Damn cop senses. Georgia’s nose might as well be a Breathalyzer. “I was.”
I reached for Zach. She held him just out of reach. “Why do you smell like booze?”
Because bourbon might be the only thing holding me together right now. “Writer’s block. I needed something to loosen up my brain.”
“Are you okay to drive?”
“I didn’t.” I hitched a thumb over my shoulder at my partner in crime.
Georgia rose up on her toes, glancing over the balcony. Below it, Vero’s butt stuck out the back of her Accord as she wrestled the kids’ car seats into place. “I thought you said Steven let her go.”
“He did.” I scratched my still-sweaty neck, finding it hard to look her in the eyes. “She came over to the house to pick up her things, and we ended up…” Destroying my table linens, dividing what’s left of my assets, and stuffing a dead guy in her trunk. “… working something out.”
As if summoned, Vero appeared behind me. “I’m going to move in and watch the kids in exchange for room and board,” she said, reaching for Zach.
And forty percent of my soul.
Georgia sagged as if a huge weight had been lifted off of her as she hefted Zach into Vero’s arms and she whisked him off to the car. Georgia rubbed her shoulder, inclining her head toward the sofa behind her. Delia lay curled under a blanket, her fine blond hair rising in a staticky halo around a silver crown of duct tape, her brow furrowed in her sleep. The TV was on low, its pale glow flickering over Delia’s soft cheeks. I was glad she wasn’t awake to hear it as the anchorman recounted the details of three grisly homicides only a few miles away. I glanced up at the headline: Man suspected of ties to mafia acquitted of all charges.
I gestured to the TV. “I’m sorry you missed your night out with the boys from OCN.”
Georgia loosed an exhausted sigh as she watched two men descend the courthouse steps and disappear into a sleek black limo on the screen. “There’ll be plenty more nights like it,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing sticks to these guys. The Russian mafia could murder half the city and still find someone to bribe. That asshole will never spend a day behind bars as long as Zhirov’s around to bail him out.”
I hadn’t watched the news in as many weeks as I could remember, and I had no idea what Georgia was talking about, but I nodded sympathetically as I slid the diaper bag over one shoulder and scooped Delia onto the other.
“Thanks for watching them for me,” I whispered, feeling the weight of Georgia’s eyes on me all the way to the door. The day, the adrenaline, and the hangover were all catching up to me, dragging at my heels.
“Finn.” My name was a quiet command. Slowly, I turned around, terrified I’d given something away. “I’ve been worried about you,” Georgia said. She handed me Delia’s cap and scratched her chest, grimacing as if something inside it made her uncomfortable. She stared at her feet, at the diaper bag, everywhere but right at me when she said, “I’m glad you’re not alone.”
I swallowed the painful lump in my throat, suddenly unsure which was worse: the secrets I was hiding from my sister, or the body I was hiding in Vero’s trunk. Georgia was always alone here. And as much as she’d insisted that was exactly how she wanted it, sometimes—times like this—I wondered how she could stand it.
I folded Delia’s cap into my pocket and held her body a little tighter. The duct tape in her hair stuck to my jaw. For a moment, I considered telling Georgia everything. About what had happened in Panera. About what had happened in my van, in my garage.
Georgia reached for the TV remote on the table.
“Georgia…？” I started in a thin voice, clutching Delia to my chest. When my sister looked up at me, it was hard to hold her stare. My gaze skipped away, to the replaying scene on the TV behind her. All I could think of was Patricia’s warning. About dangerous people with friends in high places. About how my children would never be safe if anyone knew what I’d done. If Georgia and her police friends couldn’t keep dangerous people off the street, maybe Patricia had a reason to be afraid. Maybe Vero was right, and I didn’t have any choice but to see this through and keep it to myself.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
I turned for the door, feeling those cop-bright eyes on my back all the way to Vero’s car.
* * *
“Where to now?” Vero asked as I shut the door. She made a face at Delia’s duct tape crown in her rearview mirror. The kids slept like the dead in the back seat, as still as Harris Mickler had been when we’d shut him in the trunk with the little pink trowel.