“I’m afraid so,” says Harris. And then, echoing her partner’s words from earlier: “I’m sorry.”
For months, Kaitlyn hoped against hope that her sister—her feckless, freewheeling, free-spirited sister—was still out there. Getting by on cash and car rides and getting off on ignoring Kaitlyn’s messages. But somehow, this news doesn’t feel like a surprise to her. It feels like confirmation of something she already knew to be true but wasn’t ready to accept.
Kaitlyn thinks of the words her therapy chatbot had her repeat during one of their first sessions together: “Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me. Everyone will leave me.” The hope was that—upon hearing the phrase over and over—the words would lose meaning and her fear would seem irrational. Silly, even. But instead, Kaitlyn found that the exercise just imbued the words with power, made her dread feel less like generalized anxiety and more like an active threat. And now that horrible prophecy had come true yet again.Everyone always leaves her.
The tears will come later, she knows that. Right now, it’s anger she feels. Anger that makes her want to hurt someone else the way she’s hurting.
“Amanda’s landlord called me,” she tells the officers. “A woman has been paying her rent. She delivers cash once a month. According to the landlord, she claimed to work with my sister.”
This intrigues them. “Could he describe her?” Burrows asks.
“Not really. But ...” Kaitlyn hesitates. Even though she knows it will only benefit her to offer up any information she has, she’s tempted to keep this last piece to herself. How satisfying it would be to watch the footage, identify that woman, hunt her down, avenge her sister.
“But what?”
She knows how to shoot a gun. She knows how to do it without leaving a mess too.
“Can you tell us the landlord’s name?”
Her anger has shifted, becoming something she doesn’t recognize and turning her into someone unrecognizable too. She thinks,You know what? Fuck these police officers.Kaitlyn doesn’t want to be a team player; she wants revenge, which means seeing that footage before the detectives can. “Roger something. I’m not sure.”
“Okay. Could you share his number at least?”
“I don’t have it.”
“You said he called you.”
“The number was blocked.” Kaitlyn stands. “Look, I need to go. I need to get out of here.”
“Wait.” Harris holds out a hand. “Please, just another minute.”
Kaitlyn sinks cautiously back into her chair as Harris produces a photo from the folder in her hand.
“Do you know her?”
Leaning forward, she studies the photo, a corporate headshot showing a dark-haired woman in a navy blue suit. She looks familiar—broad shoulders, small hoop nose ring, thick brows, possibly Indian—but Kaitlyn can’t quite place her. Didn’t Roger mention that the woman paying her sister’s rent had dark hair? Maybe this is her. But who is she? “No. Sorry.”
Harris tucks the photo back into her folder. “If you come across any useful information, you’ll call us, yes?”
“Sure,” Kaitlyn says, not yet convinced that she means it.
Walking out of the police station, Kaitlyn feels as though the ground is shifting and tilting beneath her. She needs to get to Roger to watch the footage. No, she needs to tell the police the truth. No, she needs to plan a funeral, because her sister is dead. Oh, God, her sister is dead. Her sister is dead.
Her arms tingle with restless energy; maybe a trip to the shooting range will help her focus. She always feels calmer after firing off a few rounds—not to mention that it’ll give her a chance to decide what to do next. Her brain on autopilot, Kaitlyn makes the twenty-minute drive to the Range at Austin. Once there, she pops open the trunk to retrieve her SIG Sauer P320, which she always keeps handy in its black leather-trimmed hard-shell case. Except ...
This can’t be. Kaitlyn shifts around the tangle of jumper cables and spare indicator bulbs and reusable shopping bags—carefully at first, and then with an urgency bordering on frantic. It’s no use; the case is nowhere to be seen.
She may have a penchant for jumping to conclusions, but this time, Kaitlyn feels sure her gut is right: Someone has stolen her gun.
And the only person she ever told about that gun? Townsend Fuller.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Amanda
The first thing Amanda did after Townsend broke up with her was text her sister. There were a dozen things she wanted to say—I’m sorry for how our brunch ended,andYou were right about Townsend,andI could use a friend right now—but she didn’t say any of them. Some small, petty part of her was annoyed that Kaitlyn had been right, because Kaitlyn was always right. Instead, she merely wished her sister a happy birthday and promised herself that tomorrow, when she was feeling less resentful, she would fix things.
Instead, she woke up the next morning feeling more bitter than ever—not toward Kaitlyn, or even Townsend, but toward the person she allowed herself to become around Townsend. Someone who was whiny, needy, vulnerable. No more of that; her new life would begin today. Her first move: redownloading the Cuff app and changing her location to Paris, France, where she planned to begin her Euro trip. It made sense to scope out the dating scene ahead of time, she figured. Then she’d waste no time when she finally arrived.
