Still really bad, though.
Mum pulls my hair back and knots it into a messy bun, one of her terry-cloth headbands keeping the stray bits from my clammy forehead. Her manicure bowl sits at her knee, a washcloth folded into the cool water.
It’s been months since I’ve done this—I swear to God I was getting better—but it’s still a routine.
With one spectacularly vicious cramp, I start puking into the toilet. Between rounds of heaving, Mum flushes the bowl, wringing out the cloth to wipe sweat and sick from my face. Even when the puking is (probably) done, that nasty feeling remains, the will-it-won’t-it hesitation that makes me reluctant to leave the bathroom.
The vomiting hurts, strong and acidic and tearing at my throat, and I start crying, which only makes it worse. My chest aches with the force of the heaves, with the effort it takes just to try to breathe.
Mum curls around me, stroking my hair, the sides of my throat, her fingers cool and moist from changing out the cloth. “It all adds up,” she whispers against my ear. “We’re going to get through this.”
“I just want it to stop,” I croak, “but then . . .”
“What?”
“We told him where to find us. We told him where we were going next and we dared him to come.”
“Dared? No. Begged,” Mum says firmly. “But if you are having even the slightest doubt, we stop now.”
It seemed simple when Mum proposed the idea back in Birmingham. If the killer really is watching us, if him being in San Diego, killing Aimée, wasn’t a coincidence, he’d almost certainly notice the profile in the Economist. Tell him where we’ll be, she said, and he’ll be there. It’ll be the best chance for him to be caught.
Which might be fine, except we still can’t fucking find him.
There was no way to anticipate the Denver FBI office having the section chief from hell. We should have anticipated he’d get around the cameras; he hasn’t been getting away with this for so long by being careless. It just seemed like such a brilliant plan when Mum told me about it, even if we had very different reasons for liking it. She wants to find him and kill him.
I want to hand his ass over to our agents.
Wanted.
Now I want . . . I don’t know. It’s hard to think through the cramping pain in my belly and the feeling of being marooned. I’m far from abandoned, I know that, but logic doesn’t help much against the fear at realizing the FBI is hamstringing its own agents, that we’ll suffer for that.
“We’re not giving up,” I mumble.
“Sweetheart—”
“He’ll kill until he’s stopped. Isn’t that what they always say? That if they’re getting away with it, they have no reason to stop?”
“Priya—”
“Other mothers will lose their daughters.”
“Other sisters,” she sighs. “You know, I am this close to sending you off somewhere to vacation for a month. Should send you ahead to Paris to decorate the house.”
“He’ll keep killing.”
“Stopping him is not worth destroying you.”
I watch her get up and walk away, knowing she won’t go far. To my room, maybe, to clean up the cookies before they attract bugs. The mini-vac whirrs, and a moment later she comes back with my toothbrush in hand.
My mouth is currently a kind of nasty I’m not sure a toothbrush can touch, but I brush and rinse and spit obediently, and when there isn’t imminent danger of more hurling, Mum helps me wash my face. It’s early yet, especially for us, but we curl up in her bed that’s been too big since Dad died. She clicks the TV on, skipping through channels until she can put on a nature documentary narrated by a man with a deep, soothing British voice.
Mum says BBC is the only thing she really misses about London.
I’m not sure either of us ever really sleep; we just sort of drift on exhaustion and emotion-numbed minds. When her alarm goes off, she throws it across the room.
It keeps going off.
I bury my face in her shoulder. “There’s nothing to unplug.”
“I know.”
“It’s not going to stop until you make it.”
“Shush.”
It’s another five minutes before either of us feels like making the effort, and even then we just haul her comforter downstairs to curl up together on the couch. She has her phone in hand, and I can hear her fingernail tapping against the screen as her thumb flies, typing out a message. I’m assuming it’s to her boss.
It could also be to Eddison.
I should probably let him know I had an Oreo incident, but I really don’t want to. Not because he’ll be disappointed—he understands—but because he’ll be worried.
More worried.
Shit.
Eventually Mum’s stomach starts growling enough she has to leave our nest of warmth. I’m hungry, but the thought of eating anything makes me queasy. She brings back a bowl of oatmeal and bananas for herself, and hands me a smoothie. It’s a good compromise. Substance, which my body still kind of needs, but not heavy. And it’s a drink. I’m not sure why that makes a difference, being able to drink it instead of bite and chew, but it does, and it might just be purely in my head.
“Will going to chess make you feel better?”
Brotherhood isn’t the only reason struggling vets cluster. Seeing your own demons reflected back at you, it creates a safe place to just be wounded. It gives permission, in a way, to not be okay. You go to your brothers (and sisters) and not only will they watch over you when you are clearly incapable of doing so yourself, they will never tell you to be anything other than what you are, even if on that particular day what you are is a collapsing wreck of a human being.
“Maybe,” I say eventually.
“Then go get showered and dressed; I’ll go with you.”
“To shower and get dressed?”
She shoves me off the couch.
When I come back downstairs, still slicking on violently red gloss over the lip stain, she’s standing at the base of the stairs dressed to go out. As I lock the door behind us, she checks to make sure the new camera is on and positioned.
Given the casual way he disarmed and ripped out the last one, I don’t think the camera is really going to help.
But it’s like locking the door, the sense of safety more than the fact of it, so I wait until she’s finished fussing with it before I lead the way down the sidewalk. At the end of the street, she stops, looks back over her shoulder at the house, and shakes her head.
When we walk up the grass—slowly brightening as spring settles in—half the vets stumble awkwardly to their feet at the sight of my mother.
Happy and Corgi let out wolf whistles.
Mum gives them one of her sharp-edged, charming smiles.
They gulp, and Pierce starts laughing. “You must be where Blue Girl learned it,” he wheezes, one hand clutching his chest.
Settling comfortably across from the slumbering Gunny, Mum shoots me a look. “Blue Girl?”
“Speaking of, we should really pick up some dye. My roots are nearing voting age.”
The weird thing about Mum coming to chess—one of many weird things, really, given that it’s the middle of a workday—is that she hates chess. She hates playing it, hates watching it, hates even hearing about it. She once canceled our cable subscription for a week so Dad couldn’t try to make her watch any more documentaries about famous games or players. So the fact that she’s sitting at the end of the table, watching all the games with barely concealed bemusement, isn’t about chess, it’s about me.
Because Mum isn’t clingy, doesn’t hover, but sometimes you just need that visceral affirmation that the people you love are all right, that they’re just there in front of you. Close enough to touch.
Sometime after Gunny’s woken up and introduced himself, a navy-banded police car pulls up next to the island and parks. All the vets straighten, the ones with their backs to the lot twisting around to try to see. A pair of officers climb out, puffy black jackets over dark blue uniforms with mustard trim down the pant legs.
A handful of the men relax, recognizing them.