I didn’t. “Yeah?”
“You know about everything that happened, I mean, with Jockey, and…”
“Milo. Yeah.” I run a hand over my face, feeling suddenly hopped up, jittery, static electricity in my veins. “Everything OK?”
Marnie takes a deep breath, then her voices plunges low, and she speaks very quickly. “Look, you didn’t hear it from me, OK, but Jockey’s guys have been watching you, I’d bet anything they’re gonna use you against him, so if I were you, I’d cut him off and lay low for a while, OK?”
My own breath hitches, but it isn’t fear that pulses through me: it’s outrage. Sudden, hot, blinding. “Watching me?”
“Yes. Don’t fuck with them, Lexie. I know you can be…”
“I can be…?”
“A little reckless.” There’s fondness, maybe even admiration in Marnie’s tone. “And I just want you to be safe. Please. Let this blow over. Don’t do anything risky?”
I meet my eyes in the mirror again. “I won’t.”
“Is there someone you can stay with? A friend, maybe? Or like, your mom?”
“Yeah.”
Marnie doesn’t sound convinced. “OK, good, I gotta go, but please, Lexie. Just look out for yourself, OK? And…you know, steer clear of Liam, for a while. He’s…”
“Trouble.”
A wry little laugh. “Yeah.”
“Marnie.”
“Hm?”
“Thanks. For the head’s up.” I hesitate. I haven’t seen her in ages and I don’t know where we stand. “It’s nice to hear from you.”
“You too.” Andclick, she’s gone, that warning zigzagging through me, winding between my bones and cinching tight, till I’m rigid and gripping my phone so hard my knuckles ache.Watching me.Jockey, watching me. My heart is drumming too hard, too fast. What does he know about me? Liam? The girls? My house and my work and my life?
Don’t do anything risky.Those words are charged, too potent, too triggered. They translate todon’t do anything, and God, haven’t I done nothing long enough? If Jockey’s really watching me, he’s planning something. To hurt or use me, my kids.
I look my reflection in the eye. I’ve done nothing for so many years. Look where it’s gotten me.
Don’t do anything risky.The Lexie I’ve become knows better. The Lexie I’ve become would listen to those words.
But not today.
* * *
The kitchen is calling me, and when I get there, I throw open my laptop and pour myself a cup of coffee. The house is silent in a way that perks my ears and makes me hyper-wary. There’s a flash of gray out the back door, among the spear-headed cypress that guard the edge of the property. A coyote maybe, prowling for something small and meek, something injured to drag into the dirty underbrush and watch die. The sky is bruised—it looks like snow.
I open my laptop and pull up my paperwork. I’ve been putting out feelers here and there, careful always to go by Alexis, my full name, and not use my last. The cops in the next town answered more quickly than I expected. Seems Jockey and his horde of assholes are giving them more trouble than they can ignore, and they’re not opposed to someone else doing the snooping.
Jockey, aka Timothy Jock Collins, has been busted three times in the last two years for possession. Public record, easy to dig up—but trickier to find are the reasonswhy. Not why he did it or how he got caught, that’s painfully obvious.
More like—why only community service? Why no jail time? No parole?
Why is this idiot getting off so easily, and so frequently?
Dirty cop.It’s the first thing that pops into my head, and it’s not exactly unlikely. We’re not Boston, and the crime here is never, or at least rarely, big-city level. Bodies aren’t popping up in the rivers, and there hasn’t been a shootout like the one that landed Liam in prison since the day Milo died.
Suddenly it hits me that what I said to Liam might not actually be true. Him going after Jockey, and the guys who killed Milo—maybe it’s not revenge. Maybe, when there’s nobody around to make justice happen, you really do have to make it happen for yourself.
