But the fire killed us both. It took away whoever we might have been. And rather than try to heal, my brother has spent all this time carrying and living in the pain, so that I could at least pretend to have a happy life. Being an actress in a role that fools everyone else is something, isn’t it? Being a good liar is better than facing the truth.
There’s the live feed of Bertram’s building. I click through the folder of auto-saved clips from the feed, but there are hundreds of them, between the lobby and the elevators and the parking garage and the penthouse. It would be so much easier if there were a camera inside Bertram’s apartment, because then I’d doubtless have hours of him toiling away doing whatever it is he does in there. But I have to locate the last time he entered the building and prove that he never left. It’s a task that could take hours—time I don’t have.
There is Bertram entering the parking garage with hisdriver after we parted ways. Progress! I save the file and continue, following him into the elevator and to his penthouse apartment. Now to prove that he hasn’t gone anywhere since this morning, when he came to get me.
My phone rings. An unknown number. Normally it’s the sort of thing I’d ignore, but today is different, and I know that whatever is on the other end of the line is important.
“Hello?” My calm voice doesn’t betray the anxiety I feel. I’m still clicking through the clips. No sign of Bertram for hours after his return home. He’s right—he really doesn’t go anywhere. A delivery person leaves food at the front desk, and the doorman brings it upstairs at ten p.m. Once the elevator dings and the doorman has gone, Bertram answers in his bathrobe, takes the food inside, and closes the door. The only sign of life.
“Mommy?” Collette’s voice sounds small, the way it did when she was a little girl, nothing at all like the maturing eleven-year-old who forever tries to carry herself like she’s twenty.
“Collette?” I rasp.
I hear the faintest murmur of a voice somewhere in the background, and then she says, sounding scared, “Mommy, can you come pick me up?”
These aren’t her words. Collette is too much of a stoic to confess when she’s afraid. She bottles it up for days, sometimes months, until it manifests in a violent panic attack. But as she gets older, she’s gotten better at hiding them. I know, because she gets it from me.
Someone is listening to us and coaching her, using her as bait. Waylen? The police? Elodie?
I have to be very careful about how I respond. I recall our conversation several weeks ago, when I was driving her to her aunt’s house. I thought Bertram was following us and that our lives were in danger, but really it was Waylen trying to scare me into retirement. Collette—smart girl that she is—was the one who suggested a code word.Nail polish.
The next set of videos shows no sign of Bertram leaving his apartment. I’m almost done with last night’s footage, making my way through to this morning. If I can prove he didn’t leave his building until I called him for help, I’ll know he wasn’t the one who killed Erin.
And my celebration will be incredibly short-lived, because that means Waylen is still in the running to be a suspect. He has been more and more desperate for me to quit spy work, and he has a motive.
I can’t communicate any of this to Collette. All I can say is, “I’m looking for that nail polish we lost. It’s important that I find it.”
Where are you?I want to say.Are you frightened? Are you hurt? Has Waylen locked you in a closet and forced you to call me?
He wouldn’t hurt Collette, surely. The past forty-eight hours have made me rethink everything about him. Insidious intention can be applied to so much of what I thought made him safe to be around.
“Um…” Collette’s voice trails off. She’s looking to whoever is with her for direction. Smart girl. She knows better than to give a poorly coded clue and put us both in jeopardy. After a beat, she says, “I think you gave it to Elodie. The red and blue nail polish.”
The line goes dead just as a male voice in the background was starting to murmur something to her. I couldn’t make out the word being spoken, but I already knew that the low timbre didn’t belong to Waylen.
Red and blue. She’s with the police.
I’m still furiously scanning the surveillance footage as I work it out. Finally, I reach this morning, wherein Bertram emerges from his apartment for the first time.
He was telling the truth. If the circumstances weren’t so dire, I’d be leaping for joy. This means I can trust him. When someone was making a bloody mess in Erin Casimir’s apartment, he was miles away in his apartment. I know Erin was alive at least twenty-four hours before the bloodbath because she’d texted me for a progress update. I didn’t answer because I didn’t have an answer for her yet.
But someone did kill her, and now I’m being framed for it. And until I prove my innocence, the police won’t stop looking for me.
When I finally muster up the bravado to approach Bertram, it’s so that I can break the news that his sister is dead. Not only is she dead, but she hired me to prove that she was the true inventor of his lucrative app, andsomeonedidn’t want me to find out the truth, so they silenced Erin—for good.
“Bertram,” I say, coming into the kitchen, “I—”
His phone rings. Both of us go silent, staring at the screen. An unknown number. He’s about to decline, when I say, “Wait! Answer it.” He looks at me quizzically, but he does as I ask.
“Hello?” He sounds cool and professional as ever, his accent rhythmic even in those two syllables.
“Bertram Casimir,” the voice says, matching his confidence. “Thank you for taking my call.”
“Waylen,” I whisper.
Bertram furrows his brow. “How did you get this number?”
“I have my ways,” Waylen says. “Especially when it comes to her.”
