The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(71)

Jamie’s the one who speaks up, though. “We should get out of here before they come looking for you, Noah. I mean, I can hand-wave a lot, but it’ll be easier if—”

“They’re not going to arrest me,” I say.

“They can hold you for less than twenty-four hours for whatever they want,” Mara says. “Without arresting you.”

“?’Murica,” Jamie mutters.

“Felicity was murdered in a property you own,” Daniel says.

“She committed suicide,” I say. “And with my father’s lawyers—they wouldn’t dare.” I glance at Mara, only just beginning to fully grasp the extent and reach of the privilege I’ve enjoyed.

“They won’t send a SWAT team here,” she says. “Probably just a couple of detectives.”

“Are you actually worried about yourself when Stella just announced to the world that she’s going to commit suicide imminently?” Leo asks me. Rage simmers beneath his placid, amphibious expression. Where was all this feeling when she went missing?

“I’m concerned that if I’m detained, I won’t be able to help in any way.” I don’t even give him the satisfaction of meeting his gaze. Instead, I pocket my mobile and my keys, one of which belongs to a car I’ve never driven and didn’t ask for but was bought for me anyway, by the assistant. No time like the present. “Shall we drive?”

“Drive . . . where?” Sophie asks.

“Anywhere but here, until we figure out where she is,” I say.

Daniel meets my steps to the door. “Works for me,” he says. Then, lower, “I was the last one in the archives. The police are going to want to talk to me.”

“No, they won’t. We left together.”

“I went back.”

It takes effort to appear as though he hasn’t said anything.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say quickly. “You had my permission. And as Jamie said, he can hand-wave any questions—”

“Where do you think she is?” Mara asks me. She’s slipping into a jacket just as Sophie and Leo join us.

“We have to try to think the way she’s thinking.”

“But she’s not thinking, is the point,” Leo cuts in. “If she were thinking, she wouldn’t be doing this.”

“She is thinking,” I insist. “She’s just thinking the way—the way someone who’s given up hope would think.” A pattern I’m familiar with.

“How can we predict that?” Sophie turns to me, then Leo. “How am I supposed to find her before . . .” Her voice trails off before she finishes her sentence, but she doesn’t have to.

“People who think about dying think about what they’ll miss about this world, if they’re to leave it. So what does Stella love most?” I ask Leo.

“Um, I thought . . . I mean . . . I think . . . she loves me?” he finally says.

Nice try, mate. “No, what does she love?”

“Her friends, family,” Sophie says.

I avoid looking at Jamie and Mara—seeing their scepticism won’t help.

“You’re not listening. Other than the standard shit people say on dating profiles,” I say to Leo.

“How would you know what people say on dating profiles?” Goose asks.

Mara twists around. “Really?”

“Just asking.”

“If you were to take away something from Stella,” I say, searching for the right words, “what thing that if you took it away, you’d be taking part of her away too?”

Leo and Sophie look at each other. The silence is worse than uncomfortable. No one in this room seems to have known Stella at all.

“She loved the water,” Jamie says suddenly. “Loves,” he corrects himself. “She loves the water.”

“She was on the swim team in high school,” Mara says to me. “I remember her saying something about that at . . .”

Horizons.

“What did she say in her video?” I ask Jamie. “Let me see your phone; play it back.”

“The whole thing?”

“Just the last bit.” He hands me his phone. It’s especially eerie now, hearing her voice, knowing what she’s planning to do.

I want all of you to see me do it . . . .

I want your own eyes looking at my eyes when she kills me . . . .

“It’ll be public, like the others,” I say. “Though not exactly the same.” Not a hanging, not jumping in front of the train. Whatever part of Stella still has autonomy is aware of the others. She wants her choice to stand out.

“The river?” Jamie looks at Mara, then Daniel.

“Which one?”

“Mates,” Goose says, “I think it might be too late for us to get out of here. I just saw two helicopters . . . .”

But I’m already moving through the flat toward the east clock face, to the glass that separates us from the Manhattan Bridge. It rises out of the East River like a prehistoric beast, its pylons rusty with age, almost appearing to ripple with muscle. The main span is like a spine, the suspension cables, ribs. It stands between islands, stretching its neck, its tail, carrying thousands of people, even now. And I know that Stella is one of them.