Page 13

Chapter

Thirteen

GRACE

R ecounting everything that happened took way longer than I imagined. Then it became a series of explanations and questions until they knew what I did. Maybe. Who knew, since they kept discovering new questions to ask. Despite fresh coffee and all the water with electrolytes they kept pressing on me, I still had a sore throat.

Bones had a pen up on a whiteboard of all things, and he’d drawn an actual time line and began to link events. Any places I had gaps because I couldn’t think of something and they added a question mark.

Next to the whiteboard, there was a screen with information scrolling on it—including video surveillance and images from security cameras in various areas. How Alphabet kept finding them so swiftly puzzled me, but the questions kept coming and it kept me from focusing too much.

“There,” Lunchbox said, his voice slicing across mine and I swallowed the rest of the answer. He was pointing at something on the screen—no, he was pointing at some one . Alphabet zoomed in. The more he blew it up the blurrier it got so he backed off a little. “Him.”

“What about him?” I asked before anyone else said anything. I leaned forward to stare at the screen. Where were they? Oh, it was the Met Gala. Eleanor had gotten me a ticket cause I’d always wanted to go. She would rather put her feet up and do her crossword puzzles while binging the latest season of…

Pain spasmed around my heart. I’d just found out she was gone and instead of actually grieving, I was what? I folded my arms and tried to focus on the screen again. Thinking about Eleanor hurt.

“He’s in a couple of the other surveillance images we were looking at,” Lunchbox said, then slanted a look at Alphabet. “Can you run one of those—” He waved his hand in the air.

“Forensic software to compare the facial features with others in the image captures?” The desert dry tone pulled a real if reluctant smile from me. “Find me the other clips where you saw him…”

“Why are you looking at images from the Met Gala?” That wasn’t recent. At least not in the window of time they’d given me.

“You were referenced in some gossip pieces,” Alphabet said over his shoulder. “One of them was about this event, so I backtracked to it.”

“Okay.” I elongated both syllables because that didn’t feel like an answer.

“We’re focusing on the intelligence we have,” Bones said, tugging my attention to where he stood with a marker in hand. It was funny, he looked like a teacher. “In this case, we’re looking to see if anyone was watching you.”

Goosebumps raced over my flesh and I folded my arms. “Watching me? Like a stalker?” I frowned. “I’ve had an occasional fan but nothing like that.” At least none that I’ve known of. “Most of them are just wealthy bored men who want to have some arm candy or want to invite me to parties.”

Most of them were not my type. I wasn’t for sale. I didn’t intend to negotiate for advances or business opportunities that way. Fortunately, it hadn’t been an issue for me. There was a lot I was willing to do for myself, that just didn’t happen to be one I wanted to explore further.

“Something like a stalker,” Voodoo said as he returned with a tablet of his own. “But not a stalker exactly. Your sister is missing, you were taken in front of her place. One logical conclusion is to presume she was the target and they took you, possibly thinking you were her.”

“Or they were double-dipping,” Lunchbox said, his mouth compressing and a muscle ticking in his cheek.

“That doesn’t seem unreasonable.” Yet the way they were talking, they didn’t seem to be on board with the idea. Except.. I frowned. “You said you tracked her until Wednesday and no sign of her after that?”

Bones touched a finger to his nose then pointed at me. “They already had her at the time they took you.”

I rubbed my hands over my face and then pushed off the sofa. I was tired of sitting still. “So we’re really not any closer to understanding what was going on?”

“Yes and no,” Alphabet said, tossing the words over his shoulder as he kept typing on his laptop. “We have more variables to work with and I have a working theory that you were both targets. Whether it was for different reasons or the same—the jury is still out on that. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you were taken outside of her place. I also think you fucked up their plans when you went down for that weekend away.”

Clearly not fucked them up enough. They’d successfully taken me. My mind flashed back to that room, the crying women. Then the man?—

Nope.

Arms folded to hug myself, I paced the room. Goblin was sprawled on his back on a dog bed not far from where Alphabet sat with his laptop. The dog’s tongue lolled from the side of his mouth and in that brief moment of quiet, the only thing audible was his gentle snoring.

“The trickiest part isn’t identifying the who ,” Voodoo said as he rolled a coin over his knuckles back and forth. His attention on the timeline. The fact he could manipulate the coin without looking at it riveted me for a moment. “We’re going to get there. The who will take a minute because there is more than one. That’s the part that bothers me.”

The goosebumps on my arms seemed to intensify. The soft swish of the marker on the white board squeaked periodically as Bones added more details to his timeline. Details like dates, places, and then more question marks. Weirdly, there was something relaxing about how neat his handwriting was.

Circling the room slowly, I made myself keep moving. The sense of everything closing in on me was inescapable. Didn’t mean I would just stand there and let it overwhelm me. Lunchbox stood fixed as he watched a series of pictures flicker past at a high rate. The one he’d pointed out earlier from the Met stationary next to it. Could he actually process any of those images or did he not want to miss a match?

I stared at the man, the one Lunchbox said he’d seen before. Nothing about him leapt out. He was maybe five foot ten or eleven. Medium brown hair. Everyman face. Even his suit was bland considering the event. He was the picture of utterly forgettable. The cameras would skate right past him.

I wouldn’t even look at him twice.

Sad comment on my part, but true. The scrolling images paused as a second image popped up. The markers were flashing. Dots on the eyes, the cheekbones, the jaw—but the two guys weren’t the same.

