Deacon shrugged, slowing us to a stop at a red light. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. “Because you looked like you were still processing to me. Seemed unproductive to force you to discuss it before I take you somewhere where you’ll be forced to discuss it, you know?”
“What if I needed help?” I asked.
“Then I would help you.”
He said it like it was the only answer. It offered me a degree of comfort, his confidence and determination. It was a quality I admired, especially in my line of work. And so I rested back in the seat, watching him curiously as the light changed and we drove toward Marie’s apartment.
The next time he picked me up from an assignment, he was five minutes late, and in the console was a bag of Skittles.
Now I can see that Deacon had me figured out from the start. He’s brilliant that way. He can read anybody. My phone buzzes, startling me out of my thoughts, and I check the message. Deacon sent a thanks for the passwords, and I set my phone down, reminded that my real partner is out of town. Aaron ditched me. Not only is this unusual; it’s dangerous. I mean, I could contact Marie—but no one wants to bring in their advisor unless it’s an emergency. How could he abandon me like this?
I stand up from the computer and walk over to the bags of clothes I brought home from the mall. My real life is growing just as confusing as this assignment, and I hope to distract myself by trying on clothes. Ultimately, I decide I don’t love any of them. I grab the outfit my mother liked the most and slip it on before heading out to help her with dinner.
My nerves are ratcheted up at the thought of sneaking out, breaking my parents’ trust. But, ultimately, talking with Angie can help me figure out how to bring our family closure. And if I get caught, I’ll manage a believable cover story. Convincing my parents would be easy. Marie not so much. But I’d be able to explain.
I just really hope I don’t have to.
CHAPTER THREE
DINNER WITH MY PARENTS IS actually nice. My father even smiles at me once when I mention how much my arm hurts, but that I’m pretty sure my draft letter to the MLB will arrive within the week. We have roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. My mother talks about her friend Maryanne again, and my dad tells us about a new project he’ll be starting at work on Monday. For an entire hour, I forget I’m on assignment. For an entire hour, I have a family—a mother and a father who share a meal with me. Me and my real dad never do that. We never have time.
My parents say good night around ten, but by now my anxiety has reasserted itself. When I finally get to my room, I stuff a pillow under my covers. I’m pretty sure that’s never worked in fooling a parent, not ever, but I’m not sure what else to do. Locking the door would be a dead giveaway.
I pull on a pair of soft jeans and do a couple of lunges to loosen them up. My T-shirt from this morning is over the back of my desk chair, and I slip it over my head and spritz on some body spray. There’s a still a little time before Deacon’s supposed to arrive, so I check my e-mails and am disappointed to find I was indeed taken off the e-mail chain. There’s a vague sense of being left out, but I quickly remind myself that I was never really invited in the first place. I close the computer and take out my phone. I click through to find Aaron’s last message.
CALL ME, I type. I don’t ask Aaron where the hell he is, or why he didn’t tell me, just in case someone else is monitoring his line. I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble. When he doesn’t respond, I tuck my phone away and shut off my overhead light. I ease open my window and sit on the sill, watching the street for Deacon.
I’m scared about tonight. Afraid I’m making a mistake. But there have been too many anomalies with this case already. I need actual research. Answers. It’s like everyone keeps telling me lies—starting with why Arthur Pritchard sent me on this assignment in the first place.
The minutes slowly tick by, and I listen for any sound coming from the hallway. Both my parents have gone to bed, and I don’t hear anything beyond the humming of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Finally a car drives up and parks in the shadows between lampposts before clicking off its lights. I quickly grab the hoodie from my desk chair and look at the doorway, listening. When I hear nothing, I push open my window the rest of the way and climb through. I ease it down, but not entirely, and then dash across the lawn toward the car.
I climb in the passenger side of my Honda, and then Deacon pulls away from the curb quickly in case one of my parents happens to look out the window. He doesn’t turn the headlights on until we round the corner and are out of view. The minute he does, we both exhale and look at each other.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Deacon while on assignment—not since we were partners. His eyes rake over me, pausing at my hair before he turns to face the windshield once again.
