“On it,” he says and hangs up.
We’ve kept tabs on Blake for months, but maybe she’s working with someone.Maybe we missed something.If she’s lying to me, if she’s somehow connected to the cops, or worse, to Spider…fuck, I can’t even think about what I’ll have to do to get that information out of her.
If she’s telling the truth, if she isn’t nuts and somehow actually sees ghosts, I pray she can forgive me and we’ll never speak of this again.
I gun the engine until the street blurs.Rage is cleaner than hope.Rage is safer than belief.It doesn’t tremble.It doesn’t make you weak.It makes the world simple and, it keeps its promises.
twenty-one
I don’t go homefor two days.
I tell my brothers everything.Every word, every pause, the way her eyes looked when she saidLondonandalivein the same sentence.Adrian and Mavik tear the city open.Every tower they can ping, every street, traffic, and storefront camera they can hack, any angle they can find.They dive so deep into Melinda they know exactly who stood near her on any given day from the second she set foot in Vegas.They read call logs and texts and scrape her phone and laptop metadata to pull the things that think they were deleted.Caleb runs her life to the penny—checking, savings, retirement, cards, subscriptions, cash deposits and withdrawals, transfers back to the day she opened the accounts.
I used to watch her because I wanted to learn her toothpaste, how she takes her coffee, whether she sleeps with socks, the way she lines her phone up flush with surrounding lines.That was me wanting her.This is prying up floorboards to see what’s rotting underneath.This isn’t love; it’s suspicion.I never wanted this.
They search for London everywhere, checking the places we always monitor and adding new ones we can think of or stumble upon.Every member of the Accord looks in their own hiding spots for her too.
We find nothing.No aliases.No partners.No coffees with stupid Detective Blake.No connection, financial or otherwise, to Spider.Every line adds up clean, which is somehow worse.
Her texts stack.
Lindy girl:
I’m sorry I hurt you.
I shouldn’t have brought her up like that.I won’t ever again.
I’m not lying to you.
If you need distance, I’ll give you distance from the subject.Please come home.
Tell me how to prove I’m on your side and I’ll do it.
I don’t reply but every half hour or so my phone goes off like fireworks.
I’ll take any test you and your brothers want.Hook me up to machines, interrogate me, torture me.I’m telling the truth.
I’m loyal only to you, above anyone and anything else.
I typeI’m coming homeand delete it.I typeI can’t do this yetand delete that, too.I flip the phone face-down, turn it over again like a coin.Logan checks in every four hours.She hasn’t left.She’s wearing the blue sweater I love today.She makes a lot of tea.
I don’t answer.I stare until the typing dots vanish.
Uncle Leven visits Adrian’s late the second night.He smells like cedar and gun oil, like always.He doesn’t ask me to sit; I do anyway.He watches me before saying, “You look like you’re trying to cauterize yourself,” he says.
“She said London’s alive.”The words taste like a pulled tooth.“With nothing to support that.”
He nods once.If the mention of London alive bothers him as much as it’s bothering me he’s hiding it well.
“You don’t have to trust her to make her hard for others to take from you.Men kill what they don’t understand.Don’t be your father.Trainher.”
“I won’t hand a weapon to a liability.”
He tips his head.“Then don’t.Hand a weapon to yourwife.”
“If she’s a con,” I say, “training her makes her better at lying.”
“If she’s conned you, me, all of us, she’s already better than anything we’ve ever seen.Training her makes her less vulnerable and if she’s had training in the past, it’ll likely show up during your sessions at some point.Push her.Hard.”He pours two fingers of whiskey.“You’re living with a woman in a war you started the second you texted back.Armor her.You can love her later or kill her later.But right now, until we know what’s actually going on, you keep her breathing.”
