The Girl Who Survived(100)

She pressed down on the accelerator, her LX 570 shooting around some muscle car, her wheels humming on the asphalt, the engine a soft, steady purr.

Jonas McIntyre could leave tonight and screw his brains out—or whatever.

But he’d be back.

Alex and the remaining McIntyre son who had survived the massacre and been so wrongly charged were symbiotic.

Jonas needed her as much as she needed him.

*

Kara slid into Tate’s SUV. “Buy me a drink?” she asked.

“It’s not even noon. You serious?”

“Just kidding. Drive.” She hadn’t been kidding. Cooped up with the detectives in the interrogation room had been excruciating. Her nerves were shot and nothing would calm them more than a Bloody Mary or a Mimosa or a damned wine cooler.

“Where to?”

“Back to your place to pick up Rhapsody, then I guess I should go home.” There was vodka and wine waiting for her in the kitchen and she felt a gnawing ache to taste it.

He pulled into the slow-moving traffic, then glanced her way. “How’d it go with the police?”

“It went,” she said, glancing at Tate as he slowed for a red light. “Look, I haven’t been totally honest with you.”

He didn’t seem surprised.

Great. Probably meant he hadn’t been honest as well.

“I don’t trust reporters, I don’t trust men, hell, I don’t trust anyone because I have abandonment issues and blah, blah, blah. It’s been explained to me by a dozen shrinks.”

“Okay.” He slowed as traffic was clogged.

“Anyway, I told the police that I think I saw Marlie at the hospital and—”

“Marlie? In the hospital?” He glanced at her.

“No, in the crowd outside.”

“You saw . . . ?” He didn’t finish the thought, but cast a concerned glance. She held up her phone. “I got this back and . . . well, crap, Tate. I was getting weird calls and texts. I mean when Jonas got out . . . or around there, but before I went to Merritt’s cabin, before I found him with his throat slit, before the accident, when Jonas was getting out, and I think they’re from Marlie. But then that’s not right because she wouldn’t talk about herself in the third person, saying she’s alive, and I saw a police composite picture of her . . .” She stopped, realized she was babbling, nearly hyperventilating.

“Marlie? You think you got a text from her?”

“Yes! I should have told you sooner,” she said. “I know it, but everything’s just so weird, so out of control so—”

“Shhh. It’s okay,” Tate said as he braked for a red light, idling behind a dirty black pickup with a load of firewood beneath a blue flapping tarp. He touched her shoulder. “When we get back, you can tell me all about it. I can stop for coffee. There’s a kiosk up ahead.”

“Only if they’ll add a shot of Baileys or Irish whiskey to it,” she said, and sent him a look. “Not kidding.” And then she turned her gaze to the intersection, where a young mom was pushing a stroller with one hand and holding on to the mittened hand of a boy of four or five with her other hand. They disappeared in front of the pickup and she glanced to the corner, where a guy dressed in a red santa suit was ringing a bell and collecting donations. He was shouting “Merry Christmas” and “God bless you” and “ho, ho, ho” ad nauseam. Man, she hated this time of year.

Closing her eyes, she told herself she just needed to hang on, to pull herself together, to do anything but lose control.

By the time they reached Tate’s loft and were inside, she was calmer, and it helped that he had taken her at her word by making them each a cup of coffee and adding a healthy pour of Baileys Irish Cream to the brew. No whiskey. She was seated on the couch, Rhapsody at her side, as he handed the steaming cup to her and she accepted it, her fingers trembling slightly before she took a long, mind-calming swallow.

That was better.

So much better.

The warmth of the coffee and the tingle of a little whisper of booze did wonders for the quivering she felt inside.

After grabbing a second cup for himself, he flipped a dining chair around and straddled it in order to face her. “So? What’s the big lie?” he asked, sipping from his cup. “We did have a deal, you know. We’re in this together.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She took another big swallow. The alcohol helped calm her frayed-to-the-breaking-point nerves. Being here, out of the police station, eased the tension, but still she was anxious and nervous, felt confined, like a damned caged animal. She needed to get out. Get away. Do something. “As I said, I’ve been getting calls,” she admitted, and took another big swallow. Then she set the cup down, found her fingers were a little more steady and unlocked her phone. Scrolling through a few calls from reporters and police, she found the voice mail and played the short message that had been left in the thin, papery voice, “She’s alive.”

“Before you ask, I don’t recognize the voice, nor the numbers.”

“Probably a burner phone.”

“Right. There’s more.” She showed him the text messages, then picked up her cup and drained it before leaning back on the cushions.

“Who would do this?”

“I don’t know.” She stood, leaving him with her phone, walked into the kitchen area, brewed herself a second cup and added a healthy shot of the Irish Cream while Tate scrolled through the messages on her phone.