Theaella

27

The Orphan Program had sent a recruiter sniffing around the Pride House Group Home to check out its wares for a variety of reasons. But the most important was that the kids who lived there were expendable.

He felt an urge now to gloss over Jack’s grief, to point out the nearly two dozen electrical shocks that Grant had endured before giving up his name. The crime-scene report had been stomach-churning. Grant hadn’t wanted to put Jack’s life at risk.

But he’d been willing to.

And Matthew wanted Jack to shove the thought away because of how painfully that same reality lived inside him—how little he was wanted, how little his life had been valued. Jack’s recognizing it meant that Matthew had to recognize it, too, the anguish resonating in his bones like a deep-struck note. But Jack was owed more than another voice giving him false assurances, so Matthew kept his mouth shut and sat in it with him.

Jack dug his thumbnail into a Styrofoam lid. “‘No one would ever think of you.’ That’s what Grant told me. That’s the thing. I don’t really matter. I’m not really family.”

Matthew breathed in the dark space. “Maybe they’re still mad at you for moving on from Violet.”

“Moving on?” Jack raised his head, the amber light catching half of his face, the other lost in eclipse. “When you love someone like that? You never move on. They get into your cells. They live inside you even when they’re not living with you.” He lowered his gaze again. “This whole mess with Grant, it took me right out of life. But that gives me a better view of it, you know? My life. Like I’m outside looking down at it. And I guess my fear is…” His lips bunched. “My fear is that maybe Grant was right.”

“If you don’t like what you see,” Matthew said, “change it.”

Jack’s laugh died quickly in the small room. “I wish it was that easy.”

“It is. It’s everything else that’s complicated.”

Jack didn’t seem to like the sound of that.

“Maybe this will give you a chance to do something different.” Matthew noticed that his enunciation was loose, slightly slurred from the concussion, and that once again he was talking to himself as much as to Jack.

Jack went back to picking at the take-out container. He did not look convinced.

Matthew fought to speak more clearly: “You know the two best words in the English language?”

Jack shook his head.

“‘Next time.’”

Jack blew out a breath. He leaned on the counter, his elbow trembling.

Matthew picked up Jack’s disposable phone from the counter, dropped it down the disposal, and let it run until the pieces rattled vigorously. Then he took a fresh phone from the duffel bag, peeled it out of the packaging, and tossed it to Jack.

“Just to be safe,” Matthew said. “Use this now. Same rules. I’ll have 1-855-2-NOWHERE up and running again as soon as I get home. I’ll be in touch.”

“When?”

“When I take care of the second thing.”

Jack chewed at the edge of a thumb, his shoulders curled inward. Wrecked with worry. “What should I do in the meantime?”

“In the meantime?” Matthew considered for a moment. “Figure out what you want to do with your life when we get it back for you.”

* * *

Detectives Nu?ez and Brust sat on the overstuffed couches in the front room of the Beverly Hills house, sipping black coffee out of bone-china teacups. Grant Merriweather’s widow sat opposite them, a frail woman with an expensive haircut and toned rich-wife muscles.

“So Jack Merriweather stopped by here on Monday,” Nu?ez said. “What did he want?”

“I don’t know.” Jill shook her head, her layered chestnut locks swaying. “He’d heard that Grant was killed. He said he wanted to offer his condolences, but it seemed like he was nosing around.”

“For what?”

She raised her head with a kind of affected dignity, the lines of her neck pronounced. “To see if Grant had left him anything.”

The detectives looked at each other.

“Like what?” Brust asked.

“In the will, I assumed. Money. Something. Jack was always…” She reached over to adjust a willow branch rising from a massive vase. It scratched against the crystal. “He was always the family disappointment.”

Brust frowned. “Have you noticed any unusual people hanging around who might be dangerous? Was anyone with Jack when you saw him?”

“We’ve covered all this already,” Jill said. “And besides, why all the interest now? Why not when Grant was scared for his life?”

“I’m sorry your husband wasn’t protected from this, Mrs. Merriweather,” Nu?ez said. “He was a courageous man who was working on some high-stakes cases, cases other people might not have had the balls—if you’ll excuse my language—to take on. We’re worried he struck a hornet’s nest. And we’re doing our best to make sure no one else gets hurt.”

“Like who?” She snorted. “Like Jack?”

“Yes.”

“You think the people who killed Grant would want to kill Jack?” Jill said. “Why? Grant was important. Prominent people make enemies. No. No. The only overlap between Jack and Grant would be if Jack implicated my husband in some dirty business. In which case—”

She caught herself. Resumed adjusting the willow branch.

“You’re saying you think we need to look at Jack Merriweather as a suspect in this investigation?” Brust finally asked.

Jill’s face contorted with grief briefly before it hardened back into an angry mask. She glowered at the detectives.

“I’m not going to tell you how to do your job,” she said.

The Snack Docent

By the time the elevator opened on the twenty-first floor, Matthew was dead on his feet. More precisely—he was dead on one sock and one boot.

He trudged down the hall, squinting against the painful light of the wall sconces, eager for the silent embrace of his penthouse.

He looked up to see Melanie, Peter, and Lorilee standing at his front door, waiting expectantly. Peter jabbed the doorbell, and Melanie hooked him back against her legs and said, “That’s enough.”

Matthew walked up behind them. Cleared his throat.

They swung to face him. “Oh, thank God,” Lorilee said. “Just in time.”