“God, it’s hot when you overthink,” I say under my breath. Without looking at me, he deliberately pushes his sleeves up to his elbows. My knight in shining polar fleece.
Lissa, meanwhile, is completely lost, blinking at Grant. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You had a habit of not being around for key moments,” I say. “When the Pedicab Pulverizer was killed. When MR Page messaged us.”
“Then there was the Fake House,” Grant adds. “Very convenient that you had to run up ahead of us, buying yourself just enough time to frame yourself as a victim.”
“You really loved that part, didn’t you?” I ask. “Making yourself out to be nothing but a quirky innocent. Poor little Lissa, with her tiny bladder and her crocodile tears and her terrible cupcakes. You were a monster dressed up as the tooth fairy.” The memories are like puncture wounds now, all those days when we thought she was just our kooky teammate. Our friend. But that was Anna’s goal all along: to throw us off the scent.
“Which brings us to Lesley,” Grant says, his voice icy. “See,I don’t think you’re bad at cooking and baking and making tea,” he says. “I think you’re very, very good at doing it just a little bit wrong. Just enough so that when the time came to slip something into Lesley’s tea yesterday morning, he’d barely notice.”
At this, there’s a subtle hardening of her features. She squares her shoulders.
“His medicine can cause cardiac arrest,” she says stonily. “Not my fault.”
“But isn’t it your fault that he drank a month’s worth at once?” I stare her down, though she doesn’t meet my eyes. “We checked last night, after it dawned on us. His entire supply was gone.”
Her lips are pressed firmly, her grip tightening on the empty guns at her sides. “He loved you,” I say, steeling myself against the mass of grief rising in my throat. “He considered you family.”
“I never asked him to.” Her eyes cut to mine, and the coldness in them nearly knocks me flat. Amid my heartache and anger, I’m suddenly glad that Lesley never had to see her like this. That he didn’t live to know her betrayal. As cruel as Anna Matthews has been, at least she gave him that one small mercy.
Lissa lets out a long breath. “I didn’t want to have to kill him, okay?” She looks from me to Grant as if willing us to understand. “Despite my best efforts, I grew quite fond of him. But he was getting too close to figuring it all out. Sometimes, you have to kill someone who doesn’t deserve it so that you can kill more people who do. It’s the classic trolley problem!”
“I would not say it’s theclassictrolley problem,” Grant says.
“It was the only way,” she sighs, like she’s getting fed up with this conversation and our need to keep harping on it. “Look, I had enough on my plate without him complicating things. My entire competition was going off the rails. Contestants were getting cold feet and running their mouths and screwing up every possible way. And meanwhile, the only person tough and brave enough to win wasn’t even a competitor.”
She gives me a long, pointed look.
Unbelievable. She’s still trying to win me over. “You can’t be serious,” I say.
“Deadly,” she says. “You were the bravest person in this entire operation. Maybe the bravest I’ve ever met. You fought murderers with your bare hands, leapt from bridges without a second thought. Never a moment’s hesitation. Never an ounce of fear.”
She steps toward me. “It’s not too late to join me. So, Grant hasn’t betrayed you—that just means he hasn’t betrayed youyet. Don’t let him slow you down.” Her eyes are feverishly bright, her mouth cracking into a smile. “Think of all the terrible people you could take down. Cheaters. Crooks. Straight male dating-coach YouTubers. I could mentor you. We could be a team, running the group together and making it stronger than ever.” She gasps. “We could call ourselves the Crime Boss Bitches!”
“Oh my God, you are theWORST,” I groan. “And you have this completely backward. I’m not the brave one here. Grant is.”
Lissa snorts, looking between the two of us. “Grant?ThisGrant?” She nods to where he stands, clenching his fists to keep them from shaking. Even he throws me a skeptical look. Lissa laughs. “No, babes.”
“Don’tbabesme,” I snap back at her. “I meant what I said. Yes, I do all kinds of stupid shit without a second thought. But that’s not bravery. Not if it doesn’t scare me in the first place.
“But Grant? He’s been terrified forweeks. He’s an English professor, for God’s sake. He wants to be reading at home with his cat, not offering himself up as murder bait. And yet here he is, staring danger in the face even though hedoeshave a second thought. And a third, and a fourth, and probably too many for any one person to healthily store in their brain. But he’s here.Thatis bravery. It’s being afraid and showing up anyway.”
Lissa is glaring at me, dumbstruck, and Grant takes the opportunity to clear his throat and take a small step forward.
“Hi—sorry to interrupt,” he says to me. “This is all so kind of you to say and means a lot. But itdoessound a little like you’re nominating me to be Lissa’s new protégé, and I just want to be really clear about the fact that I don’t want to do that.”
“No, I was going to turn it around to be about how now, thanks to our combined courage and technical know-how, we’re going to take her down,” I say.
“Oh, okay. Proceed.”
I turn back to face Lissa, but I’ve lost my Grand Speech steam. I sigh. “Anyway, that’s pretty much it. We’re going to take you down now.”
Lissa scowls. Far away at street level, a siren begins to sound.
“Oh,” I add. “And it sounds like Wally’s on his way. I guess you can hang up now, Grant.”
