Page 83 of Not Quite Dead Yet

Jet could go home. She’d done it before when things got too hard, the last time her body turned against her. She could, you know. She could.

But she’d made one hard choice, and now she made another.

‘Sorry, I can’t,’ Jet said. ‘There’s just too much to do. And I need to enjoy the time I have left. Cops’ orders.’

Mom’s lip twitched.

‘We’ll leave you to it, then,’ Detective Ecker said, chair creaking as he stood. ‘Let us know if you have any questions. And we’ll inform you when JJ has been officially charged.’

Jet nodded, following him with her eyes.

Ecker paused, turned to Jet’s dad. ‘Scott, are you able to meet us back at the site on North Street? We have a few more questions to run through.’

Jet’s dad clapped his hands to his knees. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘We’ll be right behind you. Dianne?’

Mom stood up, stopped herself. Bent down to place one kiss to the top of Jet’s head. It hurt, everywhere hurt. But that knot in her gut had loosened, finally let go.

The chief nodded by the door, and Jack left with a sad smile, first for Jet, then for Billy. Ecker was the last to leave, behind Jet’s parents, closing the door with a click.

Billy followed, peered through the peephole, watching them all leave, voices fading down the stairs.

He turned back, a new glint in his eye, saved just for her.

‘We don’t think it was JJ, do we?’ he said, head back against the door, voice hovering somewhere between resigned and excited.

Jet smiled, a real one, just the right amount of teeth. ‘No, we don’t,’ she agreed. ‘I’m not saying it’snotJJ, but I want to have answers to all of my questions before I can die happy. I’m not half-assing this one, Billy. I’m not dying a half-asser, you know that,’ she said. ‘Did JJ have access to that hammer brand, and where are the rest of the tools, then? How could he have known about the concrete going in on North Street, if he did? Who else had contact with JJ and Andrew at the fair, could have transferred that red hair? Could it have been Andrew Smith? Why is JJ’s brother pretending he never worked for Mason Construction? And why are people in my family lying to me about the day I died?’ She cracked her neck. ‘Let’s start with Sophia.’

Billy nodded, a sideways smile. ‘You never even thought about stopping, did you?’

‘Maybe for a second,’ Jet said, meeting his eyes. ‘But I need to do this. I’ve got like three and a half days to live, and I need to be the one to find my killer. Anyway, doyouwant to stop? Smashing shit with sledgehammers, pissing Luke off, being an asshole because I’m dying and I’m allowed to be, having guns waved in our faces. I’m having fun, aren’t you?’

18

Jet tried to point at the screen, almost felt herself doing it, stared down at her lifeless arm. A phantom that moved in her head but not from the couch. OK, left hand then.

‘See, look,’ she said. ‘Now Sophia comes back and it’s 3:24. She’s in the house for about five minutes before leaving again.’

Billy nodded, watching Sophia on-screen, pulling up in her blue Range Rover.

‘And this is just over an hour after she already dropped those cookies off?’

‘Correct,’ Jet said as Sophia approached the front door, Cameron on her hip. ‘And when I asked her about it, she said she accidentally left her phone in the house, came back to get it.’

‘But she texted Luke at –’

‘– 3:06 p.m.,’ Jet finished for him, glancing at her notebook on the coffee table, at her handwritten times. The glance became a stare. Her handwriting. Such a small thing. The way her zeros slanted, the way herds had no tail. She’d never write anything again, one small death already, a prelude to the main event. Jet swallowed, a slow sinking in her gut, a small blip of grief, tucked away with that other one: that she’d never drive her truck again either.

‘But she told you she’d left her phone at your house between 2:21 p.m. and now.’ Billy paused as Sophia closed the front door behind her. ‘3:24.’

‘Yeah, so she lied.’ Jet turned to him. ‘I told you it wasweird. On the day I’m murdered, she lies about not having her phone, about the reason she came back to the house. And then there’s thatCall metext at 10:52, when she and Luke were supposed to be together at the house, watching TV.’

‘What do you think that means?’ Billy paused the video.

‘I don’t know.’ Jet chewed her thumb. Felt strange doing it on this side. ‘Maybe it was aCall me because I just bashed your sister’s head in six minutes ago.’ She pitched her voice higher, like Sophia’s. ‘And I’ve got her iPhone and I’m about to turn it off and dump it in the foundations on that North Street project because I know you’re doing the concrete tomorrow morning, could you come and give me a hand? Oh, and how’s the baby doing?’

Billy tried not to smile at her impression. Was spot on, though; how had Jet not discovered this before?

‘You really think Sophia could have killed you?’