Viola, who still felt bitter about being left out of the Vegas saga, insisted on coming to New York.
“Bitches aren’t leaving me out of the action anymore. Baby is coming!”
“I still can’t believe we made it out of that alive. And I still can’t believe you didn’t have a better plan.”
Rainy smiled. Act now, think later had worked for her, but barely.
“I wasn’t really given much time to plan. But I had a couple backups.”
“Like the note at the soup station?” Braithe’s eyebrows were all the way up, her smile repressed.
“Well, sure.” The note at the soup station was a favorite topic on the blogs. Rainy liked to pretend she didn’t see the memes of the chowder bowl with the scared face holding a Help, Police! I’m Chowder! sign.
“I also wrote a note on the fifty dollars I slipped to the clerk at that corner store,” she offered.
“I guess…” Braithe looked less than impressed, and Rainy snort-laughed into her palm.
“Rainy!”
Susan had confirmed her story to the police and, miracle of miracles, still had the fifty dollars to show them when they questioned her. It was a backup plan, but one in which she’d meant to clear herself of any wrongdoing. Around the margins and in any clear space she’d written:
I am Rainy Ives. I’m being held captive along with Braithe Mattson. Anyone who reads this should contact police about Taured, the man from Friendship, Nevada: second-degree murderer, forced-labor conspiracy, attempted sex trafficking, possession of child porn, racketeering conspiracy, wire-fraud conspiracy. It’s because of him we are here. I’ve got proof.
“But, Rainy, he didn’t have anything to do with Ginger, not at that point, in that way. And not until you pulled him into it by emailing him.”
“He had everything to do with Ginger.”
“Yeah, I get what you’re saying. But I hope you get what I’m saying, too.”
“I did what I thought was right in the situation.”
“You planned on trying to kill him or you thought Ginger would do it for you?” Braithe wasn’t being accusatory; Rainy recognized her need for answers.
“I gambled. I knew Taured would come and I knew one of them would die as a result of it. I figured I’d have a chance at the other one. At the time, I didn’t know who exactly Ginger was. All I knew was that he’d been at the compound at the same time as me. And if he was doing these atrocities, it was because Taured had nurtured him toward them. Either way, I had one to deal with the other.”
“It’s like you’re giving Ginger a pass.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
At those words, Braithe’s face smoothed into what Rainy perceived as relief. She nodded. She took a sip of her water, not meeting Rainy’s eyes for several minutes. Then she said, “I’m glad he’s dead. I don’t care if that makes me a bad person. He was a monster.”
“Why?” Rainy asked. “Why was he a monster?”
Braithe was angry now, but not at Rainy. “He fucking kidnapped me, he tied me up and drugged me. I can’t sleep. I wasn’t sure who I was before, but I’m less so now. I hate him.”
Rainy made a noise in the back of her throat. “Well, I’m glad Taured’s dead…he was a monster.” She tried to clear the emotion out of her voice but gave up on it; it was just the two of them at the table today, and she owed Braithe her truth. “He kidnapped my mother and in turn kidnapped me. He tied me up, he drugged me, he took photos of me that he used to blackmail my mother. But I can sleep now…now that he’s dead. I don’t feel bad about that, either, because he was the first monster. And I ended him.”
Summer had been there for all of it. She saw what he did to the minds of those children and what he’d tried to do to her. If you weren’t there, you couldn’t speak on it.
Rainy decided that there was very little difference between her and Ginger; she’d just chosen to put her anger in a different place. She’d gone to the source and shut off the tap. Braithe would reject the idea of her being like Ginger, but there it was.
Braithe nodded. “Everything else happened like you said it did?”
“Pretty much.”
Braithe stared at her, hard, before nodding.
And then she was looking over Rainy’s shoulder at Viola, jumping to her feet to greet their friend.
“Let’s welcome back Rainy Ives, the woman who took down Tauredia.” The host had big teeth. She nodded around at her unseen audience before turning to Rainy, growing serious.