“Are you all right?” Glynne says.
“Yeah . . . I’m . . . just”—surrounded—“a little tired, I guess.” Something vibrates against my side. The burner phone in my purse. A text message from Wendy.
The dome light car is moving now. It’s a Subaru like mine, only silver rather than black and a much newer model. And as it passes us on its way out, I catch a glimpse of shiny hair, a smile, and then a hand waving, a jeweled ring catching the light.
“Bye!” Glynne calls out to the driver, and then the car passes under one of the parking lot lamps and I see her face in full.
“Who is that?” My gaze is glued to the bumper. The license plate. Who are you?
“Old classmate of mine from Brayburn,” Glynne says. “I ran into her on my way in. She hasn’t changed a bit.”
“What’s her name?”
“Do you know her?”
“I might.”
And even though that’s a rather strange response, Glynne answers amiably. “Penelope Chambers,” she says.
I nod. “Sounds familiar.” But really, it’s the face that I know—the silver-haired woman who gave me the Niobe card. I’m this close to saying out loud that I ran into her at Harris’s funeral and she warned me to leave and that now I’m quite certain she’s been part of a coordinated effort to stalk my every move.
But what if Glynne, too, is part of that effort? How big is the collective? How much do they know?
“So strange to see Penelope here of all places,” Glynne says mildly. “She was always such a city girl.”
I wait until Glynne leaves and I’m alone in my car to read my burner phone text from Wendy—three asterisks, meaning call her back as soon as I can. I want to do it right away, but instead I wait until I’m home and in the kitchen, the groceries unloaded.
Wendy says, “What took you so long?”
“I’m being followed.”
“Are you serious?”
“There were two cars watching me at the grocery store tonight—I even recognized one of the drivers.”
“Oh my God.”
“Not from an assignment. I didn’t even think she was with the collective, actually. I thought she was just from Niobe.”
“From where?” she says. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter. Look. I think Sheila’s going to need to meet you in person. She’s skeptical about the story, as pretty much anybody would be. Is there a safe place?”
I remember the roar of the engine outside my house the previous night, how it seemed to come out of nowhere. “I think my car is chipped again.”
“Ugh. Look. You stay put. I’m going to log on, private message 0001, see if I can get Violet to talk to me in front of Sheila.”
“What? No.”
“Why not? I’m obviously good at talking to people. Hell, look how much info I got out of you.”
“You said you didn’t want to get involved, Wendy. And you were right. It’s not safe.”
“Maybe I changed my mind,” she says. “Maybe I don’t care about what’s safe or what isn’t. My kid is dead. My marriage is over. And I’ve given three years of my life to something that wasn’t what I thought it was. Oh, and Alayah’s off the damn show again tonight. Did you see the spoiler on Reddit? What do I have to live for besides you?”
“Wendy.”
“Okay, before you think I’m nuts, I was just kidding about Alayah, even though Peter really is going to kick her off again. And I wasn’t planning on saying ‘besides you’ out loud.”