At the Quiet Edge(82)
But did it matter? She’d told him what she knew. She’d set it in motion.
Tomorrow she’d decide whether she would take Everett to school or keep him home. Shit, maybe she should call in sick and get him the hell out of town for a day or two. She’d never even used a sick day before. They could drive to Wichita, go to the zoo, stay in a place with an indoor pool for Everett. Pretend everything was more than okay, pretend it was good. Paranoid that Everett would see what she’d done, she deleted her texts to Mendelson and waited.
Phone clutched to her chest, she fell asleep with half the lights on.
When the wind kicked up around 5:00 a.m., Lily jerked awake, sure she’d only been asleep a few minutes. It certainly felt that way. A glance at her phone showed no messages. Lily closed her bleary eyes and tried to get back to sleep despite the howling storm.
Jones and his goddamn selfishness. He’d probably sent this wind too, just to torment her and keep her awake. Within a few minutes she was staring into the dark, eyes wide open and not one bit of sleepiness left. She checked her phone frequently to break up the seconds.
She finally wanted to talk to this Mendelson asshole, and now he was ignoring her? Typical.
Turning over, she tried to find a comfortable spot on her ancient mattress. Maybe she could toss this one and have a new one delivered to a new home. A new home. That was something good to think about.
Still, the security deposit would put a big dent into her savings, so a new mattress might be out of the picture. At least she had very good access to a dolly and moving supplies. Laughing humorlessly into the dark as she turned over for the fifth time, she finally gave up and got out of bed.
Outside her window, the wind whipped the metal doors of the nearest units, rattling them. If she tried hard, she could imagine it was the distant rumble of waves or even the whoosh of shaking leaves, but there was always that faint ring of metal beneath the sound. She wouldn’t miss that.
A sudden, louder clang of metal startled her. Jones? Could it be Jones? She went to the window to peer out at clouds scudding past a faint edge of dawn.
She didn’t think he’d hurt her—she’d never seen that in him—but he was certainly capable of skulking around. The metal sound came again, softer this time. The garbage can must have rolled over into the fence. That was probably what had woken her up. Her neck ached and her back screamed with tension, but that was all left over from last night. At least she’d slept a little.
Lily trudged to the bathroom and hit the light switch, then hit it again. Nothing. The storm had knocked out the power. She stifled a weary groan.
It was the first time this year, but she had plenty of experience. Their area was too isolated to put it high on the list of the power company’s priorities. One time she’d had to manually haul the gate open and closed for three days in a row. But Everett had loved camping in her bedroom with lanterns.
Using her phone as a flashlight, Lily found one of the battery-operated lanterns and turned it on. She washed an apple in the sink and put the coffee on, staring blankly at the machine for far too long before remembering it had no electricity.
“Oh God. No coffee.” She should really crawl back into bed and try to sleep.
For a few long seconds, she thought the buzz that began to tickle her ears was another rattle kicked up by the storm, a vibration plucked from the endless yards of chain link surrounding her home. It was only when the vibration stopped abruptly that Lily realized it had been her phone.
It started buzzing again as she reached for it. Was Mendelson finally calling back? “Hello?” she croaked.
“You’re not going to believe who I found sneaking around outside your fence, Lily.”
She cleared her scratchy throat as her pulse banged in her ears. “Jones?”
“Yes. I have him outside in my car. I’d like you to come identify him, please.”
That snapped her wide awake. Her eyes rolled toward Everett’s closed door. “I’ll be right there,” she whispered.
She hung up and stuffed her phone into her sweatpants. Thunder rolled in, starting with a purr before it grew to a roar. Then a flash of faraway lightning crept past her blinds like slashing fingers.
She needed to sneak out, confirm it was Jones, and let Mendelson gloat for a moment, since that was clearly what he was looking for. She felt strangely calm at the idea of laying eyes on Jones again. She wasn’t sure what she’d feel if he weren’t in custody. Scared or just angry? But at this exact moment, she felt nothing, like her mind had switched off her emotions for safety.
Pulling on a hoodie that lay over the corner of the couch, she moved quietly to the door to slide her feet into tennis shoes. Then she slipped out, locking the apartment door up tight behind her. The office was dark without the lantern, but a bit of light filtered through the windows from the business park across the street.
Jones had finally screwed up. He’d finally gotten too desperate and taken too many risks. She no longer cared about the optics of having him caught here, because Everett would be safe, and they were free now. She and Everett could walk away from Herriman and never set foot in this town again if they wanted. Well, aside from her supervisory duties, of course. But Everett could start over far away.
She opened the office door and was nearly tugged out by a gust of wind that spat rain beneath the hood of her sweatshirt. She rushed down the walk, wondering what this would all look like on Sharon’s security cameras.