Page 78 of Retribution

‘You have no idea where she went?’ I ask again, wanting to shake this girl and Daisy, too. ‘How can you not know?’

‘She didn’t tell me. I didn’t ask.’ Lu gives me a disgusted look. ‘She’s not a little kid. And she ain’t stupid, Novelle. I think you forget she’s a grown ass woman. I told you, she has a plan. Let her see it through.’

‘Fuck,’ I mutter, running my hands through my hair. ‘What if she’s leaving town?’

‘Running away?’ Lu lets out a long breath. ‘If she is, it might be a good thing. She… She didn’t look good. Whatever’s been going on in that house, I don’t think it’s what we thought, or what she’s been saying. At Grinder earlier, she was scared and really upset. She was hiding it, but I could see it. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she looked like she’d been to Hell and back.’

I lean against the wall. ‘I have to find her.’

‘You guys really care about her, huh?’ She murmurs.

‘Yeah,’ I say quietly. ‘She’s everything.’

‘If that’s true, then wait. She’ll contact you once she’s taken care of business.’

‘You don’t get it!’ I say harshly. ‘She was in a place, an institution for like a decade. She only just came out in September.’

‘Yeah,’ Lu says like I’m the idiot. ‘She told me.’

I blink at her dumbly. ‘She told you?’

Lu scoffs. ‘Um, I’m her bestie. Of course she told me. I mean, not all about it, but I know she was put in a place for killing that kid when she was like twelve, or whatever.’

I open and close my mouth, not sure what to say to that.

‘We don’t think she did that,’ I finally tell her. ‘Things justdon’t really add up. And my father wanted her gone, so he didn’t fight it, just had it swept under the rug.’

‘That’s why you wanted Shannon to get that old file.’

‘Yeah.’

Lu shakes her head. ‘So, your dad just fed her to the wolves. You motherfucking Novelles are pieces of work, you know that?’

‘That was all my father. Not me.’ I say quietly. ‘I had no idea. I was a kid back then, too. Jesus. Don’t you think I would have done something if I could have? Don’t you think I feel the guilt now? But the reality is, I couldn’t have done a damn thing. My father’s word was law. All I knew was that my best friend had done something bad and had gotten sent thousands of miles away for her own good, and everyone else’s.’

Lu purses her lips. ‘Well, like I said, I don’t know where she is, but she’ll be in touch when she’s done whatever it is that she’s doing.’

‘Fine. But when she contacts you…’

‘You’ll be my first call, Novelle.’ She holds up three fingers. ‘Scout’s honor.’

‘Youwere a Scout?’ I mutter as she walks away.

‘Fuck, no,’ she scoffs over her shoulder. ‘Me and the woods don’t mix.’

‘Oh, hey.’ She spins back around. ‘If you wanna actually help, get this phone far away from here. Somewhere random. Like the Jersey Shore, or something.’

She throws it to me and I catch it.

‘Whose is it?’

‘That bodyguard of Banderville’s.’

I nod. ‘I’ll have someone take it somewhere far away.’

She grins and leaves without another backward glance.

I message the guys to let them know where I ran off to from the Quad, and then I message Daisy’s phone. Nothing’s been read in two days. Was she not sick? Has she been lyingthis whole time while she was getting her ducks in a row to split without us?