“Right . . .” She chews her lip, thinking. “Okay. Anti-Alayah means ‘shut up and lie low.’ Pro-Alayah means ‘we need to talk,’ and if it’s safe—only if it’s safe—we meet.”
I nod slowly. “That works.”
“Right?”
“I’ll check the thread first thing in the morning and at five p.m. every day. You do the same. We can meet at the Exit 19 park and ride. Same place your Camry is, so we’ll both know how to get there.”
“Perfect. I feel better now.” She smiles, her teeth chattering. “That had better be our ride. It’s freezing out here.”
We both power walk up the hill, to where the car waits, its headlights flicking on.
The window rolls down. “I’m Susan,” says the driver—a square-jawed, middle-aged woman who also wears all-black, her salt-and-pepper hair in a messy bun.
It’s not her real name, but one devised by 0001—code, more or less, for I’m the one. I’m a sister. It’s safe to get in. When I picked up the frantic young woman in the Bridgeport parking lot, I was Susan too.
Wendy gets in the front passenger seat. I slide into the back.
Susan starts up the car without speaking—a sister who plays by the rules. The radio is tuned to a country station, some yodeling sad sack whining about his “stupid heart” getting broken.
Wendy closes her eyes. Within minutes she’s snoring, and it makes me feel as though she’s been holding this entire night together. And now, at long last, she can finally let go.
I gaze out the window. The sky is clear and dark, with a sparkling sliver of a moon, stars spread out around it like bubbles on the surface of a still black lake. I close my eyes and time my breathing with Wendy’s, that awful scene in my mind again, the trunk drifting open, the man inside. . . . Only, now I see that the scene isn’t awful, because he isn’t a man. He’s a thing, as Wendy said. An evil thing.
And what we did wasn’t murder. It was justice.
“SO?” LUKE SAYS.
I’m still half-asleep, “Barracuda” having jolted me awake, but I try not to sound that way. The clock by my bedside says it’s seven o’clock, and it’s dark outside. Seven p.m.? Seven a.m.? “So . . . how was last night?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Bachelor watch party?”
“Oh . . . right. That.” Last night. So it must be seven p.m. A whole day gone.
“Camille?”
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. I just woke up. I mean . . . I took a little nap.” I squeeze my eyes shut, fragments of my dream floating around in my head. Blood. Wide-open blue eyes. A machete in my hands. Wendy laughing.
“You sound . . . How can I put this tactfully? Unbelievably hungover.”
I exhale hard. “I’m fine.”
“Should I call back another time?”
“No.” I pull myself out of bed, phone at my ear. “No. I can talk.” I switch on the bedside lamp, move over to my desk, flip open my laptop, and put him on speaker. “You want to know the truth?” I tell him, the alibi coming back. “I had a really rough night.”
“Meaning . . .”
As I speak, I open the web browser, then google the billionaire’s name. “My new friend from the Reddit group turned out to be a crazier drunk than I am.”
“Wow. Really?”