She hangs up before I can reply.
Twenty
“Goddamn it,” I mutter, because the most horrific thing about this day is what I’ve just come to realize: With my brother out of commission, Bertram Casimir is the only one with the resources to help me now.
I run until I no longer hear the sirens, and I ask Bertram to meet me there.
He arrives in record time—without his driver, and in a beat-up old Honda Civic. “Borrowed from a friend,” he tells me as I climb into the passenger’s side and tug the hood of my coat up over my face.
“I thought you didn’t have friends,” I say.
He quirks a brow. “Careful,” he says. “It sounds like you’re not in a position to be picky. What sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into?”
“Where were you last night?” I ask, catching him offguard. We’re still parked on the side of the road, the occasional car zipping around us.
“What?” he says.
“I can’t explain now, but if you can prove where you were last night, I can help you.”
“Help me?”
“With Annie,” I say. “With her disappearance, and with what happened to Skylar.” I don’t tell him about Erin, who is very likely dead herself. But by whose hand? If it was Bertram, I’ll know soon enough. And if it wasn’t…I have to contend with reality about the man I married. If my instincts about Bertram’s innocence are correct, then I’ve been sleeping next to a stranger for the past eleven years. And if I’m wrong, and Waylen is innocent, that means Bertram was able to fool me so effectively that I’ve been questioning my own reality for weeks.
I don’t know which is worse. But I’ll know soon enough.
My phone buzzes, distracting me from the fact that he hasn’t answered my question. A text from Elodie:
You’re a murder suspect. They think you killed Erin. Don’t try to explain here. I’m deleting all our messages. Don’t reply.
I reply anyway:Keep Collette away from Waylen. Please.
Now Elodie is regretting trying to be my friend. I’m sure of that. This case has gone over both our heads.
My blood runs cold and rushes through my ears so loudly that I don’t hear Bertram asking me where we’re heading. I was seen leaving Erin’s apartment. Who but theguilty party would leave a scene like that without calling for help?
Numbly, I tell him which street to turn down.
I need to get in touch with my brother, but I already know any calls placed to him at the hospital will be easily traceable. For once, he can’t help me.
“Park here,” I tell Bertram, when we reach an abandoned building at the end of my brother’s block. It’s a small, unassuming neighborhood. Lower income. If he wanted, my brother could have afforded a suburban McMansion like the one Waylen and I occupy. Our parents’ deaths left us with a decent inheritance.
But he takes what he needs to fund his elaborate surveillance setup and leaves the rest of the money to me. It’s in a joint account that only he and I know about, under his name so that it can’t be used as leverage if Waylen and I ever have a bitter divorce.
Or if Waylen ever goes to prison for homicide.
“Here?” Bertram asks, looking at the boarded-up building on a plot overrun with weeds. “It looks—um.”
“I need you to wait here,” I say. I get out of the car and sprint down the street, hoping Bertram won’t follow me to see where I’m really going.
No such luck. I hear the click of his Marzeri Buranos against the uneven pavement. To look at, Bertram passes for normal. If you don’t follow the world of big tech—and most don’t—he looks like a manicured CEO, or the overachieving assistant manager at Staples. But there are little details, like his thousand-dollar shoes, the color of a lacquered wooden floor at a gastropub, and the severe part inhis short, dark hair, or the fact that his cuticles are perfectly tended to. Even Elodie would envy how well groomed he is.
He grabs my arm and whirls me around. “Margaux,” he says firmly. His voice is a rugged whisper—he knows better than to let it carry through the empty street. Someone in these shuttered houses around us may be listening. “I’m not stupid. There were police sirens when you called me. Someone is looking for you. What’s happened?”
I stare back at him, startled by how badly I want to believe in his innocence.Don’t be foolish, I remind myself. There’s a tactful way to handle everything. When I know without a shadow of a doubt that my target is guilty, I don’t go storming into their home with guns blazing and a police force behind me. I handle it quietly, giving them ample security, letting them check their mail after pulling into the driveway, pouring themselves a cup of morning coffee as they enjoy the sunrise on their porch on a Saturday morning.
Slow and effective, and always lurking in the shadows so that they don’t know what hit them. They never know who was spying on them, or where I came from.
I suppose this is also true if my target is innocent. I don’t know, because it’s never happened before. By now, I’ve always proven their guilt. I’ve always had my brother to help me.
