“I just thought you’d care about your nephew, is all.” Alana’s voice has a childish, sulking quality to it.
“You bring me the guy who killed Alan, I’ll slit his throat. But you keep bringing me society dames. I can’t work with that.”
If I could just get my hands free, I could yank the necklace off. But wriggling my wrists only makes them burn. Is there anything that I could possibly hook the necklace around to pull it loose?
“This discussion is over, Maeve. Move your car. We’ve got a big delivery shipping out just after sunset.”
I’ll have to try and work the necklace off. I trap the locket beneath my collarbone and push against the far end of the car with my feet. A burning ache flames across my right cheek as the raw skin rubs against the sticky, bloody floor. I have to ignore it. The chain cuts into my neck but doesn’t give. I push harder. My muscles and face scream in protest.
“When my father-in-law hears about how I’ve been treated—”
“You tell Jimmy whatever you like about me. I don’t know how my cousin works things in Kansas City, but I’m guessing he doesn’t let little girls tell him what to do. And I don’t neither. Now clear out.”
The smells of sweat and strain fill my nostrils. My eyes slide closed, desperate for sleep. I think of Mariano, Father, Emma, Walter, Joyce, Tim, and Nick. I parade their faces in my mind’s eye. I have to get this necklace off. I have to give people a chance to find me.
“Pat!” A new voice, masculine and panicked, bursts into the conversation. Gravel crunches—footsteps. Approaching fast. “Feds are here!”
I don’t recognize the word Patrick Finnegan growls, but his footsteps race away from the car.
Will Alana—Maeve?—take me out of the car now? Shoot me and dump my body wherever it is that we’re parked?
I push again with my toes, straining upward, but still the chain holds strong.
A door yanks open and slams shut. That must be Alana, right? The engine roars to life, and with a loud pop, the tires chew up gravel as we speed away. Each bump makes my bones rattle. The rear of the car fishtails from the high speeds on a poorly finished road.
The car makes a sudden turn to the left, sending my body tumbling out of control.
The snap of my chain is like music. The sound comes just before my head connects with the wall of the car.
And then the world is gone again.
An icy spray of water blasts my face. I try to suck in a breath, but there’s still a rag taped into my mouth, and all I manage to do is breathe water into my nose. My eyes snap open just in time to see someone grab hold of a corner of the tape and rip it off my mouth. My cheeks scream in protest, and the air feels so good in my lungs, they ache.
“Emma!” I rasp out the word as the remnants of my dream—her yellow, flowered dress, the blood spreading outward—fade away.
“Finally.” Alana towers over me, holding an empty glass. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come around. You must’ve lost more blood than I thought.”
I rest my thumping head against the tall side of a bathtub. I pull a delicious amount of air into my lungs and exhale again. The rush of oxygen is dizzying.
Alana drags a wooden kitchen chair alongside the tub, like Mother would when bathing me as a child. “I took out the gag because I need answers from you. But I won’t hesitate to put it back in if you decide to yell.”
The lukewarm water filling the bath soaks my dress and makes me shiver. “What happened”—my voice scratches against my throat—“to Lydia?”
Alana’s smile is tinged with sadness. “I am sorry about her. It sounds like she was a swell girl. Your brother was clearly still hung up on her.”
My heart bucks against Alana’s condolences, but my body is too weak to react as I want.
“I observed her for a while, you know. I would’ve liked her, I’m sure.”
I can hear Lydia’s voice in my head, confiding in me about her medicine. It makes me paranoid too. I kept thinking this black car was following me. Or like at the store yesterday. I was convinced that woman was listening to every word we said. Following me.
The tall woman who had watched us buy Walter’s shirt and hat. I look at Alana, and it’s so clear. If only I had realized it sooner.
“And I like you too, Piper. You think you’re smarter than everyone around you, but I wouldn’t sentence you to death for it.”
“How thoughtful.”
I’m not sure she hears my sarcasm above the roar of the water, but her smile has a wryness to it. “Would you like a drink? You’re probably thirsty.” She leans forward to dip the glass in the bathwater, which has been dyed pink from my blood.
Sitting on top of the toilet tank is her silver gun.