You Owe Me a Murder(55)

Fire wasn’t an option. Their house was part of a row of town homes. There would be no way to control the flames. The fire would quickly spread; those buildings were old. All that ancient plaster, wallpaper, and oversize wood furniture—?it would go up with a whoosh. If I felt horrible about the idea of killing Nicki’s mom, the idea of taking out a bunch of her neighbors made it worse. Besides, whenever I played that “would you rather” game, I always chose being frozen to death instead of dying in a fire. Hmm. No, there wasn’t exactly a way I could lure Nicki’s mom onto a passing ice floe.

I squeezed my eyes shut. My thoughts were making me nauseated. I tried to think of something else, anything else, to stop my train of thought. Trains. Nicki knew the underground stations. She’d been aware of where the cameras were located and where she could stand to push Connor without being seen. I didn’t have a clue. Not to mention her mom struck me as the kind to stick to the oversize black cabs and not venture onto public transit. I didn’t have the time to follow her around for weeks and wait for her to be standing at the top of a staircase all alone, just slightly off balance.

I got up and cranked the window open wider, seeking cool air. Stabbing was out. The way the knife would hesitate for just a second before the skin gave way and the knife slid in made me shiver. And I’d have to do it more than once. The odds that the first go would sever an artery weren’t good.

I crawled back into bed. My best option would be poison. It wouldn’t hurt. She’d just fall asleep and stay that way. Done right, the police might think it was an accident. It was an old house—?it wouldn’t seem weird if they owned rat poison. The whole city was filthy with rodents. You saw them in the Tube tunnels all the time and scurrying around openly in the streets at night. If Nicki’s mom had seen a rat in their garden, she might have bought stuff to deal with it, and if she kept the poison in her kitchen, and she had been drinking . . . well, accidents happen.

Not that I was going to do it.

I rolled over onto my stomach, punching my pillow again, trying to make the flat dense foam into something comfortable. The window was open as far as it would go. I was trying to lure a breeze, but the only thing that drifted in was traffic noise. I felt sick to my stomach. Nicki had gotten into my head. The sheets were twisted around my legs and I had to kick to get them free. An image of the bunny kicking on the road flashed into my head.

The bunny had thought it was getting away too.





Twenty-Five


August 26


5 Days Remaining


I sat there, intending to read, but I kept staring out into space. Metford’s library had floor to ceiling bookcases and two long tables that ran the length of the room, looking as if they belonged in a castle’s dining room. There were a couple of shelves of reference books, but the bulk of what made up the library was abandoned paperbacks. Residents left behind whatever they had brought to read, so there were ample copies of Stephen King novels, battered Agatha Christie and P. D. James mysteries, romance novels, and every sci-fi story you could imagine.

I was curled into a corner of the green velvet sofa by the window. The cushions were rock hard, and every time I shifted, ancient clouds of dust belched up. Yet I still felt as though I could have fallen asleep right there. I was exhausted. All night I’d tossed and turned, unable to shut off my racing brain. If I didn’t get sleep soon, I was going to fall apart.

I had finally broken down and tried to call Emily. She’s known me forever and she was the master at seeing through tricky problems. Granted, the worst moral quandary we’d faced so far was deciding if we should tell her parents about her brother planning a party for when they would be out of town. But when I reached the camp and begged the secretary to let me talk to Em, the woman had refused. I’d stared at the phone in shock. I repeated that it was an emergency and she’d laughed. She said that if she had to call camp counselors to the phone every time one of their friends had an emergency, they’d never get a thing done. Then she softened her voice and said they put through calls to counselors only from their parents. Camp policy. Right then, I hated Em for going to camp. Millions of summer jobs, and she had to choose one that might as well have put her on the moon.

I couldn’t stand being in my room any longer, and I also didn’t want to join everyone else in the cafeteria. So I’d headed to the library and grabbed a book, but it sat unopened on my lap. I was still staring into space.

Hands covered my eyes, plunging the room into darkness. I screamed and jammed my elbow back hard, connecting with someone who let out a loud ooph.

I leaped to my feet, ready to hurl the book at Nicki, but it was Alex standing there, rubbing his side.

“Note to self: never sneak up on you,” Alex said. “You’ve got a nasty hook.”

My heart vibrated at a thousand beats per second. “I didn’t know it was you,” I said, stating the obvious. Why did I have to constantly screw everything up? “I’m so sorry.” My eyes flooded with hot tears.

Alex came around the sofa, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Hey, it’s okay. I know I look soft, but I’m tougher than I appear. I can take a blow and keep ticking. It’s no big deal.”

The smell of him—?clean laundry mixed with sunshine and something spicy—?made my heart slow. He was like human Xanax in a sweatshirt. “Sorry, I’m being a freak.”