CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Adrian Marks lived in a shoddy apartment complex a few blocks from the wide green swaths of Hearst College. When Veronica arrived it was almost eleven. The pool was packed with kids—Hearst was back in session, but it looked like the residents were trying to stretch the party out a little longer. Coolers of beer lined the sides of the pool, and a few empty bottles bobbed like ducks on the water’s surface.
Adrian’s unit was on the top floor. There was a light in the window, bands of yellow peeking out past the closed blinds. She pressed her ear to the door but she couldn’t hear anything over the thump of the music at the pool below. Then she knocked.
The light in the window shifted as someone moved through it. It seemed to take a few minutes. She stood a few extra inches back from the door. She was so short people often had a hard time seeing her through the peephole.
After what felt like a beat too long, the door swung open. Adrian stood silhouetted in the doorway. He wore an inside-out T-shirt and a pair of plaid boxer shorts, his dark hair tousled over one eye. It was the most undressed she’d seen him since she’d met him the week before—he usually gave the impression of being carefully put together, even when he was just wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” Veronica’s voice was apologetic. “I know it’s late.”
Adrian rubbed the back of his neck. He gave an awkward smile.
“I wasn’t asleep yet. Just getting settled in. It’s actually early for me, but it was a royal nightmare of a day.” He held up his hands, palms out in a gesture of exasperation.
“Yeah, I heard you had to make a statement. That must have been tough.”
He shuddered. “I never want to have to go through anything like it again.”
Veronica smiled sympathetically.
“The thing is, I have a few more questions about Aurora. I was hoping you could help clarify a few things for me.”
Adrian glanced behind him into the apartment. “It can’t wait for tomorrow? I really was just on my way to bed.”
“It’ll only take a moment.” She paused. “I just want to make sure Aurora’s all right.”
Behind her she heard a shriek and then a splash from the pool. After another few seconds, Adrian swung open the door to let her in.
The cramped little apartment was a catastrophe. Dirty dishes and empty pizza boxes cascaded across the floor. An overflowing ashtray sat on top of a statistics book, next to a cluster of beer bottles. One of the lightbulbs in the kitchen was out, giving the place a yellowed and dingy look. A smell of unwashed socks mingled with the smell of sour, turning food. Beneath it she could just make out a whiff of something sweeter, like the ghost of a vanilla candle.
“So you said you had questions?” Adrian prompted.
She stuck her hands into her pockets, rocking slightly on the balls of her feet. “Did you hear what happened tonight? Mr. Jackson—you know, that kidnapping expert? Someone attacked him outside the Neptune Grand and disappeared with the ransom money.”
Adrian’s head jerked backward in a double take. “What?”
“Crazy, right?” She shifted her weight. “The sheriff brought Mr. Scott in for questioning.”
“Mr. Scott? But … why?” The boy’s brow furrowed.
“Apparently Jackson and Tanner were working together all along. Well, Jackson, Tanner, and Aurora. According to Tanner she’s been in on it too.” She watched Adrian’s face carefully. He looked confused, his eyes wide with surprise. “They decided to stage her disappearance when Hayley went missing, then created the ransom notes, hoping to cash in on both Hayley’s disappearance and Aurora’s. But when it looked like their cover was about to be blown, Jackson tried sneaking off with the money. Lamb thinks it was Tanner who assaulted him and hid the money somewhere.”
Adrian sat down hard on a lumpy easy chair. It creaked beneath him. “Oh. My. God.” He covered his eyes with one hand for a moment, then looked up, his eyes flashing. “I’m going to kill her! She let me sit here and feel like shit for covering her ass, and all this time she’s been in on everything? I can’t fucking believe her.”
Veronica sat down across from him on a sagging sofa, hands in her lap. From where she sat she could see a little way down the darkened hallway—one door was closed, another cracked slightly, too dark to see in. “So you haven’t heard from her at all tonight?”
He shook his head. “Have the cops found her yet?”
“That’s the thing.” She leaned forward. “She’s not at the motel where Tanner said she’d be. She really is missing this time.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know.” She straightened up again. “Lamb is talking about charging Tanner with her murder, but I don’t buy it. For one thing there’s no evidence. Not that that’d stop Lamb. But for another, Tanner allegedly hit his partner over the head with a maraca. I don’t buy that he’d clock Lee Jackson with an amateur bludgeon if he were cold enough to off his own daughter.”
“A maraca?” Adrian asked, looking thunderstruck.
“So what I’m wondering,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken at all, “is if you think Aurora has it in her to double-cross her dad.”
He stared at her for a moment, his mouth hanging open.
“Because here’s the thing,” she said. “Tanner may be sketchy, but he seems like a pretty smart guy. So why would he take his child’s musical instrument—which I’d just seen him handling a few hours earlier—and use it to assault someone?” She grimaced. “Besides which, where the hell was he keeping it? He was out jogging. I saw his clothes—mesh shorts, T-shirt, no pockets. So did he just jog down to the Grand with the maraca clenched in his fist, then jog off with the duffel of money? I doubt it. But if Tanner didn’t do it—and I don’t think he did—that means that whoever did do it worked really hard to pin it on him. The only person in the scam who’s unaccounted for is Aurora. And if I’ve learned anything about Aurora in the past week, it’s that she’s clever, she’s ambitious, and she’s a damn good liar.”
Adrian ran his fingers through his hair. He was quiet for a minute, staring blankly up at the ceiling. When he looked back down, his blue eyes were conflicted.
“I don’t know anymore. I mean, a few hours ago, I would have told you no way—that Rory wouldn’t do something like that to her own dad. But … she’s been lying to me all this time. She’s been lying to everyone. So I don’t know what to think. I’m sorry, I wish I could help you.”
She stood up. “It’s all right, Adrian. This has got to come as a real shock to you.” She smiled and held out her hand. They shook. “Look, give me a call if you hear from her, okay? I just want to know she’s safe.”
“I will,” he promised.
She turned to go but paused near the dark hallway. It was now or never.
“Mind if I use your bathroom before I go?”
Before he could answer, she pushed open the closed door—the one she’d pegged as the bedroom. Immediately a wave of that sweet vanilla smell came wafting out through the open door.
Then a white-hot ripple of pain unfurled in her chest, spreading out through her body. Her muscles seized up. She felt herself falling and she couldn’t move—couldn’t even put out her hands to brace her fall.
In the moment before she hit the carpet, she just had time to make out the freckled face and straight auburn hair of her attacker, a Taser crackling in her hand.
Hello, Aurora.