“You cut your hair,” he says.
I pull at the strands in the back of my hair, embarrassed of the change, which must seem extreme. It feels extreme now that I’m away from my assignment. “Yeah . . . it was just easier.”
He darts a look between me and the road. “Looks nice,” he says simply. I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t. The moment fades, and then it’s just us in the car, all of our baggage stowed away.
“Now, who exactly are we observing tonight?” he asks, taking a turn onto the freeway. Outside, the dark sky has a hint of gray from cloud cover; the first ominous drops of rain hit the windshield.
“My sister,” I tell him. “Her name’s Angie.”
Deacon turns to me. “What? You didn’t mention there would be a sister.”
“That’s because she’s not part of this assignment.” I look at him seriously. “But she should have been. I’m not sure why the counselors didn’t flag her, or at least ask her to remain in the house to support her parents. How am I supposed to position their lives without all the pieces?” I ask. “The minute Angie comes home, if she comes home, the family dynamics will change. That could throw off the entire recovery process.”
“Reasonable argument,” Deacon says slowly, thinking it over. “And you’ve talked to this girl?”
“Sort of,” I say. “She hates me, wishes I was dead instead of her sister.”
“So you’ve made progress.”
I laugh, and when I look down, I notice a bag of Skittles in the center cup holder. Deacon smiles when I turn to him. “Like old times,” he says.
I’m not expecting his comment to hit me the way it does: a mix of nostalgia and longing around the thought of Deacon. Then again, maybe I’m just craving a connection. “Have you turned up anything on Virginia yet?” I ask, trying to refocus on the assignment.
“No, but I just started looking,” Deacon says. “If she exists, I’ll find her.”
We spend the rest of the drive going over my assignment so far. I tell him about the haircut with my mother and playing baseball with my dad. I even reenact the confrontation with my sister. Neither of us mentions Isaac.
On Mississippi Avenue, I see a small brick building with the word WAREHOUSE embossed in iron above its door. People are standing around outside, smoking and hanging out under the awning. The rain has softened into a drizzle as Deacon pulls into the back lot and finds a spot near the chain-link fence. He was right—this place is kind of seedy. When Deacon looks at me, I smile. It also looks kind of fun.
“All right, trouble,” he says with a laugh, “we need a plan. There will be a least a few people at the bar who’ll recognize you,” he says. “How do you want to play that?’
I look uncertainly at the building, adrenaline rushing through my system. I’ve done some crazy things before, mostly with Deacon, but never on assignment. Not when I’m supposed to be professional. Doubt sinks in.
“Is this unethical?” I ask. The light from the streetlamp falls across Deacon’s face, clouding his expression with shadows.
“Sometimes the ends justify the means,” he says solemnly. “And those times, we have to be the ones to decide what’s worth losing
.” His voice is far more serious than I expected, and I can’t help but think there’s more behind it. “Is it worth your sister losing her privacy?”
I sit back, thinking over the question. Ultimately, this isn’t just about Angie. It has larger implications for the entire family. “I think so,” I say, looking at Deacon. He presses his lips into a sad smile.
“Then we go inside.”
Deacon doesn’t think this is a good idea, but like me, he understands it. The most troubling part about tonight is that if I see something concerning, something I can’t ignore, I’ll have to report it. I’ll have to flag Angie for the therapists. I’m not sure I’d want someone watching me that closely in my real life.
Both Deacon and I get out of the car, and the night is cold on my face. I zip up my hoodie a little higher, shivering. My nerves are frayed, and Deacon comes around the car and meets me to walk across the parking lot toward the building.
Deacon has a fake ID, but I’m relying on the bouncer being “golden” like the e-mail said. I hope he doesn’t know that I’m dead. We walk through the drizzle, and I pull my hood over my hair. Deacon takes my hand, intertwining his fingers with mine, and when I look at him questioningly, he shrugs as if saying, What? Friends can hold hands. I snort a laugh, and turn away to focus on the mission.
