Page 112 of The Five Year Lie

“Unless he was covering his tracks,” Zain says. “Or he paid someone else to do it. Maybe to scare you.”

The idea makes me feel ill. “Well, it worked. I’m scared.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. “If you need me to stop digging, I will. But somebody has to be told about the fake judge. What if there are more fakes? What if they’re still active in the system?”

“Butwhoin law enforcement?”

“Um...?” Zain says. “I’ll have to do some research. The FBI is in charge of cybercrime. Where are you right now, anyway? At Larri and Tara’s? Are you safe?”

“I’m safe,” I say, dodging the first question. I’m not in the mood to tell anyone my whereabouts.

“Do you need anything?” he asks softly.

“No. But thank you for asking,” I say quietly. Iwantto trust Zain. But there’s a reason I don’t make friends easily.

Sometimes they lie.

“Let me know if the cops find anything. Are you going to change your locks?”

“Of course. Tomorrow, first thing. I’m sorry about the laptop.”

“Don’t be,” he says immediately. “I just hate it that they got to both of us. Two robberies? Ithasto be connected. Be careful, okay?”

“You know it.”

After we hang up, I go back inside and do the dishes with Larri. Then I draw a bath for Buzzy in Tara and Larri’s clawfoot tub. The house is creaky and old, every appliance ancient. But it has big old windows and prewar charm.

There’s a collection of candles on a table beside the tub, and when Buzz points them out, I light them.

“That’s pretty,” Buzz says, flattening his body into the water like an otter. “It makes the ceiling flicker.”

I take a seat on the wood plank floor and prop an arm on the lip of the tub. Then I tilt my head up to see the spectacle on the ceiling. The candlelight is reflected in the water, so the ceiling ripples with light and motion.

Maybe Buzz will be an artist, too.

Or an astronaut, or a dinosaur hunter—those were the career ambitions he gave the preschool teacher on career day.

“It’s almost time to wash your hair,” I tell him.

Predictably, he wrinkles his little nose. “Five more minutes.”

“Okay.” I lean my cheek on my arm and watch him swim around Larri’s tub.

Buzz is my first and only real priority. I will never let anything happen to him. And Drew—whoever he was and wherever he went—would never want his child to be snarled up in the Chime Co. mess.

Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought. But I knew him well enough to know that.

There’s trouble, he’d said. My heart aches to know how much he would have told me if I’d met him under the tree that day.

Will I ever know?

Do I even deserve to?

I put Buzz to bed in the guest room.

“Where are you going to be?” he demands after I read him some poems from a Shel Silverstein book that Tara says she used to enjoy more when she was stoned.

“I’ll be right here.” I pat the other side of the bed. “Next to you. But first I’m going to sit up with Tara and Larri for a little while.”