Brooks rolled his eyes. “So glad to have that sense of humor back in my life.”
I was glad Scout was doing the talking, because I couldn’t. Walking into Brooks’s adult home, seeing pictures of his family over the years, the art he’d chosen—hazy lines and ocean colors—and his simple, relaxed furniture, the same style I’d chosen for myself, was a stark reminder that Ididknow him, that even if ten years had passed, once upon a time we’d been as close as I’d ever been to anyone. We’d been real, the two of us. The proof was all around me, in how familiar his home felt.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Brentwood guy,” Scout mused, still carrying the brunt of the conversation. “You’re in the market for a good school district?”
“It’s close to work.” Brooks already sounded exasperated.
I paused at the doorway to his bedroom. He still made his bed every day. I’d thought it was such a conscientious habit for a college boy. He had a plain, soft-looking blue duvet. I remembered how we used to lie in bed together on the weekends, limbs tangled, for hours, and it suddenly occurred to me that those might’ve been the happiest days of my life.
“Iz?” Brooks stood at the end of the hall, watching me.
I cleared my throat and jerked away. “Sorry. Where do you want us? The kitchen?”
We settled around his small kitchen table, Scout still in her elaborate Chanel dress and me in my understated black Dior. It was just like the old days, except we were here to talk about murder. I reached down and unstrapped the Louboutins, kicking them off with a near-pornographic groan.
Brooks cleared his throat. “You didn’t want to change out of your ball gowns before coming over?”
“Ball gowns?” Scout snorted. “You said to come as soon as we could after the party. Why are we meeting at your house, anyway? As charming as suburbia is.”
“It’s the one place I can control. Guaranteed no surveillance, and no one around to recognize you.” Brooks pulled out his phone. “Listen, both of you. I need you to take what I’m saying seriously. The things I’m about to show you are part of an official FBI investigation. If you tell anyone, I’ll get fired, and you’ll be fucked.”
I met his eyes. “You’re helping us.” He’d changed his mind.
Brooks dropped his gaze. “Against my better judgment. You know who Rosie Wright is, right?”
“TheNew York Timesreporter,” Scout said. “The one who wrote the hit piece on me.”
“Exactly. And because she has a national profile, the FBI was tapped to work with the LAPD.”
Scout frowned. “Wait a second. Whyareyou breaking the rules for us?”
Brooks cleared his throat. “It’s my professional duty to help solve Wright’s murder. And although I think you’re capable of a hell of a lot of things—”
Scout raised an eyebrow. For a moment, the old tensions resurfaced: all those fights between Brooks and me before we broke up, escalating in intensity until they spilled out to include Scout, until all three of us were enemies.
Feelings I thought I’d buried long ago reawakened in my chest.
“But,” Brooks finished, “I don’t think you’re a killer.”
“Kindest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Scout drawled, and the moment was over.
He sank back against his chair. “Which means no one’s looking for the real killer because they’re all too busy looking at you. I figure, sometimes, it’s okay to do a little wrong in service of a bigger right.”
“Trust me,” Scout said. “We’re familiar with the concept.”
I couldn’t look at her, but I heard the smirk in her voice.
Brooks opened the photos on his phone. “Rosie was found bludgeoned to death in her living room.”
And just like that, all the humor was sucked out of the room.
Another woman, killed like Georgia. The memory of that gaping wound—
“Unfortunately,” Brooks continued, “her apartment complex is old and doesn’t have security cameras. She was found next to this.” He held up the phone. When I flinched, his eyes softened. “I won’t show you the body, Iz. I just want you to see what was written on her wall.”
Scout and I peered at the photo. Next to a small TV, words were scribbled in capital letters, written in something light, like pencil. “You plunged your mighty pen into my back,” I read aloud.
Scout paled. “I wrote that. The lyric, I mean. Years ago, a musician wrote a terrible song about me after we broke up, and I wrote that in retaliation.”
