“And I intend to keep it that way,” said Nora, her eyes locked on Patty’s in challenge.
Patty nodded the nod of someone who didn’t quite know why they were nodding but couldn’t think of a better alternative. “Very good,” she said tentatively.
“We’re going,” said Nora. She offered her hand to Charlie and hoisted him to his feet.
“Nora—” Patty started, then stopped herself. “I’m sure Mom and Dad would be glad to have some help with lunch,” she said instead of whatever she’d actually wanted to say. “If you see Phil before I do, tell him I’m looking for him.”
“What for?”
Patty feigned a smile. “Oh, just a little project we’re working on. It hasn’t been going very well so far, but I’m hoping we’ll be changing that real soon.”
They stood there holding eye contact, locked in a standoff neither of them dared name. Patty broke first. “And that car of yours,” she said. “I’ll make sure Phil has you behind the wheel again in no time. I’m sure we’d all like that, wouldn’t we?”
23
Nora had carved an effective pacing route between the two beds. Up one side towards the back wall, pivot, back down to the door she’d locked and barricaded with a dresser. Charlie’s and Jessica’s heads followed her back and forth like the spectators of a slow-motion Ping-Pong match. Richard and Ruby were upstairs making lunch, just as Patty had predicted, but instead of helping, Nora had dragged her brother to their bedroom for the sake of general safety, a debrief, and to keep Charlie away from knives.
She chewed the inside of her cheek as she paced, stopping occasionally when an unexpectedly heavy step forced her jaw down too hard. This would usually be enough to stop the chewing altogether, but not today. Today the pain kept her alert.
“It’s Patty,” she said. “She’s working with Phil. He’s her stooge, the one doing the dirty work. That mower had Phil written all over it. Richard and Ruby are helping her too, or at least they aren’t working against her. And then there’s the old guy in the forest—”
“Forest house,” Jessica squawked.
“Sure,” said Nora. “He’s close with Phil and Patty. He mustknow what’s up, though he keeps to himself too much to be an active participant in anything.”
“Okay,” said Charlie.
Nora paused her pacing and plucked Charlie’s file off the floor by her bed. His cause of death was still a blur, its shape altered yet again. Also on the rug was Ruby’s file. Somehow, Ruby’s cause of death had completely vanished in the years since it had first appeared, but Nora didn’t think she’d have much luck getting an explanation out of Ruby herself after what Nora had overheard that morning.
Nora could think of only one person who knew everything that went on in Virgo Bay but wasn’t invested in any of it.
“I’m going back to see Oliver,” Nora said.
“Okay,” Charlie said again. “Why?”
“Because he has answers.”
“Answers he clearly has no interest in sharing,” said Charlie.
“Yeah, well, I had no interest in traveling to another country and getting stranded in a town full of sociopaths. We all have to make sacrifices from time to time.”
“All right,” said Charlie, standing up. “Let’s give it a shot, I guess.”
Nora shook her head. “I’m doing this alone, Charlie. You keep yourself locked down here, okay?”
“But—”
“Charlie…” Nora was instantly back in that forest, gunshots raining down around her, tree bark erupting into dust. The deafening blasts, the raw fear like a million thundering hearts racing in harmony in her ears. She could still taste the damp earth that had sprayed into her mouth as she’d scrambled across the ground on her elbows. It could all happen again. If whoever was afterCharlie wanted it to, it could all happen again. And this time there was no guarantee they’d both leave the woods in one piece. She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t have to. Charlie knew. One look at his sister’s face and he knew exactly where she was.
“Be careful,” was all he said.
“I always am,” said Nora, but the longer she spent protecting Charlie from death, the less true that felt. She couldn’t keep risking her life to save his. It wasn’t how she was built. She needed this to end.
* * *
The woods felt suffocating. Eyes landed warm on Nora’s back from behind every tree, from within every shrub. Each rustle of leaves sent her jumping, the crack of a twig beneath her feet summoning the reflex to duck for cover. Nora reminded herself she wasn’t the target. Over and over again she repeated it like a mantra as she trudged deeper into the forest. But the more she said it, the less she believed it. Would that remain the case if she got too close to the truth? She had her doubts.
She made it to the stone house without incident, or at least without any physical harm. Her nerves were another matter. She was so worked up by the time she reached the front door that she could barely steady her hand long enough to turn the doorknob. When she finally managed it, she found something almost as shocking as a shooter in the woods. The door was locked. No door in Virgo Bay was ever locked. She tried again, thinking the anxiety filling her limbs like helium had made her grip too weak, but the knob simply wouldn’t turn. Nora took a step back and examined the dark wooden door with a scowl. Interesting that Oliver would choose today, mere hours after his great-grandchildrenvisited him for the first time, to start locking his door. And by “interesting,” she meant “infuriating.”
