Page 193

I go very still.

Sherry realizes she chose badly, and starts backing up.

“There been more people like me?”

She splutters, “Just some nurses and a bitch from the State. He’s dramatic. Starts trouble over nothing.”

“Dramatic.”

“Always has been.”

“Interesting.”

I tuck the folder under my arm, then pull my gun.

“Holy shit!” she screeches.

“Oh, shut up. Kitchen. Now.”

She goes. Her slippers scuff the linoleum, one heel dragging like she’s already wounded.

I sit her at the kitchen table. The vinyl chair creaks under her. There’s a coffee mug on the table with dried rings inside it, and a fly buzzing against the window over the sink.

Her hands shake.

I lay the gun down within reach, angled toward her, and take out my phone.

“Bank.”

She stares at me over the rim of the mug. “What?”

“You’re giving Kamden his money back.”

“What money?” The lie comes out so fast I almost admire it. No hesitation. Not even a blink.

“Four thousand seven hundred and two dollars.”

Her face drains. The color goes first from her lips, then upward, like someone pulling a plug. “I spent that.”

“I know.”

“I don’t have it.”

“You have more than that.”

She leans back in the chair, and it complains under her again. “How the fuck do you know what I have?”

“I know a lot about you now, Sherry.”

She believes the rest. I watch it happen—the doubt folding up, put away like laundry. I don’t need to explain where I got her financial information, which accounts I found, or how much I know about what she spends money on.

“Log in.”

She doesn’t move. She looks at the gun instead, at its black barrel pointed at nothing much.

I tap the gun once against the tabletop. The sound is small and flat in that kitchen.

Her hands start moving frantically. She pulls her phone out of her robe pocket with two fingers, as if it might burn her, and unlocks it with a thumb that slips once before it works. The screen light casts a blue glow across her face.