fancy hotel room. The bedsheets are too perfectly made. “I assume you found the note I wrote you in your phone?”
“Yeah! I’m kind of amazed you managed to type all that out while just pretending to look at my pictures.”
If you’re still interested, I’ll contact you via Skype from twelve to three a.m. My username is
[email protected] I found it in my notes app the next morning.
“I didn’t want Jack to see it,” she says. “What I’m proposing would make him angry, and I want him focused.”
“So…” I glance at my phone. “You want me to plant the key log thingy on Will’s computer, or whatever?”
“Precisely.”
“Okay, I’d love to do that for you and all, but I’m gonna need some incentive.”
Vanessa nods. “Of course. I’d be happy to pay you—”
“Uh, no. I don’t want money. I mean, I do want money, always, but not from you.”
“Then what do you want?”
I knit my lips and debate the validity of telling a possibly-government agent a very dirty secret. Her face is so set and determined, and it’s then I realize she doesn’t care about anyone else’s business. It’ll all get shoved aside as information, a means to an end. It’s Will she’s after.
“So, Jack did something. A long time ago.”
“The Hernandez disappearance?”
I squirm. “Uh, yeah. How did you—”
“I know all I need to know.”
“So then you know the Feds gave the tape of that, um, incident, to Will’s friends. So they could clear up the tape for them.”
“Regrettably, yes.”
“Aren’t you guys hunting Will and his friends? So why—”
“There is little cooperative communication between us and the federal government,” she says quickly. “Call it rivalry, call it human pride, but mix-ups like this happen very often. We don’t tell the Feds what we are doing and to whom, so we sometimes end up arresting people they’ve…enlisted for help.”
“Right. Well. I’ll do the whole key log thing for you. But. But I want you to make that footage go away. I want you to make it stop going to the Feds. Or anyone. Forever.”
Vanessa purses her lips. “That’s an awfully big request. You’re asking me to tamper with evidence in a federal cold case.”
“I know. But. If you do it, I’ll do the key logging thing. Tonight. Right away. Just make it disappear.”
A tiny voice in my head begs to ask her to make the footage Will has of me defacing Summers’s office go away, too. But Jack’s dilemma is more important. Jack’s means jail. Mine just means getting kicked out of college, and one is definitively worse than the other. So I stand firm.
Vanessa ponders it, then sighs.
“All right. You put the key log on tonight, and I’ll make some calls.”
“Thank you,” I breathe. “Thank you so much.”
“I’ll have my associate drop the key log off in a brown paper bag, in the right-side garbage can outside Ciao Bella. That’s the café on your campus.”
“Duh. I’ve been there a thousand times.”
She fixes me with a stern look, and I fall quiet.
“You’ll attach the key log to one of the USB ports on his computer. Any one will do, just make sure it’s all the way inside. All I need is for the key log to stay in the computer for four hou
rs. After that, I’ll be able to access his hard drive anytime I choose.”
“USB port, all the way inside. Got it.”
“I’ll know when it’s done. Expect a call from my associate in the next few weeks. He’ll tell you when your ‘reward’ goes through.”
“Right.”
“And Isis,” Vanessa says. “Be careful. Will is not a good person.”
“I sort of already know that.”
Vanessa logs off, and I switch back to Kayla.
“Everything okay?” she asks. “You look kind of sick.”
“Sick nasty rad,” I correct.
“No, like, throw-up sick.”
I’m quiet, staring at the darkness of her bedroom as she stares at the darkness of mine, seven hundred miles away.
“Hey, Kayla?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you still be my friend if…if I dropped out?”
Kayla furrows her brow. “Of course, dumbass. Do you not, like, like it there?”
“I thought I would! I thought I really wanted to be here. I thought it would be great, and it’s been okay, but. It’s just boring,” I say. “School is boring. I wanna go places, and see new things. Things that aren’t textbooks. I want to travel! I wanna get out of this state, this country. I just wanna…go. Except—”
“Your mom,” Kayla finishes for me. “You’ve looked after her for so long! You deserve some vacation time away from family!”
“But she’ll be— She and Dad will be disappointed in me, and the money they spent to send me here—”
“They won’t have to pay anymore if you drop out!” Kayla laughs. “And I dunno about your dad, but I know your mom. She’s so sweet. She’d want you to be happy, not miserable.”
“You don’t think it’s stupid? You don’t think I’ll be ruining my future forever or something?”
“Uh, no? You’re Isis Blake! You’re not me, or Wren, or even Jack. You’re not like other people. You’re hilarious and quick and good, and most importantly you’re you. You’ll be just fine, no matter what you do with your life. Nothing is ever ruined forever. And I’ll always be your friend.”
My eyes well up with tears, and so do hers. She laughs, wiping her cheeks.
“As long as you go for what makes you happy, everything will turn out okay. I promise.”