You Can't Catch Me(44)

“No more visits to town unless you were an elder, no more free time on Saturdays, and all the books were thrown away. A lot of other things.” She shivered though the sun was warm. “They cracked down so that no one else would escape.”

“But Covington got out,” I said.

“Covington?”

“Oh, sorry, that’s the name he uses now. Here, I think he was called Terrence.”

“Oh.”

Kiki was blushing. I couldn’t believe it.

“He’s five years younger than us,” I said.

“So? He was cute.”

“Still is. Did something happen between you two?”

“That’s forbidden.”

“Oh, Kiki.”

“What?”

“Do you actually believe in that stuff? Still?”

Kiki looked out at the water. It was a large man-made pond, not a proper lake, though we always called it the lake. It was the only place I’d felt free as a child, those moments when we were allowed to cast off our uniforms and leap from the dock into the water. We were plunged into the cool, and we felt cleansed of our lives. At least one thing Todd said was true.

“I didn’t say I believed,” Kiki said. “I said it was forbidden.”

“Not now, though.”

“You think so?”

“Of course. Todd’s dead. You’re all free.”

She turned to look at me. Her eyes were a clear blue, like the sky above. She was always the most beautiful of all of us, inside and out. Was that why Todd chose me instead of her to enact whatever terrible ritual was waiting for me on the other end of the wedding dress? Because he saw something dark inside me?

“Are you free?” Kiki asked, and I didn’t know what to say.

“We need another Jessica,” I say to JJ and Jessie the next morning in another coffee shop with a view of the river. It’s windy out and the river’s choppy. I watch a runner try to keep her hat on as she dips her head and pushes into the wind. “We locate another Jessica and use her as bait.”

“How are we going to do that?” JJ asks. She’s wearing a different army jacket today, one with a flag over her (our) last name. Her short hair looks translucent in the light from the fluorescents above.

“I’ve got a friend who has some connections.”

“Liam, you mean,” Jessie says. She ordered a scone and a yogurt, then put the yogurt on the scone as if it’s clotted cream. It looks kind of disgusting, but I suspect it might be tasty.

“That’s right.”

“Is that how you found me?” Jessie asks.

“That and your nosy neighbors.”

She bites her lip and looks down into her cup of coffee, milk, and three sugars. She must have one of those bird metabolisms.

“So, we need to find another victim?” JJ asks.

“No, a potential victim. We need to create a good target.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“We know how she works, right? One of us does well, gets mentioned in the news, and she gets a Google Alert. So, we find someone who on the surface is a good candidate, and we build up a social profile for her—maybe she has a rich relative die, or something like that, I haven’t worked out all the details—and then we set off the alarm.”

“Which is?”

“She talks about how she’s going on a trip.”

“But I thought Jessica Two was the one who reached out to her victims?” Jessie says. “Like what she did to me and JJ.”

“Not all the time. She didn’t reach out to me. Look, I know it’ll take a bit of time to plan to get it right. What I need to know is, are you willing to help?”

“Define help,” JJ says. She didn’t order anything to eat, but then again, she slept in her own bed last night.

“Whatever’s needed, and to be there when it goes down.”

“Like, actually meet her?” Jessie asks.

“That was always the plan.”

She raises her shoulders to her ears. “That sounds dangerous.”

“I think it’s more dangerous not to do it.”

“Why?” JJ asks. “What’s happened?”

“She’s ruining my life.”

“I thought she did that already?”

I shake my head. “No. One plagiarism count . . . it’s bad, don’t get me wrong, but I could come back from it. I could’ve laid low and in a year or two when everyone’s forgotten about me and moved on to some other scandal, I could’ve made my way back. People like giving people a second chance, if they’re worth it. If they’re redeemable.”

“And now you’re not?”

“Bingo.”

“Why?”

The waitress approaches our table with a coffee carafe. I place my hand over my cup. I don’t need any more caffeine today. “This guy that I used to work with ‘found’ my senior thesis from J school, and he says it’s plagiarized. It’s all over the internet. But I didn’t do it this time. That’s not the paper I wrote, I mean, not mostly. Someone’s gone in and changed it.”

“Couldn’t you prove that was the case?”

“I don’t think I have an original copy anymore.” I’d thrown all that stuff out when I moved into my current semicloset. “It’s in a digital archive. Who knows if they even kept the paper original. Someone who knows what they’re doing could go in and change some key passages, and there wouldn’t be any evidence left about what I wrote.”