You Can't Catch Me(92)
I used a guy I’d met researching a piece to help me track down the other Jessicas. There are eight of us in North America. I watched all of them as closely as I could. I was worried about JJ when I saw her get famous, and sure enough, once that piece was written about her, Jessie struck. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion. The piece. JJ tweeting that she was going to that cooking exhibition. Her going silent. Then those terrible tweets from her account. I saw it all and it felt like there was nothing I could do to stop it. But it solidified what I wanted to do. If I could get someone to help me.
I struggled with that for a while until it struck me.
Who better to ask than JJ?
It took a while to gain JJ’s trust, but I’d learned a thing or two living in the Land of Todd. I worked on her slowly, and in the end I’m not sure she’d even say that what we did was my idea. It was something we agreed on together.
This was the plan. In the end, it was simple. Step 1: make myself a perfect target and get Jessica to take my money. Step 2: act like I had “tracked” down another victim, i.e., Jessie. Step 3: meet Jessie and get her to believe my story and agree to help me. Step 4: have JJ “appear” on Facebook from the same online trap I laid for Jessie. Step 5: get us all together. Step 6: use one of the other Jessicas as bait to get Jessie somewhere we could expose her and finish her.
That last part JJ and I left unspoken. But we both understood.
What else? I was the one who made sure my plagiarism was uncovered. I was the leaker. I knew it would cause a fuss, and I was delighted when it worked.
JJ and I were careful. We communicated through a secure messaging app and wiped our messages constantly. If anyone went looking, the only thing they’d find were the Facebook messages from last summer, when she reached out to me when I was with Jessie.
And I used you, my love, to redo all the things I’d done in the first place. Find Jessie. Find the other Jessicas.
Jessie went along with all of it, even though I realize now because of what she said on Jackson Lake about researching all of us that she must’ve known who I was from the beginning. How she must’ve been laughing inside, thinking she was taking me too. She really couldn’t help herself, which is what I had been counting on.
Not everything went according to plan, but we were nimble. We adjusted. We shuffled the cards enough times to keep her following the wrong one.
We won. We took her money, and also her life.
Like she’d taken Kiki’s. Like she’d taken JJ’s. Like she thought she was taking mine.
I should’ve left you out of it, but I needed an alibi too. To leave a trail that would look like someone trying to put together a puzzle rather than carry out a plan.
The one thing I didn’t plan was that night at your apartment, or the days that followed.
I almost gave it up then. I almost called it off.
But what if I could have it all? You and revenge. You and justice for Kiki.
Too tempting.
I’m sorry. I did a bad thing, but there’s a certain justice to it, isn’t there? And we’re going to have to pay. Despite all our plans, JJ and I will both have to disappear.
Please, don’t try to find me.
Please, let me go.
There are others who need you, and I’ve been too much trouble from the get-go.
Love, Jess
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is my tenth published novel. Such a crazy sentence to write. When I sat down all those years ago (fourteen by the time you read this) to write I did not know what, I never could have imagined that I’d be here. Ten books. More than a million copies sold worldwide. Bestsellers in several countries. They tell you to dream big, but I never would’ve gotten this right.
I’ve gotten a lot of help along the way. My agent, Abigail Koons, and the team at Park & Fine. My editors, Jodi Warshaw at Lake Union and Laurie Grassi at Simon & Schuster Canada. The editors who acquired me in the first place in Canada, in the US, and in many countries around the world. The publishing and marketing teams at Lake Union and Simon & Schuster Canada. My sister, Cam, for reading as I write and fixing my mistakes. My mom for being the eagle-eye finder of typos on the final-pass pages. My writer peeps: Randy Susan Meyers and Matt Norman for reading an early draft of this and helping me craft it; Shawn Klomparens; my writing partners and daily partners in crime, Elyssa Friedland and Kim Roosevelt, whose new (but forever) friendships have enriched my life; Therese Walsh for being a sounding board.
I also couldn’t do this without my friends and family, and especially Tasha, Sara, Candice, my husband, David, and the reason this book exists in the first place: Christie Brown. Thank you for having such a common name that we got pulled over at every border crossing for two years! Because of you, this book exists.
Finally, thank you, dear reader, and especially if you’ve followed me from Spin to now. I write for you.