Betty had gottenused to traveling by night by now. She wished she had the luxury of peering out the window of the bus at sunset or in the midday sun. She was jealous of Levi and how he’d seen the country, just as he said he would do since the time he’d torn the advertisement for that contest of United States landmarks out of an old magazine from the school library. Betty had been terrified that they would get in trouble for vandalism, but he said, “Seriously, Bets, this was published in”—he flipped it over and searched for the date on the cover—“oh my god, this magazine is a decade old. You think they’re going to notice a page missing? No wonder we’re all such idiots here, the magazine collection is ancient. How are we supposed to actually learn anything?”
She wanted to tell him not to use the Lord’s name in vain, not because she cared, but because if anyone heard him and reported back to her dad, Levi would be shunned to his room again for a week minimum with only one meal a day and no contact with the rest of them. The first time it happened, theschool called once asking about his absences, but the assistant principal had recently become a member of her dad’s church, and then no one called again. She also wanted to tell him that he wasn’t an idiot. He had an actualplanfor getting out. That made him the smartest one in the family.
There wasn’t much to see at night now anyway. A long stretch of deserted land. If it had been daytime, she’d probably see pockets of tumbleweeds, some cacti. She purposely chose indirect bus routes, going north, switching stations to go south. She hadn’t seen anyone trailing her this past week at the hostel, but then, Las Vegas was nearly as crowded as Manhattan had been, and look what happened there.
Run.
Last night, when she couldn’t sleep, she finally googled Julian. Not just the obituary, though that, distressingly, was the first link that popped up. But deeper, into some of the back pages. No one had ever taught her how to be a citizen of the internet, and as ridiculous as it sounded in 2026, Betty honestly was just not good at it. All the other girls her age were on, like, seven different apps posing in bikinis and with ornate manicures, and Betty was still half scared that she’d stumble down a link that could lead her straight to hell. She didn’t really believe that, but also, eighteen years of her father’s sermons didn’t just evaporate. She thought that the farther she got from Georgia, the safer she would feel. But actually, the farther she got from Georgia, the more she realized how little she knew. And that she would never be truly safe.
Run.
There was very little on the internet about Julian. A donation from him and his wife to a police fund; a donation from him and his wife to his daughter’s middle school, and she foundthat only by clicking on the school’s newsletter archives. His wife’s obituary caught her eye. Nothing identifying about Julian other than what she already knew, but she scrolled down to the comments, thememory bookas the funeral home put it.
There were over twenty comments in the memory book. Most innocuous.RIP!AndDeepest Condolences!But one, from a Richard Watkins, stood out.
Simone—your mother was a superstar. She always sent your dad into the office with a fresh packed lunch because she knew he would skip it otherwise; she always checked in with us when the cases were tough and the hours were long. She never held it against me when I needed your dad in the middle of the night or when a two-day trip stretched into a five-day one. She raised you because your dad was off fighting bad guys too often to be around, but she made sure to let you know how much he loved you. I’ll miss your mom, and I’m so sorry for your loss. I have your dad’s back always, and now I have yours too.
On the thin twin mattress at the hostel, Betty’s heart felt like it was going to detonate, like she already knew what she was about to uncover. She curled herself into a fetal position, her face illuminated by the glow of her phone, and typed “Richard Watkins” into Google.
Her hand covered her mouth when she pulled up a news article about a triple homicide outside Baltimore. He was quoted in it. Richard Watkins was FBI. Julian had been FBI.
Betty had never believed in coincidences, and now she was sure. Julian had been killed because of her. She bolted upright in bed, packed her bag. Checked the bus schedule andreformulated her plan. She sped up her itinerary, got the hell out of Vegas and onto a bus that night.
All of this had to end. She couldn’t keep on running. It had to end immediately.
She was going to be the one to do it. Not just for what had been taken from her. But for Julian too.
61
Night Twenty-Six
Sybil
January 17th
Levi’s text wasone sentence long. An address.
Sybil hadn’t been to Los Angeles in years. She and Mark had come out to Beverly Hills for a medical conference half a decade ago, but she didn’t know the city well enough to orient herself at night, as her car from the airport wound through the streets of Beverly Hills. She was startled when they pulled into the hotel driveway. She was so discombobulated that she hadn’t expected to arrive so soon.
She checked in, dropped her bag in her room and caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror. Even with the soft lighting of a five-star hotel, she looked undeniably wrecked. Puffy eyes, splotchy skin. Her highlights had grown out, leaving an inch of muddy brown roots; her Botox was totally gone now, and that crease between her brows made her look somewhere in a state between bitchy and furious. She rubbed in two pats of cream blush and dotted her lips with gloss. It was the best she could do for now. How delusional had she been? Hoping Zeke Rodriguez would make a move in Georgia! She looked everyday of her middle age. She stepped back to get a better look in the mirror. She thought even her boobs looked saggier than they had just a few days earlier.
Levi lived on the second floor of an apartment building in Ocean Park. One of those cute retro buildings with a shared pool that reminded Sybil ofMelrose Place, even though she knew the reference dated her. His door was a lime green that needed repainting, and before she could knock, it swung open as if he had been staring out the peephole waiting for her.
“Levi?” she asked. Like it would have been someone else.
“Come on in.”
The apartment was nicer inside than the door implied. Pristinely clean, inexpensive furnishings that had been well maintained, attempts at decor with framed black-and-white photographs, a rich emerald green rug, a pretty gold lamp like something that Eloise would rustle up at a flea market.
He sat on an upholstered armchair and gestured for her to do the same on the gray fabric couch facing him.
“I—first, thank you for agreeing to meet me,” Sybil said. She had a long speech prepared, about how worried she was about Betty, how grateful she was that he answered her text, but Levi’s intensity spooked her, the way his eyes bored into her but were also wholly aware of everything around them, like if he needed to bolt at any second, he’d disappear before she could even realize what was happening.
“I wouldn’t normally,” he said. “But I believed you in your text. And…I remember Bets called me from your house, left me a message. Thanksgiving. She liked you, I could tell. And that you figured out the postcards”—he shrugged—“I realized that you were smart. If Bets trusted you,andyou were smart, I figured I could trust you too.” He cleared his throat. “I normally block all unknown numbers on my phone, even hers—if Idon’t have your cell number, then you don’t need to have mine. But I left home the week after Thanksgiving, so, um, I was feeling lonely, nostalgic, I guess, and I decided to check my messages. Sometimes I give myself, like, an hour to wallow.” He shook his head, like he wasn’t sure if he’d made a mistake or wasn’t sure that he should admit such vulnerabilities to a stranger. “Still, I wasn’t certain if I was being played.” He sighed. “When you reached out over the flip phone I’d given her—I mean, I realized then it really was her calling me that night. I still have a lot of residual trust issues, I guess. Obviously.”
Sybil glanced around.
“So…she’s not here? With you? I was hoping you texted me on her behalf, that she’d be in LA. Safe.”
