Page 79 of This is Why We Lied

In fact, Faith had been enjoying a cold beer in the shower when her phone had made a funny noise. The triple chirping was like a bird perched on her bathroom basin. Her first thought was that her twenty-two-year-old son was too old to be messing with her ringtones. Her second thought put her into a full-on sweat even though she was standing under a stream of water. Her two-year-old daughter had figured out how to change the phone settings. Faith’s digital life would never be safe again. A virtual walk of shame flashed in front of her eyes: the selfies, the sexting, the random dick pics that she had absolutely solicited. Faith had nearly dropped her shower beer as she’d bolted out from behind the curtain.

The text was so alien that she had stared at the screen like she had never seen words before.

EMERGENCY SOS REPORT

Crime

INFORMATION SENT

Emergency Questionnaire

Current Location

Lather, rinse, repeat: her first thought was of Jeremy, who was on an ill-advised road trip to Washington DC, if ill-advised meant his mother did not want him doing it. Her second thought was of Emma, who was on her first sleepover with a close friend. Which was why Faith’s heart was in her throat as she’d scrolled past the response from the satellite relay. Of all the things she had been expecting to read, from a mass shooting to a catastrophic accident to a terrorist attack, what she’d read was so unexpected that she wondered if it was some kind of phishing scam.

GBI special agent Will Trent requesting immediate assistance with murder investigation.

Faith had actually looked at herself in the mirror to check if she was having another crazy work dream. Two days ago, she had danced her ass off at Will and Sara’s wedding. They were supposed to be on their honeymoon. There shouldn’t be a murder, let alone an investigation, let alone a satellite text for assistance. Faith was so out of it that she had literally jumped when her phone had started to ring. Then she was perturbed that the Caller ID showed her boss, exactly who you wanted to talk to when you were staring at your naked self in your bathroom mirror with a beer in your hand at quarter past one in the morning.

Amanda hadn’t bothered with an I’m sorry to bother you on your week off like a normal human being who cared about other human beings. All she had given Faith was an order—

“I want you out the door in ten minutes.”

Faith had opened her mouth to respond, but Amanda had already ended the call. There was nothing to do but wash the soap off her body and frantically search for some work clothes in the Mount Everest of dirty laundry piled around her washing machine.

And here she was five hours later doing fuck all.

Faith looked at the clock again. She’d shaved off another minute.

She thought of all the things she could be doing right now. Laundry, for one, because her shirt was gamey. Drinking another shower beer. Rearranging her spice cabinet while she listened to NSYNC as loud as she wanted. Playing Grand Theft Auto without having to explain her indiscriminate killing. Not worrying whether Emma was scared about sleeping in a different bed. Not worrying that Emma was loving sleeping in a different bed. Not worrying that Jeremy was on a road trip to tour Quantico in hopes of joining the FBI. Not worrying that the FBI agent who was driving him there happened to be the man Faith was sleeping with, and that they’d been going at it hot and heavy for eight months and Faith still couldn’t bring herself to call him anything other than the man she was sleeping with.

And that was just her problems for the right now. Faith had planned on using her week-long holiday to give her sainted mother a break from babysitting Emma. And to remind her daughter that she actually had a mother. Faith had overscheduled the time like she was cramming for a test, booking an afternoon tea at the Four Seasons, signing up for face-painting lessons and pottery painting lessons, buying tickets to the Center for the Puppetry arts, downloading a kid’s audio tour of the botanical gardens, looking into trapeze lessons, trying to find—

Her phone started to ring.

“Thank God,” Faith shouted into the empty room. This was not a good time to be trapped with her own thoughts. “Mitchell.”

“Why are you at the sheriff’s office?” Amanda demanded.

Faith suppressed a curse. She wasn’t happy that Amanda could track her phone. “The sheriff told me to meet him at the station.”

“He’s at the hospital with the suspect.” Amanda’s tone of voice indicated this was a well-known fact. “It’s directly across the street. Why are you dawdling?”

Yet again Faith opened her mouth to respond just as Amanda ended the call.

She grabbed her purse and left the cramped waiting room. Pink clouds tinted the sky. Twilight had finally broken. The street lights were powering down. She took a deep breath of morning air as she picked her way across the railroad tracks that bisected the small downtown area. The city of Ridgeville was not much to write home about. A one-story, 1950s strip mall stretched from one end of the block to the other and was filled with tourist-trappy businesses like antique shops and candle stores.

Ridgeville Medical was two stories of cinder block and glass, the tallest building as far as the eye could see. The parking lot was filled with pick-up trucks and cars that were older than Faith’s son. She spotted the sheriff’s cruiser by the front door.

“Faith.”

“Fuck!” Faith jumped so hard she almost dropped her purse. Amanda had come out of nowhere.

“Watch your language,” Amanda said. “It’s not professional.”

Faith guessed this was her origin story for saying fuck the rest of her life.

“What took you so long?”