“I just needed a minute, Jess, okay? I need a minute.”
“Honey,” she says softly. “What happened?”
“Akia took my job, and that attorney you sent my father to has a hard-on for Big Davis.”
“A hard-on? Okay, you are really, really not yourself. You never speak like that.”
She’s right. Of course she’s right. Nothing about me right now is me at all. “I told you,” I say, “I needa minute.” But as surely as I say this to her, I ramble onward, adding, “I’m trying to take control of my life, Jess, and it’s not working. I just want to be invisible. It’s better that way. I mean, I worked hard to build the auditorium revenue, and I did. I blew away expectation. I sold people on why we were the venue for every event. Yes, the presentation sucked, but why did that matter? Why did that one hiccup allow Akia to take my job? My work should have been enough. I even wrote an email to the entire board of directors pitching myself, and for what? He still took my job. Why can’t I just be in the background, do a great job, and that be enough?”
“Mia,” Jess starts, but I’m not done yet, and I say as much.
“I’m not done. I worked hard in that meeting with the attorney today to convince my father to do the right thing. No one listened. They all want to jump in the devil’s sandbox and build sandcastles with Big Davis. My father is going to get screwed over, and I can’t stop it from happening. So you see?”
“See what, Mia?”
“When I try to speak up, when I step out of my comfort zone, it doesn’t work. Some people are just meant to be in the spotlight. You are. I am not. Everyone is not like you. You know that, right?”
“Okay, deep breath,” Jess orders gently. “Deep breath. You’re upset—”
“Ya think?” I demand. “Really, Jess? That’s your reply?”
“Mia—”
My phone buzzes with a call, and I find Jack on caller ID. “That’s Jack. Can you just call him and tell him I need a little time? I mean, you know me well. Once in a blue moon, I melt down. It happens, and thenI pick myself back up and I’m better for it. That’s now. Just tonight, right now, I need to be with me, just me. Don’t come over. Don’t let Jack come over. Just let me think. Can you both understand that? Please.”
“Okay,” she agrees. “Yes. I know you. I know how this works. I’ll come by in the morning, though, and we will walk to coffee together. Is that okay?”
If it just lets me be alone right now,I think,I’ll agree to about anything.“Yes,” I say. “Fine. That’s fine.”
“Love you, Mia.”
“I love you, too. I gotta go.” I disconnect and check my call log. My parents have not called. That’s because my father is going to do what I begged him not to do and go onLion’s Den. In other words, he’s going to be destroyed again. And the music downstairs is louder now. I can’t take it. I’ve had enough. I google the news anyway. Still nothing on Kevin. I don’t understand. Am I losing my mind? Did I imagine his murder?
An urgent need to prove I’m not crazy overcomes me. I hurry upstairs and strip away the stupid Chanel clothes—I don’t even care if Adam is watching me. In fact, I hope he sees me pull on my Walmart sweatsuit and sneakers. I shove my hair under a baseball hat, and then, grabbing a jacket, I hurry back down the stairs and exit my apartment. Once I’m in the main foyer, I note the lodged-open door to the bookstore, the music grinding on my nerves.
I push it open and walk inside. Ben is nowhere to be found. “Ben!” I call out.
He steps from between two rows of books. “Yes, my lady? What can I do for you?” His tone is pure mockery.
“I’m going out. If I come back and that music is blasting, I swear to God, I will stomp your iPhone to its death. And I will repeat that every single night if necessary.” I turn and exit the store and the building. I am not a killer in the Adam sense of the word, but if Ben thinks I’m joking, he’s wrong. I’ve had enough. I will kill his iPhone in two seconds flat.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
There’s a high probability that I really am crazy.
Otherwise, why would I be here, of all places, right now?
I stand across the street from the building where I’d gone to meet Adam for our first date, or so I’d thought. The building with a view right into Kevin’s apartment. Which is exactly why I’m here now. I have to know if Kevin is alive or dead. I have to see him, sprawled on his floor, with my own two eyes, just one more time. Of course I’m worried about street and building cameras that might spy me visiting this location, but with my hair back and my hood over my cap, I’m incognito. And the truth be told, I just have to do this. I can’t go on without doing this.
This area of town is no party sector and manages to be quiet this time of night, as is the case this eve. I scan the area, looking for and finding no sign of law enforcement. I mean, if there was a murder, wouldn’t there be some police presence? Or maybe there would be, and there is, and I simply don’t know. Maybe “they” are just watching for fools like me who return to the scene of the crime. But fool that I am, I’m doing this. I amdoing this.
After hurrying across the street, I enter the building and rush to a stairwell, using the sleeve of my jacket to open the door. I left fingerprints before, I know—I had to have—but so have many others after me, to cover them up, to dilute the quality of my touch versus theirs. At least, I hope there was. This time, though, this night, I will leavenothing of myself behind—well, nothing I haven’t already left. For instance, a part of my soul that is now doomed to hell and beyond based on my silence over Kevin’s murder.
I didn’t even call for help.
What if he was still alive when I left?
The walk up the stairs is unconscious for me again. Time and places are muddled about in my mind.It’s that survival instinct we all possess,I think. That part of my mind, of all our minds, that is programmed to protect us, to ensure our sanity. I reach the floor where everything bad in my life feels as if it originates, though I know it was earlier than that night. It started with the first note from Adam. Maybe before. Maybe he’d been watching me for a long time.