We weave through the crowd, and I’m careful to scan their faces in search of my sister without being obvious. No one pays attention to us, and I’m grateful. But that’s a skill we’ve learned over the years, how to blend in. How to hold ourselves in a way that doesn’t bring attention to our features. It comes in handy when trying to assume the identities of other people.
Deacon stops in front of me, dropping my hand, and I lower my hood now that we’re under the awning. Smoke drifts over from the group behind us, and I swallow hard and watch Deacon flash his ID, looking past the bouncer into the bar. The guy checks it quickly, not paying attention because Deacon’s mannerisms are confident, older. The bouncer waves him in and turns to me. Deacon goes to wait just inside the door, but I’m scared. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I got turned away, but it would be the end of tonight’s adventure.
I hold out the ID I took from the wallet on my desk, which reads Catalina Barnes and identifies me as completely underage. The bouncer looks at the picture, and then at me. He winks. “Tell Isaac he owes me,” he says, and nods me through. I tense at the mention of my boyfriend’s name, but smile as though I’m not the least bit fazed.
“I will,” I say, touching the bouncer’s arm, and glide past him to meet Deacon in the doorway. When I look sideways at him, Deacon’s face is a little colder and his eyes scan the crowd inside. I have a slight twinge of guilt but then remind myself I haven’t done anything wrong. Any jealousy he may have is totally on him.
“We should grab a spot in the corner. The light’s not hitting it.” He motions to an empty space near the bar that’s almost completely lost in darkness. I agree, and we walk toward it, my eyes trained on every face, flipping from one smiling or scowling expression to another. The bar is packed; in the back room a band is setting up their equipment on the stage, and people have already flocked to take their positions in the crowd in front of them.
Zigzagging through the people proves difficult, and I lose Deacon at one point since I’m not tall enough to see over the shoulders of the guys in front of me. By the time I make it to the corner, Deacon has already taken off his sweater, and he’s resting casually against the wall.
“Was about to send out a search party,” he says, smiling now that we’re alone in the crowded room. I unzip my hoodie; the air is warm from all the bodies packed together. Deacon looks past me. “This is going to be a little more difficult than you thought, isn’t it?”
I take up space next to him on the wall and check over the crowd. “Definitely didn’t expect it to be this busy.”
“It’s a good band tonight,” Deacon says, taking out his phone and checking for messages. “And this place never charges a cover, so they pack them in. Hey, do you want a drink?” he asks.
“No,” I say shaking my head. “I need to stay clear.” I continue checking the crowd, worried that my sister may not have come here at all.
“You know,” Deacon says, not looking at me, “if she’s not here, we could just hang. Dance, even.” I watch him a minute, trying to guess his intentions, but he’s unreadable. Although a night out, a normal night out, sounds amazing right now, it’s not my reality. I don’t belong here with Deacon—I’m breaking character.
“Not tonight,” I say quietly, and turn away. There’s a sting, that familiar ache I get when I know I’ve hurt his feelings. But I chalk it up to the pinch of a needle when you get an inoculation. It hurts for a moment, but it prevents a much bigger problem down the line. Deacon shifts next to me but doesn’t say anything else. He slides his phone back into his pocket and asks me to describe my sister once again.
The band finishes setting up, and when they start to play, Deacon takes a walk through the crowd, closer to the stage, so that he can look around. I wait, fading into the background so I can observe without being noticed. About halfway through the band’s first song, I find Angie.
She looks unsteady as she runs her hand along the brick wall, making her way toward the music. Her behavior garners looks, and a few people whisper as she passes.
She’s alone, I note. In her posture and expression, I can see she’s alone in every sense of the word. Even her broad smile at a passing guy is a mask. Her eyes are darker, her skin sallow in the places that makeup doesn’t cover. She looks unwell.
