Page 276 of Innocent

“Hey, Alexa. Text Jordan Walsh.”

I wait while the app responds and asks what I want to say.

“I’m sorry. Please come back. I didn’t mean it.Send.”

Seconds later, my personal phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and, sure enough, there’s the text.

I shove it back into my pocket. Ripping off the nitrile gloves, I hurry to the apartment’s front door and make sure the knob’s unlocked. Storming out, I slam the door behind me, and make it about halfway down the hall, where I pull up short, like something stopped me.

I take out my personal phone, check it, and pause for a moment, so to any casual observer it looks like I’m thinking about something, before I turn around and head back to her apartment.

Okay, that’s the first exact time locked in. It should line up nicely, between the CCTV footage and the text message time. A few seconds off here or there will be discounted as lag time or a difference in the time settings of the systems.

I lock the front door, just in case, and go check on Grace.

Still breathing—barely. I pull the gloves on again, peel one of her eyelids open, and gently tap her eyeball.

No response.

Checking her phone, I find the text I just sent myself mirrored there. While I’m in her phone, I look through the pictures and video albums and don’t find anything regarding me. I also delete her Dropbox app from the phone, just in case. When I replace the phone in her hand, I make sure the keypad function is open and all other apps are closed out.

Next, I log in from her computer and delete her entire Dropbox account, along with the notification e-mail that appears in Gmail seconds later. I also go into her trash and delete only that message. Her tablet is in her laptop bag. I unlock it—same code, of course—and delete the Dropbox app from it, too. Then I replace it in her bag.

Sloppy, Grace. Really fucking sloppy.

I grab our martini glasses, wash hers, dry it, and replace it in the back of the cabinet, swapping it out for a different one. Then I mix a real martini—sans olives—and pour it into my glass. I take off my gloves, add some of the drink mix to the new glass, swirl it around, and then dump it all into the sink, making sure to let the water run for a moment to flush it out of the drain. Leaving my glass unwashed in the sink, I carry the other glass over to the sofa, press her fingers all over it, touch it to her lips several times to smear lipstick on the rim, and then set it on the coffee table, next to the drugs.

I check her again—she’s nearly gone.

For good measure, I retrieve the bottle of vodka from the kitchen, dump half of what’s left of it into the sink, and flush the drain with water. Then, I carry the bottle out to the living room, remove the cap and, after pressing her fingers to the cap, I drop it on the floor in front of her. Not sure how detailed CSI will get, but she is a congresswoman. My prints can be on it, but hers have to be on top of mine.

After touching her fingers to the bottle in several places, I splash a little vodka on the coffee table, just a tiny bit in the glass, and leave the bottle sitting there next to the glass, both well within reach of where Grace lies on the couch. I tap the empty bag of Fentanyl over the glass, so a little residual powder drifts into the glass.

Perfect.

Pausing, I take several long, slow, deep breaths and shake my hands out to try to calm myself. Surveying the scene, I carefully look for anything I’ve missed. Me being here isn’t the problem—I willabsolutelyadmit I was here. That’s a necessary part of the plan.

Nothing I leave behind can contradict my story, though. The timeline has to be perfect.

I stare at her. I’m totally fucked now if she really does have a hidden camera. I’ve swept the living room twice with a cell phone app on previous visits and didn’t find anything. So now I turn off all the lights and carefully look for any LED lights in the darkened room, in places they shouldn’t be.

The only ones I see are on the TV, DVD player, cable box, and modem. I know the TV itself doesn’t have a camera on it, fortunately.

Leo taught me well, showed me what to look for to help protect Elliot. Short of a full, official sweep with expensive equipment, it’s the best I can do.

But a woman stupid enough to use the same password for multiple accounts probably isn’t smart enough to install sophisticated surveillance equipment on her own.

One more thing—I make sure to play with the TV remote and I flip through the Netflix app on her Fire TV. One of her favorite shows is queued, so I start it bingeing.

A sort of rattling breath softly puffs free from Grace. When I look, I see her chest is no longer moving.

I give it another five minutes. When I check her pulse in several places, I can’t find one. I try pinching her nose shut and covering her mouth, and there’s absolutely no reaction whatsoever, involuntary or otherwise, even after a minute.

She’s gone.

Never even had to draw Leo’s gun, which is tucked under my shirt, inside the waistband of my compression shorts in the concealed sticky holster pouch he has for it. My belt is cinched tighter than I usually wear it as extra insurance to keep the sticky pouch in place. My backup plan was to dope Grace with the roofies and force her to drink the Fentanyl concoction at gunpoint, if I had to.

Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary. It’s certainly a better, kinder, and more peaceful death than she deserves. No telling how many lives she’s ruined, or helped ruin, based on what Leo told me about her. Yeah, it’s tempting to rifle through the apartment, but I’m not going to do that. This must look like an accidentally self-inflicted death, and the clock’s ticking. Time of death isn’t a perfect science. As long as I have a small window where I can be seen on CCTV leaving the apartment, and I have received text messages from her after that time—which can be confirmed by them triangulating my cell phone’s location from what towers it pings in the city—I should be clear.