She checked her watch: 5:38p.m.
And despite all her adult free will, Lucia still hadn’t contacted her.
She checked her voicemails, hovered over one she’d saved the week before. Against her better judgment, she hit play.
“Since you still can’t be trusted to eat enough or, better, to take your time during lunch, I’ll stop by tomorrow again. This time, we’re going out and getting lunch together. No argument, Dr.Blackwell.”
Lucia’s voice filled the room.
Penelope closed her eyes. Her chest tightened.
She cleared her throat.
She typed:Are you OK?
Deleted it.
Can we talk?
Deleted.
I’m here if you want to talk.
“She knows that,” Penelope muttered, and deleted that, too.
“Don’t be a fool. You don’t know what’s going on.” She paused. “Maybe it was just fun for her.”
But what if somethinghadhappened? Was Lucia injured or in danger?
Her throat ached suddenly, raw from holding her breath. She inhaled deeply.
Fuller meowed.
“Sorry, girl.” Penelope scratched her face, smiling when Fuller nuzzled her hand. “I’m being silly. I must be, because the alternatives are…daunting.”
Chapter 26
Spirals
Lucia groaned, wiping a smudge on her canvas.
She leaned back and stared at her painting—an explosion of color, earth tones bleeding into various shades of red. Up close, it looked like chaos, but if you stepped away, it crystallized into the image of a locked scream.
Melodramatic? Yes.
Lucia didn’t plan on showing it to anyone or, God forbid, including it in an exhibit. This was one of her personal journaling pieces where she tried to throw an emotion onto the canvas. That was it. She felt like screaming, overturning tables, clawing at the walls.
Yet she did nothing because she had no mouth, couldn’t move, and her arms were as weak as cooked noodles.
Everything had gone wrong.
She’d been so high with Penelope, and yes, maybe the law of balance demanded a return to lower heights, but that didn’t mean she had to plummet to the fucking ground.
Two days had passed since the theft and the ambush, since Francesca had shared her insane plan, since Lucia had promised to call Penelope and hadn’t done it.
At first, she’d been trapped in inertia—too shocked to even move—then Francesca’s news added more pressure, and when she’d gotten home, Lucia had just collapsed and passed out.
Ever since, she had locked herself in her art studio and painted.
