She holds her breath as she enters the code—1-1-0-5—and lo and behold, the keypad chirps and blinks green. It worked. Now she can get inside, wake Townsend, and finally—
“Meera, please.” Already standing just a few feet behind the front door is Townsend, hands held up in surrender. “Don’t do anything stupid. Let’s just talk, okay?”
He seems apprehensive. Afraid—ofher, she realizes. As though Meera is some wild animal escaped from her cage.
“Is Talia here?”
“No. She’s at home.”
Meera almost laughs as she watches Townsend shift from foot to foot. He’s always been a shitty liar. “I would believe you,” she says, “but I just drove by her house. It was burned to the ground.”
Townsend’s brow furrows. “I don’t know what the fuck kind of game you’re playing,” he says, “but Talia isn’t here, and you need to leave.”
“I’m not here to play games.” Why is he looking at her like that, like she’s a criminal? She’s only doing what she needs to do. “I’m here to warn you. I ...” There’s no easy way to tell him this, to make him understand what she finally realized herself. “You’re sure Talia isn’t here?”
“For the last time, yes.”
“Okay.” Meera steels herself with a deep breath. “Then you should know that your girlfriend isn’t who she seems.”
“Fiancée,” Townsend corrects. “And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“All that awful stuff about her past? She made it up, Townsend.”
Meera’s suspicions first began the other day, reading that stupid romance book of Talia’s. Her eyes nearly glazed over until they snagged on a familiar name: Neveah’s Oasis. The home for unwed mothers where the protagonist’s sister went to give birth. The same place where Talia claimed her own sister had been sent. Maybe it was a coincidence? Meera googled it. Outside the world ofMeat Cuteby Kennedy J. Abbott, it seemed Neveah’s Oasis did not exist.
Bewildered, she leafed back through the opening chapters, reminding herself of the plot details she’d failed to absorb the first time through. It was all there. The pious butcher father, the hard-drinking mother, the wayward sister sent away after getting knocked up ...
At the time, Meera had just felt vaguely uneasy. Why would Talia invent a personal history, stolen from the pages of a fiction book? Perhaps her childhood had been so uneventful, so conventional, thatshe’d felt the need to borrow tragedy. To give herself a sense of intrigue. That Meera couldn’t condone, but she could at least understand.
But then she returned from Townsend’s last night to find a box of her personal effects from the Cuff office outside her door. In it, a note from Aarav:Don’t trust your friend.
“Neveah’s Oasis, where Talia’s sister was supposedly sent? It’s a made-up place,” Meera explains desperately. “For all I know, Talia doesn’t even have a sister.”
“Who would ever lie about that?”
It isn’t Townsend who asks this, but Talia, and at the sound of her voice, Meera jumps. She whirls around to find Talia standing in the bedroom doorframe, wearing a Penn crewneck and what looks like a pair of Townsend’s boxers.
Townsend lets out a low snarl. “Tal, I told you to stay in my room. And why do you have my paintball gun?”
That’s when Meera sees it: the metallic object clutched in Talia’s right hand. But that isn’t a paintball gun. That’s a real fucking gun.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Townsend
“Fuck, Tal. Where did you get that?”
Talia ignores Townsend’s question, still keeping her gun trained on Meera. “The police are on their way,” she warns. “You’re not going to get away with this.”
Slowly, Meera raises her hands. “I’m not here to hurt you—either of you.” Despite the fact that she literally just broke into his home (and despite what the police laid out for him just hours before), Townsend has to admit that she seems like she’s telling the truth. Her fear is palpable, real.
Meera looks away from the gun just long enough to glance at Townsend with pleading eyes. “This is what I was trying to tell you. Talia wants—”
Before she can finish, Talia cuts her off. “I want you to finally tell the truth. I want you to admit that you’re in love with Townsend.”
Meera’s mouth opens and then closes again. For a moment, it looks like she might even laugh. “You can’t be serious.”
“That’s the reason you’ve been torturing me. Because you love him, right? The police told us everything. We know you killed Amanda.”