It listed a possible match of 57%. That didn’t seem like a lot.

“Save?” Alphabet asked.

“Yeah, could use prosthetics to change his look,” was Lunchbox’s answer.

Could use…

“Why would anyone use prosthetics to change their look to follow me? That’s nuts.”

Almost as one, all four men looked at me.

“It’s nuts, right?” The shivers seemed to intensify. Was the room freezing or was that just me?

“Maybe,” Lunchbox was the one that answered. “It’s still a close match, so better for us to keep it for reassessment. We can’t leave any stone unturned.”

The last almost sounded like an apology. Then the images started flicking again and his attention returned to the screen while Bones went back to writing. I couldn’t fathom any of this.

None of it made sense.

None of it.

The hum under my skin seemed to grow louder. The buzzing was almost too much. The noise intensified as did the agitation. It was like I’d taken a fall into some poison oak, and had to wear some scratchy burlap on top of it and then not react.

Abandoning the room they were working in, I headed to the hall and then toward the living room and kitchen. A glance outside showed the bluer sky had been blanketed by darker clouds. Not quite rain worthy, but definitely overcast.

I did a circuit of the living room—twice. The place was almost painfully neat. There weren’t a lot of knickknacks. I paused a beat and searched the room with a sweeping glance. There were no knickknacks. The only thing sitting atop one of the tables was the universal remote that I’d flung at Bones.

The room looked like one that would show up in a catalog and you could order all the pieces—right down to the rug. Nothing to really focus on so I kept moving.

There were three dishes in the sink, I paused to rinse them out before opening the dishwasher. There were a few dishes in there—all ones from breakfast. So that made sense. I stacked the bowls in the top and then closed it again.

Impatience ripped through me. I checked the garbage can but it was mostly empty. Not that I would know where to take the garbage if it wasn’t. With a low groan, I pivoted and found Voodoo leaning against the column that framed part of the entranceway separating the kitchen and dining room from the living room.

“You don’t have to do dishes,” he said and I shrugged. The pull on my back wasn’t as bad as it was previously. Still not terrifically comfortable, but I’d rather feel that pinch than the sensation of a thousand ants crawling all over my skin.

“They were there and I wanted…” I spread my hands. “I don’t know what I wanted.”

“You’re upset.” The deadpan delivery seemed to make the words even more ironic.

“No shit.” I stared at him. “Of course, I’m upset. Every question I answer creates new ones. You four are all fired up and on the hunt—it’s impressive. But I’m still…” I gestured to the space around us then folded my arms again. “I’m doing nothing.”

For the first time in a very long time, I was helpless. This was not a feeling I ever wanted to encounter. The last time had been when Maman got so sick. I pushed those memories away. I couldn’t deal with that right now. Not with anxiety swirling in my gut like a violent whirlpool threatening to suck the life out of me.

It might almost make some of this easier. The moment that thought tried to take purchase, I ripped it out. No, I wasn’t giving up on anything. Being lost didn’t make anything easier. Neither did being dead.

It just made you dead.

“You want to talk to me about what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?” Voodoo’s question reminded me that he was right there, enjoying a front row seat to my existential crisis.

“Not really.” Maybe a little blunt and on the nose, but here we were. “I don’t even know if I know everything going on in my head. I feel like I’ve been ripped out of my life and tossed into another universe where up is down and down is up and nothing makes any damn sense.”

“Well, multiverse theory usually has to do with choices. Choose the red pill, you face the dark harshness of real life. Take the blue and you can continue to live in blissful ignorance.”

“That’s The Matrix .” I frowned. “Not multiverses.”

One corner of his mouth kicked a little higher. “The principle applies. Depending on whether we’re discussing Marvel or DC, the multiverse discussion can get muddy. Particularly when they can’t make up their minds if they are actual alternate timelines or alternate universes.”

“Aren’t those the same things? Wouldn’t an alternate universe have an alternate timeline?”

“You’d think,” he said and it was his turn to shrug. “Personally, I think they should have actually hired someone who understands quantum mechanics and physics to give them a plausible explanation. Spaghetti and forks are not what I call helpful.”

“I really have no idea what we’re talking about anymore,” I admitted.

“See, that’s the problem. Their convoluted explanations make it all more confusing. Butterfly effect? Totally understandable by the masses. String theory? Not so much.” He pushed away from the column. “So let’s talk about something else. What has you spooked?”

“Does it have to be one thing?” It didn’t feel like just one thing.

“Obviously not,” Voodoo said, holding out a hand to me. “And why don’t we go sit down? You’ve had a lot of shocks and you need more rest.”

I glanced down at his hand and then at him. “I don’t think I can. If I sit still, I’m just gonna start screaming and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”

Admitting I was freaking out was the first step to fixing it, right?

He studied me for a long moment. “What can I do?”

I glanced at the windows. “Can I go outside? I need to breathe. I need to walk—I just need to move where the walls aren’t closing in.”

Head cocked, he stared at me for another long moment, then nodded. “Yes, you can. But one of us has to go with you.”

“I really don’t care. I just—I just want to go.”

“Give me two minutes, Firecracker and grab your boots and a jacket. Both should be in the mudroom.” He was already striding up the hallway back to the room where they were tearing apart all their different angles.

By the time I had my boots on, he was back with Goblin. I welcomed the dog with head scritches as he pulled on his own boots. He was also wearing a shoulder holster with a gun in it. He covered it with his own jacket and then reached for the door.

“Ready?”