Mallory has to get out of here. Out of this office, out of this investigation, out of this life.
“The loss of Grayson Fields?” Georgina’s in front of Mallory now, with a clear view through the glass office door. “As in missing? As in dead?”
The word draws like a magnet, pulling forward Ozzie and Ella and several of the marketing team Mallory’s always threatening to fire and Heidi Hoffman, who doesn’t even work here. A camera lens wedges itself between Mallory and her father, capturing Officer Middlebury and Mack Weldon and a terrified Aubrey and a worried Noreen. The camera zooms in, then back out, refocusing squarely on Mallory. Who runs.
42
Aubrey
Monday Afternoon
Four DaysAfterthe Outing
Aubrey’s wedge sandals catch in the gaps between the bricks as she spins. The rehab center, the AIM logo, Ethan’s building, the deli with the rooibos lattes. The rehab center, the AIM logo, Ethan’s building, the deli with the rooibos lattes, again and again, around and around, all blurring into one giant string of malware replicating inside Aubrey until she explodes.
Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.She stops spinning, bends at the waist, places her hands on her thighs, her knees, her face that’s not even damp with tears. Her heart’s pumping too hard just to keep her alive, it has no room for tears. Grayson’s dead, and everyone will know it once the footage goes live onThe Shandy Shane Show.
Mallory, gone, Ilena, gone, she was the only one left when Ella and Kai and Noreen and the rest of AIM all looked to her to explain, to make sense of the police officers and Grayson and what this means for going public, for AIM’s future, for their future. A thousand questions to which she had no answer: Mallory’s father and the police asking where Mallory was, andwhy Ilena never came, and why a television crew was filming in the office—filming them—and everything’s changed, all of it changed, and Aubrey’s jaw locked. Her tongue went limp. Her brain was the only thing going, but not working, swirling, unable to focus, to make a single decision on anything, for any of them.
She’d still be there, hands twisting and eyes wide, if it hadn’t been for Felix. He handled everything, or she thinks he did, hopes? She left. Let Noreen carefully guide her to the restroom, her words of reassurance about not giving up hope and how friends stick together and everything will work out okay just white noise. And when Noreen went to check on the dog, Aubrey snuck out. Elevator, lobby, plaza, looking for Mallory or Ilena or the life she had or could have or—
“Aubrey?”
The familiar voice curdles her stomach.
“Aubrey? I thought that was you. I was just about to text you.”
Ethan stands before her, his eyes like a snake’s behind those black-rimmed glasses. Maybe it’s the light. Or maybe it’s because Aubrey’s no longer in the dark.
“Leave,” she mutters under her breath.
“My thoughts exactly. Your place? I’ve got about—” he holds up his phone “—twenty minutes? Good, right?”
Aubrey fully straightens, a pounding in her temples, a constriction in her throat.
The bed, the curtain, the white sheet. Ethan.
“No,” she says.
His eyes flash with annoyance. “My office, then. Shades, ergonomic desk chair, we can make it work. Even got a change of clothes for this exact reason.”
Because she’s surely not the first woman he’s cheated on his fiancée with. She clasps her eyes shut like a child, but she’s nota child and she needs to stop acting like one. “I’m so stupid sometimes. Maybe all the time.”
“You aren’t making any sense.” He presses his hand on her lower back. “Babe, last night, your friends, I nailed it. Honestly—”
“Don’t! Don’t use that word. There’s nothing honest about you in any world, is there? I may be naive and needy, yes, sure, I am, but I also trust, and I trusted you, and you used that to get... what exactly? What did you want from me? Why me?”
His eyes dart around the plaza. “Let’s maybe go somewhere else—”
She wrestles away from him. “To your fiancée’s, perhaps?” The word burns like acid.
“My what?” He shakes his head. “Listen, I can explain whatever you think’s going on, but not here, let’s...” He looks past her, a strange expression overtaking his face, before stepping closer, crowding her, and for a moment, she thinks she was wrong. She misinterpreted, and then his hands are on her cheeks, cool against her flush, and the life she had—they had—rushes back and fills her with one desire: to not relive it.
Clove nearly suffocates her, and his lips press against hers. She can’t move. He again lands a hand on her lower back, edging down, and she breaks away.
“Last night wasn’t enough for you. I get that a lot.” He’s grinning, strangely, jutting his chin. “Hey, kid.”
“It’s Kai.”
