Vengeful (Villains #2)(88)

“What have you been up to?” asked June, leaning against the wall.

“Making connections,” said Marcella. She drew a folded piece of paper from her purse. “Since you have a knack for finding people—”

“I have a knack for killing people,” corrected June. “Finding them is simply a prerequisite.”

“Well, I have a job for you.” Marcella held out the slip. “Did you know that there’s someone out there killing EOs?”

“Yeah,” said June, taking the folded slip. “It’s called EON.”

Marcella persisted. “I’m talking about an EO. Someone like us, killing people like us. Which I find rather vexing.”

June unfolded the paper, her gaze flitting over the list.

Fulton.

Dresden.

South Broughton.

Brenthaven.

Halloway.

She stilled, recognition flitting like a pulse inside her chest. “What is this?”

“The locations,” said Marcella, “of the EO’s last five kills.”

June didn’t look at her phone, but she knew that if she did, if she opened her texts from Sydney, she’d see these same places listed, each in response to the question June always asked.

Where are you these days?

June wanted to know, because the world was big, wanted to know because Sydney was hers to protect. She read the list again.

So this was what Victor had been doing. Why the three of them were always on the move. But June doubted that he was purely an executioner. Doubted it was that simple.

We’re looking for someone who can help.

Maybe that was true. Maybe Victor was being thorough. Covering his tracks afterward. It made sense, considering he was supposed to be dead.

“Let me get this straight,” said June, pocketing the list, “there’s an EO out there killing other EOs. And you want to find him.”

“EON wants to find him,” said Marcella. “And they want my help.”

June let out a short, humorless laugh. “That’s what you meant by making connections?”

“Indeed,” said Marcella. “I told you I would handle them. But I had to give the boys something, and it was either you and Jonathan, or this.” Marcella leaned on the marble counter. “They’ve given me two weeks to find this EO killer.”

“And what happens then?”

“Oh,” mused Marcella, tracing the veins in the stone, “I imagine that Director Stell will decide I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

“You don’t seem worried,” said June.

Marcella straightened. “He’s underestimated what I can do with two weeks. In the meantime, I suppose we should find that EO.”

June’s mind was turning, but she kept her voice airy, light. “What are you going to do with him?”

“You know,” said Marcella, “I haven’t decided yet.”





XX



A WEEK AND A HALF AGO





DOWNTOWN WHITTON


JUNE had texted Sydney on her way to the car, sat idling there until she saw the three small dots that signaled an incoming reply.

Syd: Whitton.

June put the location into her GPS, and shifted into gear as the map came up on the screen.

From there it was easy to find them.

How’s the view? she’d asked. Tell me what you see.

Such a simple question, made routine by years of checking in, asking such small, seemingly innocuous questions as a way to condense the distance between them. June soon learned that Sydney and Victor and Mitch were staying in a nondescript apartment building, a ten-story stack of tan stone blocks on a street filled with the same, the only relief a small park on the corner, the bright flags on the hotel across the street.

June checked in to that same hotel the next day, and waited. Waited for proof that Victor was the EO killer, that he was the person Stell was looking for, the one Marcella promised to find.

She had been waiting for three days.

Victor came and went, a constant, restless force, carving slow circles through the small city, and June would follow at a distance, snapping photos with her phone. But so far, he’d yet to make a move. June was getting restless.

Still, it hadn’t all been a waste of time. She’d gotten to see Syd—hadn’t let the girl see her, of course, there would be time for that later—but once, she’d trailed Mitch and Sydney to a movie, sat right behind them, and let herself pretend they were there together, like a family.

It had been nice.

But mostly, June waited.

She hated waiting.

Right now, she was pacing on the curb outside the hotel, dressed as an old man, a cigarette hanging from her fingers.

She looked up, now and then, waiting for the balcony door five floors up and two over to slide open, waiting for Syd to emerge into the afternoon sun.

A few minutes later, she did.

That familiar blond bob caught the light as she stepped out onto the patio. June smiled—despite Sydney’s complaints, she was growing up. The changes were subtle, sure, but June knew people well enough to read those subtleties, even if they had less to do with height and weight and more to do with posture, poise.

Syd had explained the problem of her aging, sometime around her sixteenth birthday. It was the cold—or, at least, that was Victor’s theory—that the hypothermia she’d suffered had slowed everything about her. Syd had complained that, at the rate things seemed to be going, her teens would take forever. But then June had pointed out that so would her twenties, and in her own experience, those were the best years, anyway. Syd had gotten quiet then, silence stretching across cities.