I bite on my thumbnail and look around for Deacon, hoping he’ll get back here before she disappears into the crowd again. Instead my gaze falls on Isaac, sitting on a stool at the bar. People are reaching around him, holding out money for the bartender, taking drinks before a new crush of people filters in. But Isaac’s in slow motion, stagnant in the madness around him. He sips a cup of ice water, staring at nothing. Sympathy floods my chest. Without thinking, I take a step forward into the light so I can watch him a little more closely. Watch him ignore the entire world as he drowns in his grief.
“What the hell are you doing here?” a voice calls sharply, cruelly. Startled, I spin and find my sister a few steps in front of me. Her eyes are blazing; red flares on her cheeks. Her body sways with anger, and I try to move back, but it’s too late for me to fade away now.
“Angela, I—”
“How dare you come here!” she says, her tone unhinged. “How dare you!” Her mouth is pulled tight in an ugly scowl. Several people around her have turned to stare, but I don’t acknowledge them; I don’t even turn to see if Isaac has noticed. I have to defuse this situation. The crowd in this room has quieted, and the echoing music from the band is hollow around me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice not nearly as close to her sister’s now. I’m trying to calm her, and to do that, I need to be less aggressive. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
She laughs, a sad laugh of disbelief. “You’re playing my dead sister,” she says, earning even more looks. “What makes you think I’d have anything to do with you? You’re a monster.”
Heat crawls over my cheeks, but I try to exude calm. “I know you’re upset,” I say, holding up my hands in surrender. “But if I could just talk to you about your parents. I really want—”
“I don’t give a shit what you want!” she shouts, and now it feels like the entire bar is watching us. Where the hell is Deacon?
“Maybe if we go outside,” I start, but before I finish my thought, there is a blur of movement. Angie grabs the drink from the guy nearest her and then hurls the liquid at me, splashing my face and clothes in cold, red liquid. I scream and fall back a step, completely shocked and dazed. I swipe my hands over my eyes, the alcohol burning my skin.
“I don’t want your help,” my sister growls. “I don’t ever want to see you again.” She turns and walks away, the guy calling after her that she owes
him a drink. There is laughter, a couple of curses about how they shouldn’t let underage people in the bar because they always ruin the night. But mostly it’s the judgmental stares of the people who know what I do now. They know I’m a closer; they’ve put together why I’m here. And they hate me for it.
Sickness washes over me, and I try to back into the corner, shivering and sticky. Then suddenly, out of the crowd, Deacon appears, his posture hardened. He reaches past a couple of guys at the bar and grabs the stack of napkins without missing a step. When he reaches me, he takes my arm, not saying a word, and turns us toward the door.
I can feel the bouncer’s stare as we walk past him, and I’m not even out from under the awning when I start to cry. Humiliated, degraded. I take Deacon’s hand and let him lead me back to the car.
CHAPTER FOUR
DEACON DOESN’T ACKNOWLEDGE MY TEARS. The rain has picked up, but I don’t flip my hood. I let it wash over me, wash off the drink my sister threw in my face, wash off my shame. When we get to the car, Deacon hands me the damp napkins and unlocks the passenger side, helping me in. He closes the door, and pauses to look back at the building, as if he’s considering going back in to fight for me. But there’s no one to fight. He rounds the car, tossing a concerned glance at me through the windshield, before climbing in and slamming his door.
We sit quietly with the sound of rain splattering on the glass. Deacon doesn’t start the car, even though it’s cold. He doesn’t do anything. Which is exactly what I need him to do in this moment.
Back when we were partners, I was slow to let Deacon in—at least on a personal level. I may have liked him, but I didn’t let him know. I definitely didn’t want him to like me, either. It seemed like it’d make things more complicated. Then one night, we found ourselves parked outside the house of his assignment. He would do that sometimes: convince the clients to go out, to reconnect. I think it was more so that he could get a break from them. Get a break from the job.