First Lie Wins(15)
I also learned that it would be best to keep that version of me separate from the real version. Lucca Marino is a seventeen-year-old high school senior who sews dresses and makes costume jewelry to help her mother pay the bills. The girl at the flower store has different hair, different makeup, and answers to a different name.
It takes some time to pry the stones from their settings before I can drop the gold into a small melting pot. Next week I’ll drive in the opposite direction, crossing into Virginia, to get rid of the stones and gold. No one ever recognizes their stones once they’re free of their settings.
It’s a lot of risk for a couple hundred bucks, but we need every penny we can get. I’ve learned you’ve got to target the exact right woman. She’s well off enough that she hires a professional florist to decorate for her party and has a few nice pieces of jewelry that she feels comfortable enough to shove into a bathroom drawer but not so well off that there’s a safe to crack or a security system to disarm.
I work carefully. Looking at each piece through an LED magnifying lamp, it’s slow work prying each prong off without damaging the stone. Mama would have had this done in minutes. Well, not really. She’d beat my ass if she knew what I was using her tools for. I had to decide a long time ago that what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.
I finish up just before midnight. I still have a paper to write, and Mama needs another dose of her meds before I can crawl into bed. Putting the tools away and cutting off the light, I’m already thinking about the wedding tomorrow night.
Chapter 8
Present Day
It takes ten minutes to get myself under control. Panicking was a dumb move, and one I hope I don’t end up regretting.
I should not have walked away from her.
I should have discovered whether her knowledge was just of Eden and the general events of my life or whether she knew deeper things, the things only a handful of people could have told her.
I should have pushed her more, found the hole in her story and smashed it open.
I should have seen this coming.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been blindsided.
Ryan is scanning the crowd for a sign of me when I leave the bathroom. He’s still in the same place I left him, probably thinking that it would make it easier for me to find him if he stayed put.
But James and the woman with him are long gone.
Ryan pulls me close the second I reach him, his arm sliding around my waist. “Are you okay?” he asks. “You look pale.”
The woman’s appearance here is concerning, but I don’t know exactly how just yet. It’s easy to jump to conclusions and assume this has something to do with my last job, but it’s a mistake not to consider any and all other options as well. I’ve made a lot of enemies over the last ten years, but people you trust can turn on you just as easily.
I remind myself—I only deal in facts.
Nodding, I clear my throat. “Yes, all good. That drink went straight to my head.”
He seems relieved that my predicament has an easy remedy and pulls me to the buffet table and loads a plate of food for me. Ryan finds two open spots at a white-linen-covered table and sets the plate between us. “If you don’t feel better after eating some of this, we can leave.”
But there’s no way I’m leaving until I have another crack at that woman. I pick through the offerings on the plate, nibbling on a finger sandwich while Ryan signals to a passing waiter for a bottle of water.
Deep breaths. I need to get back on my game.
“It looks like it’s been a long time since you’ve seen your friend James,” I say.
“Yeah, God, probably two years. We were close as kids. He didn’t move back after college.” He frowns. “Things have been tough for him. Said he’s in town because his dad fell and broke his leg. Sounds like he’ll be here for a while, helping his mom take care of him.”
“Maybe we can have them over for dinner while he’s here. Give you two a chance to catch up.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”
I want to ask about the girl. What he knows about her. If he knows anything about her. If there was anything he learned after I ran off to the bathroom. But that’s so unlike me. This me I’ve created doesn’t pry. Doesn’t ask unnecessary questions. Doesn’t push for information about his friends or their companions. I need the moments that include James and his date to be buried in the blur of the day and not become the chunk of time that separates itself and becomes its own memory.
Because that’s all it would take. It’s been said that if you want a slice of time to stick out, to be crystal clear in your mind, one small difference in an otherwise normal routine is all it takes. Like if you’re the type who has trouble remembering whether you locked your front door before leaving for vacation, you should separate it from all the other perfunctory times you’ve locked your front door. Something as simple as turning around in a circle just before you slip the key in the lock would do it. A simple movement and forever that memory will be burned into your mind. It becomes clear enough to play over and over again. You see the door, the key turning, the doorknob wobbling when you tested the lock, and there’s no guessing whether or not you did it because you know you did.
I don’t need Ryan analyzing this moment later, wondering why I had such an interest in his old friend and the woman from North Carolina. Why I actively wanted to hunt them down so that we could spend more time with them. I don’t need these questions to be the turn before locking the door.