Uh, yeah, not touching that one with a ten-foot pole. Besides, I have different priorities right now. I do my best Mickey impression at Cami.
“Ugh,fine. Meena is planning to call up a special investigative unit from New York for the case. She thinks we're in way over our heads. Please don’t tell Nick yet. It’ll break him. Meena has an entire plan to break it to him once everything is…”
My body goes cold. A special team? I know I was careful, but things aren’t in my control anymore, are they? Who knows what the copycat killer knows and what they want? They can bathe the next crime scene in my DNA, and now that Nicholas won’t be on the case to protect me, I can be in jail within the week.
“When are they taking over?” I ask.
“...we haven’t found—what?” Cami’s surprised voice makes me realize she was still talking.
“Uh… I was planning to take him on a trip,” I hedge, but I can’t be bothered to add any inflection in my voice.
Cami frowns. “That’s great. Uh, it might take two weeks to finalize the team.”
Two weeks. Right. Two weeks is enough time to find a killer whose entire identity is copying me. All I have to do is get a few steps ahead of him. We can do it.
“Promise you won’t tell Nick.” Cami looks so sincere in her request that I almost want to confess that it’s, in fact, one of the first things I’ll do as soon as I’m out of here.
If I were someone else, if we were just normal people meeting to help our friend find his perfect wedding cake, I’d have made that promise, and I’d have meant it. But in this life, I just nod.
“And Matt, either,” she says to Oliver.
“You got it.” He gives her the spoon back, and they go back to eating cakes while I sit there barely registering their conversation.
I knew my days with Nicholas were numbered, but the clock just sped up.
***
I could not sit there eating cakes while a killer might be planning to frame me for murder, especially when I had so much to do before I was forced to flee to Indonesia. So, I made a vague excuse and practically ran out of there. I’ll deal with Oliver’s disappointment later.
I text Sam to meet me at my place and call Ashley as I start the car.
“No, you don’t have an appointment for another hour. You can’t come back yet,” she says as soon as she picks up.
Why Ashley is so ready to conspire against me with everyone who tries, I’d never know. “Actually, I need you to cancel everything for today.”
“I knew you’d have fun if you just tried to be more social—”
“I miss your goth girl ‘I hate the world’ era. Please go back to that. It’s an order.”
She laughs at my face. “I’ll cancel your appointments.” She disconnects before I can be rude to her. Look at her taking my orders seriously. The best assistant ever.
I spend the entire rest of the drive coming up with plans to find this murderer before the new team shows up and we lose our access to Bureau data. Nicholas won’t be back from work until late, and he’s probably going to stay at his place tonight. I’ll fill him in later, but right now, I need to make a plan with Sam, like we used to.
I park my car, happy to find Sam’s rental already in the driveway, and rush inside.
Sam is sitting on the couch, eating a sandwich. “This better be important. I had to make my order to go, and these do not travel well.” He points at me with his sandwich, then takes a bite.
“We need to find the copycat killer.” I sit down on the chair close to him.
He tilts his head, continuing to chew. “Aren’t we alreadydoing that?”
I shake my head. “No, we need to find themnow. Nicholas doesn’t know, but his boss is bringing in an entirely new team on the case. We’ll lose access to everything then and become more vulnerable.”
Sam sets his plate down. “Shit. That’s not great.”
“No, it’s not.” I lean back against the couch. “But I have a plan.”
Sam leans forward. “Okay?”
