“I don’t like this,” she said again, but her voice had lost its fight.
“I know. I don’t either.”
She looked up at me, mouth tensed like she was swallowing back ten different arguments. I knew that look. She was scared that if she pushed too hard, I’d bolt and withdraw from her again. She wasn’t wrong, but I wished she understood that I was doing it for her safety.
“I’ll be back before you miss me,” I said.
“That’s not possible,” she confessed quietly.
I didn’t look back as I left, not wanting to acknowledge what she’d said.
The drive back to Sunning was excruciating. I couldn’t stop thinking about Eden, although I couldn’t decide if it was worry and stress over her being there alone, or if it was because I just… missed her. Wanted her there with me, completely unrelated to the grim task at hand.
Halfway to the city, I texted Rook and told him I was going to go through with faking Eden’s death. He gave me an address, with no other information. It was in an industrial park in a bad part of town, right off of Jessop Terrace, a place often known for its illegal activities. It was an old parking garage, according to my GPS.
The moment I reached the city limits, it started raining. I wasn’t sure if it was a bad omen or if it was a blessing in disguise. Rain masked so much: noise, visibility, trails. Rook was already standing outside his car in the abandoned parking garage. It wasnear the railroad tracks. I felt the vibration under my feet as it rolled by. The sharp tang of rust and weed smoke hung in the air around him as I approached. He was wearing a hoodie, pulled low over his face.
“You sure you wanna do this?” he asked, flipping a lighter open to light a cigarette. “You want to kill some innocent girl to save another girl?”
I ignored his question and put my hand out. He offered me a photo, grainy and black and white, of a young woman thatdidresemble Eden. In the right light, with a little facial damage, no one would question it. Rook worked fast. I wondered how he’d found this girl so quickly, and if she’d done something that made her a target too. Rook was shrewd; he would be milking two wallets that way.
“She’s a runaway. No one is looking for her, as far as I can tell. Already halfway disappeared at this point. She waits tables at a diner off Needham, walks home every night…but… she also does sex work.”
I stared at the photo longer than I should have. Just a girl trying to make it in this shitty world. She walked home alone at night, just like Eden.
“Easier to proposition her, then,” I agreed.
“Would be cleaner,” Rook said, puffing more coniferous smoke into the air between us. “There’s no street cameras down there. Police don’t give a shit about this part of town either.”
I reached into my pocket, handing him another wad of bills. He stood there and counted them, pulling the rain saturated paper apart.
“Need anything else?”
I turned and climbed back into my car, letting my departure speak for itself. Rook watched me leave, no surprise on his features as he finished his cigarette. I drove to Needham, checking my watch to see that it was almost perfect timing. Iparked, pulling the hood up on my jacket as I went back into the rain. I stood against the wall a few blocks down from the diner and waited for the woman to come down the street. I saw her coming, minutes later, clutching her purse to her body, head tucked as she tried to avoid the rain that pelted down on her.
In the grand scheme of things, she was just a kid who ran from something worse and straight into me. I didn’t even know her name, but the lie would work, and it would buy me time. That was all that really mattered to me, wasn’t it?
“Hey,” I called, voice nearly lost to the rain.
She flinched, side-stepping.
“Haven’t I seen you around?”
She narrowed her gaze at me, and I kept my body posture loose and casual.
“I don’t think so,” she responded, and I thanked God she didn’tsoundlike Eden.
“Do you…” I looked up and down the street like I was afraid someone would hear me. “I think I know where I’ve seen you… do you dowork, you know? On the side?”
She pursed her lips together and I saw the dread there. That might have been worse than the idea of murdering her, knowing that she would die hating what she was about to do for money. She nodded slowly. “Yeah, sometimes.”
“Well, I know you’re soaked, and I’m soaked, but… if you got like five minutes…” I pulled a hundred dollar bill out of my pocket and extended it towards her.
She didn’t take it, hesitating in the rain.
“I’m going to be honest, maybe two minutes.” I tried a sheepish grin. “Not proud of it.”
“Okay,” she said, approaching to take the money with a shaking hand. “Where?”
