Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard #2)(31)
Jesse came back a few minutes later with a big armful of pillows and what looked like sleeping bags.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going to have a campout,” he announced.
I gave him a dubious look. “Excuse me?”
“Look,” he dropped the pile next to Max and me—Max craning his head at an impossible angle to lick Jesse’s face, as if not wanting him to feel excluded—and sat down. “We came in the front door, and walked into the house. We’re not within ten feet of an exterior anything, as far as I know, and the bathroom is farther in still. As long as we stay here, there’s only one way they could possibly come in, right?”
“Yeah, but, Jesse, we don’t have to sleep on the floor. I haven’t been in a sleeping bag since, like, high school. My people are not camping people.”
He was already shaking his head. “I thought about it. All of the upstairs bedrooms are against exterior walls.” He pointed to the couch at the far end of the living room. “That’s an exterior wall. I’ll move the couch closer, and you can sleep on that. I’ll take the floor.”
“You really think Olivia’s going to, what, dynamite your parents’ wall to get to me?” I said skeptically. “Ninja-jump through a second-story window?”
“No, I don’t,” he said primly, mock offended. “I think that sounds ridiculous. She shouldn’t know where my parents live. And I personally don’t think she could get within two hundred feet of the house without this mutt”—he pointed at Max, who was still panting and looking from one of our faces to the other like he was in heaven—“sounding the alarm, which is an impressive one. But the two things we know about Olivia for sure are that she’s motivated and that she’s completely nuts. I don’t want to risk it.”
“But—”
“Scarlett, for all you know, she could be working with a witch who can cast a spell to get them close to the house without making a sound, and to remove a damn chunk of the building.” My mouth snapped shut. That was kind of a good point. I’d once seen Kirsten drop a section of flooring down to rescue me when I was trapped in a basement. “Besides,” he overrode me, “I don’t want to not be able to sleep all night, imagining her and her crony creeping up on the house. This way they can only come at us from one possible direction, and that feels a lot safer to me than having the whole house exposed.”
I sighed and looked down at my lap. “What do you think?” I asked the dog, who focused on my face and wagged his tail hard enough for his butt to wiggle. He licked the air in front of his face a few times, having probably been trained that people didn’t want face kisses. I laughed. “Fine. Max says campout.”
I went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. To my surprise, Molly had played nice and just packed flannel pants and a gray T-shirt as my pajamas. She ordinarily wouldn’t miss an opportunity to dick around with my wardrobe—it would be just like her to pack me, say, a negligee or something involving a thong—but she probably felt bad about being in on Dashiell’s plan to shanghai me. Well, good.
When I came out, Jesse was standing in the living room holding a big armful of quilts, with a cell phone tucked between one ear and his shoulder. When he saw me, he said into the phone, “Me too. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He dropped the blankets so he could hang up the phone.
“The girlfriend?” I said, in what I hoped was a casual manner.
“Yeah.” He fidgeted with the blankets for a second, making them into a nest on the floor.
“Is she…upset?” I asked, not even sure how I would feel about it if she was.
“No. I was a little vague on the details, I guess,” he said uncomfortably. “I’m just gonna run to the bathroom.”
While he was gone, his phone made a little ping, and I impulsively picked it up. New text message from Runa. I didn’t open the message, but I couldn’t help but see the picture that popped up on the screen for Jesse’s new girlfriend. The woman was even more beautiful than I had feared: all white teeth, glowing tan, and white-blonde hair. She was standing on the beach with a camera strapped around her neck and one hand shielding her eyes. The hand was attached to a very tanned, toned arm. She looked happy and lively, just bursting with good health and enthusiasm for life.
Of course.
I put the phone back where I’d found it. When Jesse came out we finally got settled, me on the couch and him on the floor with Max stretched on his tummy against one of Jesse’s legs. I listened to the silence for a few minutes. It was quieter here than at Molly’s Hollywood bungalow, and darker too. You could almost believe we were out in the country somewhere, instead of in the heart of Los Angeles.
“What about her background?” Jesse asked suddenly. “What do you know about Olivia’s personal life?”
I blinked at the new topic and hung my head over the couch to squint at him. “Why do you ask?”
His blankets moved in a shrug. “I don’t know what else to ask about her.”
I lay back and stared into the darkness, thinking it over. “She was married once, but her husband died a long time ago. He left her some money. She didn’t really need the job cleaning for Dashiell, but I think she got off on the power. On knowing secrets.”