“We—” she starts, then picks her words more carefully: “Some of the construction crew was spending too much time on their phones, and Instagramming stuff too. Mr. Baker said the floorplans for some of our houses could be in the backgrounds of their selfies, so—”
She leaves that hanging.
“So?” Jade prompts.
“Mr. Pangborne had a jammer installed? The yacht’s out of the radius, but all the houses are in it, or in them, however it works.”
“A jammer,” Jade repeats.
“Like an umbrella, except it blocks from the—”
“No, I get it,” Jade says. “Is that legal?”
“There’s no guarantee of service over here,” Letha says with a shrug. “It’s the wilderness, right?”
What do they call those jammers, though? She’s heard it online. A… a rape tent, or something? At least when they’re used to keep a victim from calling the cops.
Or, a potential victim.
“Hardy was warning you about me?” she says.
“No, no,” Letha says, crossing to Jade to touch her forearm, swat that possibility away. “He was worried that you might be in danger.”
“Figured he’d be busy.”
“I mean, his office called.”
“Meg.”
“Tiff’s mom?”
“You caught that machete last night,” Jade tells Letha.
“T was behind me,” Letha says. “It could have—she might have gotten hurt.”
“It’s for tomorrow night,” Jade says. “Hardy didn’t take it?”
“I told him my dad was putting it in the safe. He had to…
you know.”
“Take me to jail, lock me up for my own good, keep me from being a menace to society.”
“He really cares, Jade.”
“This too,” Jade says, unholstering Just Before Dawn. “I couldn’t throw it. That’s… it’s why I came over.”
She holds Just Before Dawn across.
“A videotape,” Letha says, like identifying a bug.
“Yeah, it’s the only way—”
“We don’t have a player on the yacht?” Letha says, kind of in apology.
Jade winces, says, “So—wait, does this mean you coudn’t watch Bay of Blood?”
“Bay of—oh, oh, yeah. No, I’m sorry. But I’ve still got it—”
She’s walking and talking, Jade’s wrist somehow in her hand now, like she’s been arrested in the kindest way possible.
“No, we can’t, your dad—” Jade starts, unsure how to say what she needs to say.
“He won’t mind,” Letha says, pulling, not stopping, “won’t even know I’ve got someone over. The yacht’s so crowded tonight, everybody’s here for the Fourth! And for, you know, Mr. Samuels. Anyway, my dad’s room’s all the way in the bow, we’ll be—”
“I can’t, I’ve got to—”
“Walk around the lake in the dark with a bear in the area?”
Letha asks, dragging Jade across the living room now. “I mean, if you want, I can call the sheriff, have him send a boat.”
“Or, or. You could—”
“My stepmother won’t let me drive the boat at night,” Letha says with ill-feigned disgust. They’re coming through the front door now, are on the porch.
Jade immediately clocks the inky black trees Theo Mondragon is about to come slouching out of in his burly-lithe way, the bulb in his headlamp off but still warm.
“Okay, okay,” Jade says ahead to Letha, giving up this futile resistance, stepping in alongside so as to get up the pier and into the boat faster, please. If Theo Mondragon really doesn’t know his daughter has a guest for the night? That can almost maybe work. Or, it can work one hell of a lot better than getting caught out in the open by him when his hands are still red.
“So where did you spend the day?” Letha asks in a making-conversation bid.
“Camp Blood,” Jade monotones, looking behind them at the candlelight flickering in the kitchen window like a beacon.
“That old—？”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t it scary over there?”
“You tell me.”
“I know I’ll never go there again,” Letha says, doing a full-body shiver, the memory of Deacon Samuels apparently washing through her.
“I’m serious about tomorrow night,” Jade says.