“Two years later, my father died,” she says, “And I was lost. I had her as the only person to give me some direction. Something she shamelessly used.”
Her head twitches slightly. Followed by the rolling of her shoulder. It is a habit I have noticed several times now, and it dawns on me that it is her way of removing uncomfortable emotions. A very important tell, because it means she does feel something.
“How did she use it?” I ask.
Avery breathes in deeply.
“For her gain. It took me a long while to realize she was getting information from me, and she took things I was after before I could get them. We did three jobs together in the past, because I couldn’t have done them alone.”
She walks further to the right.
“This here was the first big thing we did together,” she says, pointing to a circle with the ‘2006 Heist Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam’ written in it. “I was sixteen back then.”
She scoffs and stares into emptiness for a moment. I watch her, and while I try to convince myself this is all just another performance, I know it is not.
This is a real part of her that she is giving me.
Apparently, catching Hedda is more important than not trusting me with all this information.
“I evaded her afterward,” Avery finally says as she snaps out of her memory. “Until I met her at a fundraiser where they exhibited royal jewelry, one of the pieces being the diamond collar, you know it as Case No. 244-NY-2012-004471, unresolved. It was me; I stole it by misleading her, because that’s what she did to me in 2006. It was my revenge.”
And once again, she falls silent. It makes me wonder… because Avery Zayne is usually never at a loss for words. While I do believe everything she is telling me right now, I feel there is an ulterior motive.
She was in my home, even if she denies it.
I know it.
Maybe she is still having me watched.
Knows I am suspecting her.
And tries to regain the power with the move.
“The second time was the heist of a Lake Como house, the Lumiere’s mansion,” she continues. “I couldn’t have done it without her. We both almost died that day; I got shot twice in the back, and I still carry those scars with me as a reminder to never trust anyone,” she says, turns, and pulls up her blouse. Two old gunshot wounds in the left middle of her back, right where the ribs end.
“Was it Hedda’s fault?” I ask because the most important part was the ending, where she mistrusts everyone.
“Yes,” she says.
“Why would you do that again and again and again?” I ask her. “You knew she used you already. You knew she was aconwoman, someone you had a fallout with, and yet you work with her again?”
She smiles faintly.
“In my line of work, there aren’t many good ones.”
I don’t believe one word of that sentence, because she averted her eyes before she said it.
“And the real reason?” I ask. I’m not letting that go.
Her eyes flash at me.
“Why do you fuck with Rachel?” she asks me, shooting back at me. She is not one to be backed into a corner.
Because it’s convenient,I tell her in my mind. Something I’d never speak out loud. Rachel is the only person I ever broke the rules for. Because of convenience and desperation. For both of us. We don’t love each other. We’re friends. With benefits. Out of convenience. And I understand what it must be like for her with Hedda.
Hedda was the only person there for her after losing her father. She was lost and a teenager who needed someone to latch onto. Someone to give her direction and wings—and that’s what Hedda did. In her own way, making Avery someone in her image.
I avert my eyes back to the wall.
