'Yeah,' he says. ‘We just... We got a little antsy upstairs.'
'Antsy?' I ask.
‘Worried,’ he clarifies with a grimace and looks around at the café as if someone’s going to come out of nowhere to kidnap me again. ‘We sort of realized we want you with us, you know?’
‘So, you want us to come upstairs?’ I ask, fully okay with us all being together because I’m sort of feeling the same.
‘Yeah,’ he murmurs ruefully. ‘Sorry, Tulip.’
I smile. ‘It’s not a sorry thing, Mav. I get it. You want me safe.’
He nods. ‘Yeah. Safe. Exactly.’
Lu gets up. ‘Well, this is sickeningly adorable,’ she says in a cutesy voice. ‘I gotta go anyway. I have a shift at Grinder in a little while. I’ll see you later, Daisybear.’
I grin. ‘Okay, Lulu. Thanks for coming. It was really nice to see you.’
She points at me. ‘Message me later.’
I nod.
‘Oh! I almost forgot.’ Lu delves into her purse and comes up with a rumpled piece of paper. ‘This was in the files Shade asked me for. Found it under my bed in my dorm. My bad. It must have slipped out.’
I look down at it. It’s a photo of a keychain.
’Uh, thanks.’ I fold it up and put it in my pocket.
As Lu leaves the hotel, I stand up and go with Mav. In the elevator, he pulls me close and holds me tightly.
‘What’s up?’ I ask.
‘Nothing,’ he breathes. ‘I just didn’t realize how I’d feel when you were not with us. That, and I want to find the answers you need, you know?’
I hug him back. ‘We will.’
Blake
I'm reading and re-reading the paper I found in the drawer. It’s in the kind of lawyer-jargon that makes your brain want to ooze out of your ears. When Mav brings Daisy upstairs, she focuses on me and I bask in her attention like a neglected puppy.
'Figured anything else out?' she asks immediately, looking a little apprehensive.
'Well, your name appears, but there’s a lot of legal jargon that’s not really in context because we don’t have any of the other documents,' I say. 'Legal stuff isn’t really my forte.'
'Mine either,' Mav says apologetically. ‘Plus, it’s like a tiny piece of the middle of the story, you know? And the date is only from a couple of months ago. Stevens said stuff had been coming over years. There must have been a ton more documents before the folder was cleared out.’
I give her the paper that I've read through.
'Can you tell anything?' she asks, perusing it slowly.
I take the paper back.
'Well, this lawyer is the one that Stevens was saying to us was the one that started sending letters to John, and they were the same letters that John didn't want your mother to see.'
'But my mother was a Winters, or at least she had been. Why didn't he want my mother to know about these when her family’s name is on it? It doesn’t make sense.'
‘We could try to contact the lawyer directly,’ Mav says.
'They aren't going to tell us shit,' I murmur, staring at the page. 'But, maybe, if they have servers online, I can get in and find out more...'
