My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(32)

Why is she watching it now, though?

She actually stumbles when the obviousness of it hits her: she’s not watching Terra Nova at all. She’s glaring back at Letha’s father, Theo Mondragon, the one who rolled his arm forward for the graduation crowd, telling Proofrock it could get on with its little ceremony.

The chip on her shoulder for him isn’t only about that, though. It’s… it’s that he’s a father of a sort-of young girl, isn’t it? An innocent girl, at least.

Shit.

Jade collects herself, walks faster, with more purpose.

Her job here, it’s not only to educate Letha on what’s coming. It’s also to keep her safe so it all can happen.

That includes keeping her safe from her father, who, by marrying a woman half his age, is already whispering to the world that he’s not averse to stepping well outside his age group. Maybe even has a taste for it.

Is this the chink in Letha Mondragon’s otherwise impervious armor? Final girls these days do have those pesky pre-existing issues, Jade knows. She thought it was whatever happened to Letha’s real mom, which would be enough, but— no no no—she has something more intense, doesn’t she?

Something in her past, in her childhood, that’s left her skittish, that fundamentally broke her confidence in the world.

Her father.

It all tracks, doesn’t it? Letha isn’t timid and conservative and right-moral’d from nature, but because she’s trying to make up for something, trying to cover it with good deeds.

Something that wasn’t even her fault. She was just a little girl left alone with her dad for the afternoon.

Jade is crashing through the bushes now.

Chancing another look across the water, she can nearly see Theo Mondragon up in his office in their yacht, getting off scot-free one more time, skating like he always has with his wealth, his privilege, his good looks and charm. His funny excuses, his believable lies.

He’s smug because no one is ever going to know. Letha sure isn’t going to tell, and, from what Jade hears, it’s just them over there—the Mondragons. The other Founders swing through on and off to check on the progress of Terra Nova, but they’ve got empires to run, and their yachts are probably cutting through other waters anyway, the world being their playground and all.

“You’re being paranoid,” Jade tries to tell herself. But she doesn’t slow down any. What she’s seeing now that she’s deeper in the trees, cutting across to the flickering bonfire at Banner Tompkins’s, what she can’t help but picture, is Theo Mondragon in what he would probably call a skiff or a dinghy, with a silent little trolling motor. Not the Umiak, as everybody knows that one, and of course not the pontoon boat with all the seats that they use when the other Founders are in town. It’s got festive lights strung all over it now anyway. And the catamaran with the big sail would be like advertising his progress across the lake, and the gondola boat tied to their dock has to be purely for show, and wouldn’t last out in Indian Lake’s chop anyway, and the canoe and rowboat are too slow, too labor intensive for a CEO, and the stupid white pedal boat with the high arching swan neck and tiny aristocratic swan head has to be just for any kids who show up, doesn’t it?

No, a little flat-bottomed jonboat with a trolling motor. It’s like putting a silencer on a small-caliber pistol. Theo Mondragon’s probably sitting in the bow right now, his hand on that steering handle, the wind in his tight hair, his five o’clock shadow raspy, his eyes brimming with the most expensive wine.

Does he have a spotting scope up on that tallest part of the yacht? Has he been tracking the party?

Jade can’t say there’s not a sliver of a chance.

And, right now, Letha, she’s in a between-place, she’s unaccounted-for, it’s her first big night out on her own.

Anything can happen.

Jade slows a few feet back in the trees, eases the Michael mask out, fits it over her face just in case, fluffing her purple-tinged hair out over the elastic band. Watching like this, a mask just feels better. It’s not the first time she’s done it, of course—she treats parties like anthropology field work, taking mental notes the whole time—but it’s the first time she’s doing it for a reason that might make sense later.

The bonfire blazing in the yard is the jumbo-size version of her dad’s yearslong fire pit in the backyard, that he makes her scrape out some Sundays.

The Jeep is already there.

Jade creeps over, holds her hand close to the tailpipe, feeling for heat, then finally thins her lips, just clamps right on.

It’s only warm.

Letha’s in the house, then. With all the music, all the loud talking, all the squeals.

Good for her. She deserves this. Be a kid before it’s too late, this is the last summer for it.

Jade feels around for the right tree to stand behind, for the right dip to crouch in, for the right pile of junk to mask her pale coveralls, and it doesn’t match the mask, but she can’t help doing the sound effects a bit: ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma.

She’s not here to carve through the party, though. Let them have their fun, she doesn’t care. She’s here because—because what if Theo Mondragon is about to drag his Saturday night special jonboat up onto the shore?

Jade would never kill anyone just because. With reason, though, yeah. Twice-over, with interest, and more than a little attitude, maybe even something a little extra, for style points.