“Give what to her?” My voice is cool, not loud. There’s no reason it should leave a ringing silence in its wake. Gravely shrivels again, turtle-like, and Baine looks like she’s preventing herself from rolling her eyes only through years of elite training.
Gravely is breathing hard, almost panting. “Doesn’t matter now. I burned the will myself, and your mama drove into the river before she knew what was coming.”
“She knew.” The words taste true. You’ll see, Mom told me. She told Bev she was going to make things right, and I think she meant it. I think she was going to bend that stubborn spine of hers and claim the inheritance her daddy offered, and buy us a better future.
But dreams don’t last long in Eden. The mist rose high, the wheels left the road, and by the time Constable Mayhew bought me that Happy Meal, my future was gone.
Stolen, by this stone-eyed bastard.
A surge of fury puts me on my feet. “You—”
“Enough.” Baine’s voice is cool, a little bored. “The past is over, and you can’t prove anything, can you?”
I open my mouth, then close it. The only evidence I had was my mom’s number written on a dead man’s receipt, her picture in the family photo album. It’s all ashes now, smoke and rumor.
“But let’s talk about the future,” Baine continues. “I think it’s safe to assume the courts would grant Jasper’s guardianship to his uncle, especially given his sister’s . . . behavior.” She cuts a glance at me, handcuffed and panting, reeking of smoke.
“You can’t see it, but I want you to know that I’m flipping you off.”
Baine is unmoved. “And I don’t think Mr. Gravely would be inclined to send him off to Stonewood. After all, he’s been offered a position in the family company. Why shouldn’t he take it?”
“Because he has asthma, you fucking ghoul.” Lacey’s dad works at the plant, and she told me the hood of his car is covered in fine black soot by the end of each day. All it would take is a long shift, a broken inhaler, a walk back to the motel on a misty night.
Panic chokes me, turns my voice into something like a plea. “He wouldn’t make it a year.”
Gravely blinks rapidly. Baine lifts and drops her shoulder again in that delicate, maddening shrug.
I wet my lips and observe, conversationally, “I’ll kill you.”
“Difficult, once you’re jailed for arson.”
She’s goading me, watching me with idle blue eyes while she screws with my whole life, and I’m sick of it. “Jesus, just leave us alone. I don’t even work for Arthur anymore, thanks to you!”
Baine leans back against fake leather. “I know.”
“And even if I did, even if I begged—” An image of Arthur interrupts me, the way I saw him last: on his knees, eyes closed, like some ancient penitent. I swallow. “He wouldn’t give me the keys.”
A flash of humor in her eyes. “No?”
“No.” Arthur might want me, but I’ve seen him put his fist through a window rather than reach for what he wants. He won’t falter, won’t bend. I swallow again and meet Baine’s eyes. “I can’t help you.”
“I know.” She’s still perfectly serene.
“So are we done?”
She gives me a small, patronizing smile. “No.”
“Why not? What exactly are we doing here?”
Baine turns her wrist to check her watch again. “We’re waiting.”
A current of trepidation moves through me. I ignore it. “No, you’re waiting. I’m leaving.”
Before I can even edge around the table, there’s a deferential tap at the door. “Missus Baine?”
“Constable Mayhew?”
“Another visitor is here.” Mayhew sounds relieved to be reduced to a mere butler in this production.
Baine smiles at me as she says, “Finally. Show him in.”
The metallic jangle of keys, a low voice. Then the door opens, and Arthur Starling walks into Conference Room C of the Muhlenberg County Detention Center.
I’ve never seen Arthur outside the grounds of Starling House, and I can’t say I like it much. He looks awkward and over-tall, as if his dimensions don’t agree with ordinary rooms. His face is meant for slanted sunlight and old amber bulbs; beneath the overhead fluorescents it looks pale and lumpen, like an old bone pitted by the rain. His lip is freshly split and one eyebrow is misshapen, swelling fast.
His gaze spins wildly across the room until it lands on me with the quivering certainty of a compass needle, and God, he should not look at me like that where Baine and Gravely can see, and I shouldn’t look back. The two of us are a pair of clumsy card players, showing our hands to the whole table.
“You goddamn fool,” I breathe.
Arthur doesn’t flinch, his eyes moving from my face to my scorched shirt to the painful angle of my shoulders. His jaw tightens. “Why,” he grates, “is she handcuffed?”
Elizabeth Baine is smiling at him like he’s her firstborn son, fondly indulgent. “The keys, Constable?”
Mayhew unhooks a key ring from his belt, but hesitates. “I recommend against it, ma’am. This one committed petty theft the same day her mother drowned herself.”
I bare my teeth at him. “She didn’t drown herself. And maybe if you got me more than a Happy Meal I wouldn’t have been picking your pocket, you cheap motherf—”
I’m interrupted by Arthur, who makes a sound remarkably like the hellcat and snatches the key from Mayhew’s hand. He crosses the conference room in two enormous strides and kneels behind me. I can feel the heat of him at my back, but nothing more; my hands are swollen and nerveless, like plastic gloves blown into balloons.
There’s a metallic tick and my arms fall forward, shoulders grinding in their sockets, blood pulsing in my palms. My flesh is a shiny, unpleasant pink, deepening to purple where it swelled around the cuffs.
I turn and find Arthur standing so close that my eyes are level with his throat. Jagged lines cut across his carotid, lurid pink and puckered. I wonder if he’s been keeping the wound clean or letting it fester.
I swallow hard and hiss up at him, “Did you let Jasper take those notes? Because if you did, I’ll slit your throat again.”
“No. Crime runs in the blood, apparently.” Arthur’s voice is pitched low, lips barely moving. “Is he alright?”
“I think so.” I fight a reckless urge to lean my forehead against his chest and burst into exhausted tears. I bite the inside of my cheek instead. “He wasn’t there when it happened.”
Arthur’s voice goes even lower. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” He lifts a hand to the matted crust of blood and ash on my cheek, fingers hovering just above my skin. I bite my cheek harder. “No.”
“It’s my fault. I’m so—I tried to stop them—there were two this time, and one of them—”
I can’t stand this. The grief of him, the guilt that hurls him into battle after battle and leaves him bloodied and bruised.
I push my cheek into his hand. “It wasn’t your fault. None it ever was, okay?”
He chokes.
I take a step backward. “What are you doing here? What are you thinking? You know what these people want—”
“I’m glad you could make it, Arthur.” Baine lobs her voice like a polite bomb between us.
Arthur’s hand falls back to his side. His spine hardens. “Of course,” he says, and his voice is the careless sneer I remember from winter. Gravely is watching him with an expression of sick satisfaction, but Arthur keeps his eyes on Baine.
“Thank you for your assistance, Opal. You’re free to go.” Baine dismisses me with a cordial nod, as if we’re at a business conference or a job interview. She gestures to the empty seat at her side, beaming at Arthur. “Take a seat. Let’s talk.”
I brace my feet, preventing Arthur from stepping around me. “He doesn’t have anything to say to you.”
Baine nods to Constable Mayhew without looking at him. “Escort her out, please.”
He tips his stupid hat to her and comes clomping toward me, and I don’t know how much hell I can raise with hands like a pair of boiled fish, but I’m prepared to find out when Arthur says, tiredly, “Opal. Go.”