Stephen Applebaum and Valynne Maetani had both eaten at Pancho’s Pizza the night they were murdered; Ostler wanted to keep that detail secret, to avoid ruining the restaurant’s business completely, but Trujillo insisted that warning people was the best possible thing we could do, even if it meant driving The Hunter away and losing one of our only leads. My thoughts were somewhere in the middle: the pizza place was the ideal way to send this guy a message.
I would have to be extremely careful about the way I contacted him, not just because I was worried about him finding me, but because I knew Ostler would be furious. Any contact our team made with a Withered was supposed to be approved by her and open to the group; everyone knew everything. After the deadly police raid on the mortuary, I was done working like that; I would do this my way, and no one would get hurt but me.
The first step was to get away from Potash, which was harder than it sounded now that he was out of the hospital. He was a special forces assassin who’d been running surveillance on people since before I was born—he knew how to follow people, and he knew how to do it right. He was also dying of a lung condition, though, so I used that to my advantage. He slept at night with a CPAP machine on his face, which was basically a giant oxygen mask that forced air into his lungs. It didn’t restrain him as much as I’d hoped, but it was relatively loud. Asleep, with that on, and with my bedroom door closed, he could barely hear me at all. The first night after we questioned Elijah, I stayed awake reading and waited for him to fall asleep. Around two in the morning I slipped out my back window, shimmied down a power pole, and ran off into the darkness.
I preferred this time of the night. In a big city there might still be a lot going on in the early morning—nightclubs or parties or who knows what else—but in a small town like I’d grown up in, and even a smallish city like Fort Bruce, the entire world was asleep. The bars had already closed, and the early morning businesses hadn’t opened yet. I saw a car here and there, but always in the distance, and only for a moment. The world was silent and empty, and it was mine.
I had a few hours to kill before the thrift store opened—the first step in my plan—so I went to Whiteflower and watched Brooke’s window. She was on the third floor, the highest in the building, so I couldn’t see anything, but it was comforting to watch it. I used to stalk her like this back home in Clayton, watching her possessively. This was different. I didn’t have to dream about her thinking of me, or wanting me, or relying on me, because she already did in real life. I was her actual protector, and my motives weren’t creepy but laudable. Besides, I wasn’t in love with Brooke anymore.
I was in love with a dead girl.
Even though she was gone, I still thought about Marci all the time. I thought about the way she used to look at me, like I was puzzle with one piece left and she just had to find where to put it. I thought about the way she smiled, and the way she talked to her siblings—little twins, a boy and a girl—and the way she used to be more proud of the money she’d saved finding a great deal on some hot new outfit than she was of the outfit itself. She looked good in everything; the savings were the real accomplishment. I thought about the way she’d helped me track a serial killer, and the way she’d seen clues that I would never have seen in a hundred years. The way she’d put the pieces together. The way she’d grounded me to a reality I’d never experienced before.
The way we’d danced and the way we’d kissed and the way she’d died, all alone in a dark bathroom, while the demon called Nobody made her slit her own wrists.
I stood up and started walking, feeling the energy in my hands and feet like a vibrating engine. I thought about Marci all the time, but I shouldn’t. It always made me too excited—too angry. The sheer injustice of it, the wrongness, the powerlessness that I felt reliving a night I wasn’t even there for.… I wanted to punch the light post as I passed it on the corner, but I didn’t. I couldn’t let that rage get loose. I twisted my hands in my pockets and gripped the knife in its nylon sheath and clenched my teeth and thought about nothing. Of darkness. The empty city. The calm streets. The numbers, one by one in my head.
One, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen.
Twenty-one.
Thirty-four.