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“So, they are killing themselves.”
“But they wouldn’t have, if not for him. Bastard,” she said again.
“So, we find him. And stop his clock.”
“One thing at a time. First we talk to the girls’ fathers. I’m suspicious, but I would like to talk to at least one of the family members. Then we tell the queen what we know.”
“Okay.” Pause. “The queen?”
“Oh, you won’t be there,” she assured him. “You can just drop me off when we get to Minneapolis.”
“Hell with that,” he said.
“Liam…”
“Nope.”
She didn’t reply, but figured that could be dealt with when the time came.
5
“NO,” the woman in the bathrobe said. She was probably in her late forties, but looked like she was on this side of sixty. Poor thing, Liam thought. Losin’ her kid, and now strangers knocking on her door in the middle of the night. “I told you. No more reporters.”
She started to swing the door closed, but quick as thought, Sophie brought her arm up and stopped her, her palm slamming into the glass pane so hard, Liam was afraid it would break. “I beg your pardon,” she said in her gorgeous accent, “but we do insist. We will not take up much of your time.” She smiled big—Liam almost got dizzy, she smiled so big—and looked dead into the woman’s eyes. “And a mother knows things, yes? A mother always knows things.”
As if in a trance, the woman stepped back, leaving the door open. Sophie walked right in, bold as you’d want, and Liam followed her. He noticed that though the woman was staring at Sophie with a rapt expression, she kept her hands up on the neckline of her powder blue robe. Keeping it closed. Hum.
“It’s so good of you to see us,” Sophie said sweetly, soothingly. “And we won’t be a minute. Where is your husband?”
“Asleep. He took three Ambiens and he sleeps all the time.”
“Of course. And soon you will be sleeping as well. We just want to hear about Shawna’s boyfriend.”
“No good,” Shawna’s mother said, shaking her auburn head, which was probably neat and pretty most times, but tonight it looked like a dirty mop. “He was no good.”
“Because he was never around, correct?”
“Yuh.”
“You asked and asked to meet him. Told her to invite him to dinner many times.”
“He never came.”
“That’s right, he never ever did, and you never saw him during the day, did you?”
“He was in school,” Sophie’s mother said, fiddling with the neckline of her robe. Liam had the impression she was trying to break Sophie’s gaze, but couldn’t quite do it. “He was busy. She understood. But not me. If he really cared for her, he would have met us. He would…” She sighed, a dreadful, lost sound.
Liam’s heart was almost breaking, listening to that. To distract himself, he looked around the small ranch house. Pictures of Shawna all over the place. He jerked his gaze elsewhere, finally settling on Sophie, who was holding the mother’s hands with both of her small ones. Her dark eyes were intent and sad at the same time.
He couldn’t believe the night’s events so far, and felt ashamed that he was so happy in the middle of so much shit and sorrow. He’d finally screwed up his courage…and now they were after a bad guy together. She’d let him come along; shit, she was letting him drive her. He was afraid he’d wake up any minute. It was awful being in the dead girl’s house, but it would have been more awful to watch Sophie leave.
“Then he quit calling, yes?” Sophie was still pulling information out of the dead girl’s mom, as carefully and gently as he’d get a kitten out of the lilac bushes behind his place. “And she couldn’t find him? To talk to him, find out what was wrong?”
“It was worse than that. He said she was a child, a little girl. He said he needed a woman. A grown-up woman. He said he hadn’t liked her for a while, he was just…” Another dreadful sigh. “Playing.”
“And Shawna couldn’t take that, yes? She tried to hide it from you, but…”
“A mother always knows. Her dad thought…you know, high school stuff…”
“That she would get over it.”
“But she couldn’t. He was everything. He was…” Shawna’s mother’s fingers were fiddling faster. “Her dark sweetheart. Her everything. He was going to be a doctor. He was pre med. That’s how they met. And…”
“And she waited until you were gone,” Sophie prompted gently.
“And then we came home…and she had…but I think he came back. I think he came back and hurt her by saying more bad things to her. Hurt her until she did that. Hurt her until he got what he wanted.”
“As a matter of fact,” Sophie said, “so do I. And there’s just one more thing…where is this awful creature staying? Did Shawna tell you?”
“He’s at the B and B. How many college students do you know who stay at a B and B? He was no good.”
“I agree totally. Madam, you will not remember this conversation.”
“No,” she agreed, “I won’t remember it.”
“And you’ll go to your bed, and find solace with your darling husband. And you’ll sleep and sleep.”
“I’ll sleep and sleep,” she agreed, “for the first time since Shawna left.”
“Yes. And tomorrow, you will still grieve, but you will start to imagine that perhaps someday, there will be something to live for again. It won’t seem like a far-off impossibility.”
“Someday there might be something to live for. Lots of kids need good homes.” Then she added doubtfully, “But I doubt it. Shawna’s death is too big. It takes over everything.”
“Yes, but not forever. Go to bed, now, madam.” Sophie stood on her toes and kissed the older woman on the cheek. “Shawna sees you.”
The woman turned around without another word and shuffled toward the back of the house.
Sophie burst into tears, startling Liam. He put a clumsy arm around her and she leaned against him. She smelled like sweet, fresh straw. “Oh, the poor thing,” she wept. “Did you see the pictures? Their only girl, dead. And for what?”
“I guess,” he said slowly, “for a mean trick.”
Sophie stopped crying at once—though there had been no tears, just a kind of hoarse sobbing—and her eyes took on a hard shine he had never seen before. It was dumb, but he almost felt like taking a step back from her. “That’s right, Liam. That’s just right. A mean trick. And we’re going to stop his clock. We’re going to gut him like a trout and take his head and bury it with the garlic bulbs. That’s what we’re going to do.”
“All right,” he replied. “Sounds like a good deal. But I gotta gas up the truck first.”
She smiled at that, as he had meant for her to do. “Fair enough. Let’s leave this place. Can we be in Minneapolis before dawn?”
“You bet.”
She tucked her small hand into his and followed him back to the truck.
6
“I’M sorry,” the reservations clerk at the Radisson told them. “The only rooms we have left have a king-sized bed in them. Non-smoking,” he added helpfully.
“That will be fine,” Sophie replied. Liam was his usual expressionless self, but she assumed he wouldn’t mind, either. In fact, the thought of sharing a bed with him caused a pleasant tingle low in her stomach, usually the sort of tingle caused by strolling through a blood bank. If Liam did mind, she could always sleep under the bed. Or in the closet. “Do you take American Express?”
When the clerk, a short man with a freckled, egg-shaped, shaved head, turned away to run the card, Liam muttered, “You got a credit card?”
“You know all those ‘Cardholder for ten years,’ ‘Cardholder for twenty years’ ads?” she whispered back.
“Don’t even tell me.”
“Well, I’ve had one for a long time.”
He snickered and, when the clerk came back, said, “Can we get a window facing west?”
The clerk blinked. “Oh, sure.”
