The Night Shift(27)

“Yes, the morning’s better.” He looks at Jesse. “Shall I make up the guest room?”

“That would be lovely. Thank you, Charles.”

Charles disappears.

Jesse’s mouth is agape as she looks about the foyer. The high ceilings, chandelier sparkling even in the dim light. She wanders into the library with its expansive bookshelves and ladder attached to a rail that spans the length of the wall.

They sit in the two leather chairs. Ella’s dad would spend hours in this room, reading, thinking, seeking refuge from her mother.

Ella notices that Jesse hasn’t checked her phone for worried messages from her foster mother. Her heart aches at that. The girl survived an attack out of a horror movie, and she seems alone in this world.

They remain silent for a long while. Ella finally breaks the ice: “When I went back to school after what happened, I felt like a different person. Like I was in one of those alien movies—my body was the same but something had taken over inside.”

Jesse stands, walks to the bookshelf, pulls a leather-bound volume, and flips through it absently.

“But I’ll tell you,” Ella continues, “it gets better.”

Jesse whirls around. Her elegant features are shadowed, giving her the appearance of a 1950s movie starlet. She’ll be a beautiful woman one day. She already is.

“Does it really?” she asks. “Get better?” It’s a challenge, calling Ella on her bullshit.

“Yes.”

“Does your fiancé agree?”

Touché.

Ella feels a sting of guilt. She’s been a serial cheater. She pictures Brad’s face from earlier. It wasn’t angry. Just run-down, exhausted because, no matter how hard he tried to make things work, she wouldn’t stop. She’s a horrible person, she knows. What the hell is she doing? She’s the worst person in the world to give advice.

Ella says, “Earlier, at the rail yard, you said you’d lied about what happened.”

Jesse’s glance returns to the book, flipping the pages. “I’m really tired. Can we talk about it tomorrow?”

Ella doesn’t want to talk about it tomorrow. She wants to talk about it now. But she doesn’t push. She waits.

At last, Jesse says, “I hated Madison Sawyer.”

Ella doesn’t understand. Who’s Madison Sawyer? Then it hits her: one of the ice cream store victims.

“I went to the store to confront her.”

This was the lie: Jesse told the police she went to the store to use the bathroom. That she didn’t know the victims well.

“Confront her about what?” Ella asks.

“She was talking shit about me. Her and her friends. And I wanted them to stop.”

Before Ella has a chance to respond, Charles appears and says their rooms are ready.

Jesse leaps at the chance to escape. They follow Charles up the spiral staircase.

Jesse says, “We’ll talk more in the morning.”

Ella wants to protest. Wants to know more. But Jesse disappears into the guest room and shuts the heavy wooden door.

Back in the familiar comfort of her childhood bedroom, Ella falls into the bed. She’s exhausted, but not sure she can sleep. She has a knot in her gut. Anxiety prickling under her skin at the unanswered questions: What happened at that ice cream store? What else might Jesse be hiding? And, critically, what is Ella supposed to do with this new information? As the hours pass and darkness gives way to a purple hue, she wonders what further chaos the day will bring.





CHAPTER 23


KELLER





The phone pings at the breakfast table. Keller fights the urge to check the text as she downs the porridge and fruit Bob has made her. He has a thing about using phones at the table and she tries to respect that.

“Do you have your thermos?” he asks, retrieving a blender pitcher filled with green sludge from the refrigerator.

She grimaces. “I’m sorry, I left it at the office.” More likely it’s still rolling around on the floor of her car, where she left it yesterday.

“Nice try,” he says, pulling another thermos from the cupboard. “I bought two.”

Keller’s phone pings for the fourth time.

“Go ahead, check it,” he tells her.

She scans the device. A series of texts from Stan:

Turn on TV

Today show Or any morning show Call me



Keller goes to the living room and turns on the set. She assumes it’s another segment on the ice cream store murders or even the Blockbuster case. But the Today show anchor is smiling, upbeat. On the screen: “We’ve been showing you this all morning, but the internet has been ablaze with a video they’re calling ‘Agent Badass.’ Yesterday in New Jersey, local police were storming a house to detain a suspect when a federal agent learned that the suspect wasn’t there. Instead, his autistic son was inside, and the police didn’t know it. Fearing for the boy’s safety, the agent … well, watch this.”

The screen skips to cell-phone footage of Keller—looking extremely pregnant—holding her badge in the air, crossing the street, and barging through the shattered front door.

Bob has joined her in the living room. “Is that you?” He looks at her. “You said you went inside for the kid, but you didn’t mention it was mid-siege. What were you—”