Jenna still holds the muzzle of the pistol to the hit woman’s head.
Artemis looks at them both. Like he’s pondering what to do as the ones and zeros come together in that computer of a brain.
“We all need to talk this out,” Arty says. He looks at Jenna. “You can let her go.”
“I’m not letting anyone go until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
Artemis offers a disappointed look. He moves toward her. Jenna moves the gun from the woman to Arty’s center mass. “Don’t fucking move.”
Finally, she understands. It wasn’t Brood who hired the hit woman.
It was Artemis.
That’s when Jenna feels the blow to the back of her head and she hits the floor.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
DONNIE
The Uber pulls up to the area where the street ends and woods begin. The driver says, “Here?”
“Yeah, this is great,” Donnie says, still feeling the booze. It’s getting dark, a few minutes past seven. He wonders if Jenna and Nico went through with the meeting at Savior House.
Donnie gets out of the car and heads into the thick vines and weeds and trees. It’s been so long since he’s been to this patch of gloom, but there’s an immediate familiarity. He stumbles on some bushes. He needs to get himself straight. He smacks himself in the face, which works sometimes, and continues navigating through the branches and scrub.
Could the gun still be here after all these years? Is that why Benny was back in Chestertown—to see if the blackmailer was bluffing? Lying that he had evidence of what they had done. And did Benny hide something else in the spot? It has to be what he meant by “Boo Radley.”
Donnie spies the tree, the one Nico carved with the N + A. Nico was such a sap back then. Now he’s a Benedict Arnold who deserves an ass kickin’。
Two trees down, Donnie sees the familiar base of the giant maple tree. He gazes up and is taken momentarily back to hot summers with the G.R.O.S.S. club—Get Rid Of Slimy girlS—a name he’d stolen from Calvin and Hobbes. He didn’t think girls were slimy, he quite liked them even at fourteen, but the tree fort was inspired by the comics, so it was fitting.
He travels past the tree fort and four trees to the right, and there it is, the knothole about three feet from the ground in the old tree: the Boo Radley hole.
Donnie swallows, his mouth dry. A headache is creeping at the back of his skull. He thrusts his hand inside. He feels the metal and retrieves the small handgun he and Benny secreted there more than two decades before.
For a moment, he’s back on the knoll. Arty is peering into the shallow grave like he’s gonna do it but only stands there, arm extended, the light rain beading his face. Jenna takes the gun from him, says, “We agreed. We all have to”; then there’s the sickly bang of the gun. Jenna hands the firearm down the line; Ben takes his shot, then Nico, then Arty, who thrusts the weapon into Donnie’s hands. Donnie stands frozen until Benny laces his finger over Donnie’s and squeezes the trigger.
His mind snaps back to the woods around him. He feels light-headed. He tucks the old .22 in his waistband and sticks his hand back inside the knothole. He feels the glass of a bottle and tugs it out of the hole. He examines a half-empty pint of peppermint schnaps and shudders. You never forget throwing up that stuff. He thrusts his hand back in the hole and feels around. Ben was in Chestertown when he was killed, when he called the law clerk. He wanted Donnie to come to this hiding place for a reason. Donnie’s fingers land on a thin slab of metal and plastic, and he pulls out the phone. It has a gold chain tangled around it.
Donnie looks around, worried that the FBI agent or someone is gonna jump out from behind a tree, but there’s no one out here but Donnie and the insects bouncing off his skin.
He untangles the chain from the device, powers it on. The FBI must not have been able to track Ben’s device because it was off or because of no signal in the woods. When the screen pops on, it asks for a password. Donnie tries Bell’s name, then Mia’s. He thinks on this more, then tries “Calvin.”
The phone flashes to a screen. The camera app. A video shows up as the most recent image.
Donnie takes a deep breath before playing the video, and that’s when he notices that the gold chain has a decorative name engraved into it:
Annie
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
JENNA
Jenna comes to on the dining room floor of Savior House. She must be seeing double because there’s two of the hit woman now: one standing over Derek Brood, the other crouching low, looking Jenna in the eye with the hint of a smile. Nico’s sitting on the floor, back to the wall, his hands behind him. He looks despondent, defeated.
Artemis walks up to Brood, whose face is covered in blood. “I’ll ask you again. Where are the bones?”
Derek looks at his lap. “I told you, I have no idea what you’re—” He’s cut off by his own deafening scream … as the hit woman’s weapon makes a whoosh and there’s the sound of cracking bone as she removes it from Derek’s thigh.
“You know what, Derek.” Artemis crouches in front of their old nemesis, who appears to be losing consciousness. “I think I believe you.”
Derek’s chest is shuddering, he’s blubbering now.
“You know what else?”
Derek dares to look up into Artemis’s eyes.
As she watches, Jenna is trying to clear her head. To formulate an escape plan.
Arty raises his voice. “I said: Do you know what else, Derek?”
Derek shakes his head timidly.
“Your father was a buffoon, which is the only reason he got stuck babysitting a bunch of kids.
Your uncle was probably relieved when he disappeared, except that he was stuck raising another buffoon.”
Arty stands straight. “But at least your dad wasn’t a bully.”
“Please…” Derek moans as the hit woman raises the tube weapon.
“No compute, no compute,” Arty says in a mechanical voice. “That’s how robots talk, right?”
“I was just a kid.…”
“And so was I.” Artemis says it again: “Where are the bones?”
“I … don’t … know.…”
Artemis looks at the hit woman, nods. The other woman—she must be the hit woman’s identical twin—has eyes on Jenna, watching for any sudden moves.
Again in a robot voice, Artemis says, “Terminate.”
The hit woman puts the cylinder weapon to Derek’s temple and whoosh.
Derek slouches lifeless in the chair.
As the woman pushes Derek onto the floor, Artemis’s gaze goes from Jenna to Nico.
“Which one of you is next?” He touches his chin. “Bring her to the chair.”
One of the ghastly twins drags Jenna off the floor and onto the chair.
Jenna’s head is still pounding, she’s concussed, but the adrenaline has heightened her senses, her fear, as the hit woman jams the tube weapon at the center of her chest.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
DONNIE
Still in the woods, Donnie watches the video on Benny’s phone. It has a night-vision filter that casts everything in a green tint, but it’s surprisingly clear. Ben filmed a figure on the same knoll where the five of them had put Mr. Brood in the ground.