A hint of anger crosses the cop’s face, and I take a half-step forward, getting between him and my girl. He steps back, trying to communicate that the anger isn’t at her, but I’m not sure I believe him. “We’ll get him,” he says instead, even though none of us here believe those words, Tom Reed included.
A commotion by the fire line draws our attention, Trips stomping forward, Jansen curled around a lumpy bundle that has to be our cat.
Reed fades into the crowd of cops and firefighters as Clara stumbles from the car and rushes to Jansen, bowing over thecat; a plaintive mew followed by a cough is the greeting she gets. Trips watches them, caught between confusion, anger, and affection, his usually stoic face expressive in a way I’ve never seen before. He closes the distance to where Walker and I wait next to the truck.
“The cat is stable, but he has to go to an emergency vet for observation, probably overnight, maybe longer. But I just got a panicked call from Mattie at the hospital.” Clara turns at that, one hand on Jansen’s arm, her fingers mostly covered by the sleeves of Walker’s blazer. She has to be freezing, though, her dress more gauze than fabric.
“I’ll come with you if you guys go with Jansen?” she asks us.
“I’m coming with you two,” I say as Walker cranks the car back on and opens the back door. Jansen crawls in with the blanket-wrapped cat, pushing aside the pile of masks, ashes drifting in after them.
Trips palms his phone. “I’ll call a rideshare—our cars are part of the crime scene.” A second later, he looks up, features glowing from the headlights as Walker backs down the street until he can find space for a U-turn. “Thanks for coming with me.”
Chapter 80
Trips
Mattie must have come running the second she heard the elevator ding, because she grabs me before I take two steps down the hallway, dragging me to a small sitting area tucked between patient rooms. “Thank God you’re here,” she whispers, even though there’s no one here to hear us. A lifetime of habits won’t die overnight. “I don’t know what to do.” Tears glisten in her eyes, and the urge to protect her becomes so damn strong I have to keep my fists clenched instead of giving her the hug she probably needs.
“Tell me what’s happening,” I say, panicking at her panic.
“It’s Father, and Bry, and Mom, and the cops, and it’s all so much.”
Clara comes to my rescue, sitting next to Mattie and taking her hands. “I know it’s hard, but can you start at the beginning?”
She nods, taking a few deep breaths, getting control of herself like all of us Westerhouse kids learned to do practically in the cradle. “I found this tacked to the door of the condo we’re staying at.” She pulls out an envelope, and the three of us share a look, knowing exactly what’s inside. My sister’s hands are surprisingly still as she pulls out a card, ‘With deepest sympathies’ scrawled across the top. Inside is familiar handwriting. ‘Lost innocence, lost safety, lost little girl. One chance. One call and I’ll come. Otherwise…’
Mattie hands it to me, and I want to fling it into the embers where our home used to be. “I knew it was from Bry, but I didn’t know what to do. Mom found me freaking out about it, and she cursed up a storm, but said we should take it to Father, because if anybody can make someone disappear, it’s him. Only when we got there, there were people digging up the rose garden, and Mom lost it. She rushed in, angrier than I’ve ever seen her. Only Father was unconscious on the floor in their bedroom, so we ended up here. And I don’t know what’s going on anymore. Mom is so mad, she’s vibrating, Father’s hooked up to all these machines, and Bry is out there, watching me. How else did he know which unit we were staying in?” Mattie gets a little quieter with every word, falling back on the silence we survived, her grip on Clara not loosening.
RJ steps closer, his phone in hand, tapping out something, likely digging into one of his back doors into the investigation on the elder Westerhouse. “The people digging, were they cops?”
“I don’t think so. They were wearing green uniforms.”
He looks at me, but I have no better idea of what’s going on than he does.
“We can all agree that it’s not normal to be digging up a garden in the middle of winter. Do you think your father knows the cops are closing in? What could he have hidden there?” RJ asks.
Clara looks at Mattie. “I don’t know if you’ll want to be here for this conversation.”
“I’m not a kid. Not anymore. Tell me. I can take it.”
My heart aches, knowing that whatever childishness my sister had is gone.
“I bet it’s more bodies,” Clara says, treating my sister like the adult she’d always wanted to be seen as.
“More?” she clarifies, pulling her hands from Clara’s grip.
I glance down the hallway, glad we’re alone. “Yeah. More. Father’s got his own graveyard at a cabin out West. A torture shed and everything.”
She reads more on my face than I’d wanted to share. “Did you—”
“Yeah. I’ve been sent out there since I was your age. But luckily, sometime before me, Father stopped dealing with his own disposal, so I’m clean.” I don’t add that Clara’s clean, too. Mattie saw my wife kill a man. There’s a reason she’s keeping her hands in her lap now. Her brows furrow as she glares at the ground, before she follows the line from RJ’s dress shoes up to his head, blinking a few times as she takes in our formal attire.
“Why are you all dressed up? You stink like smoke,” she says, running from her problems for a moment.
Clara takes this one, her anger vibrant, glinting nearly as much as her crown. “It’s RJ’s birthday. And Bryce burned down our house.”
Mattie grips the card. “Otherwise…”
