Authors: Elle Cosimano
N— This is for you. I was saving it for your graduation. Use it if you must. Save it if you can. Please stay out of trouble. And be safe. It’s yours to waste now. —M
Mona’s note lay on the table beside a fat brown envelope that said
For Nearly
. The handwriting on the envelope looked familiar. Not like Mona’s. More like my own.
I picked it up, the paper crackling loud in the silence. I opened it. Turned it upside down over the table. Tight rubberbanded rolls fell out with a series of thuds.
Money.
A lot of money.
But it was the yellowing letter that I reached for first. It
peeled open, brittle like the skin of an onion. My eyes burned as I read it.
M—I need to lay low and I can’t stay. Hide this. It’s all for Nearly. For college. I know how much that means to you. It’s not much, but I’ll send more through Butch as often as I can. He’ll watch out for you. I’m sorry I let you down. I love you both. —D
I tore off the rubber bands, fanning the cash in my shaking hands, a ripple of loose bills spilling to the floor as I counted. Five thousand dollars. Not as much as the scholarship, but enough.
I scooped the rolls of money into the envelope and clamped it tight over my chest, the names of a thousand distant cities rolling like a bus departure ticker through my mind. A lightness filled me, but it didn’t last.
If I weren’t so worried about what might happen to Jeremy, I could’ve run.
I slipped into chemistry class at the last possible second. Whispers and stares followed me. They’d grown louder and harder to ignore since Teddy and Posie died, and the connection between the victims became undeniably obvious. Anh acknowledged me with a nervous smile.
I kept my head down, sparing a quick glance at Oleksa’s empty chair, and dropped into my own just as the bell rang. Anh sat rigid, her desk cleared of all but two number-two pencils and her calculator. By the bags under her eyes, I guessed she’d been up all night studying—an entire night more than I had. I wanted to tell her to relax. That her victory was a sure thing. Winning the scholarship was no longer an option for me. I hadn’t studied. I was short on community service hours. TJ was the one she should be worrying about, and even he was a full percentage point and a half behind her.
Rankin was silent as he passed out the final exams. Whispers spread throughout the room.
“Is there a problem?” Rankin spun around, angrier than I’d ever seen him. A few students glanced nervously at each other, nudging each other in the elbow until Oleksa’s lab partner finally spoke up.
“We thought you’d cancel the final today. You know . . . because of what happened to Kylie over the weekend?” I hoped for his sake he hadn’t bet money on it.
Rankin’s harsh laugh shook the room. “Oh, you did? Frankly, I’m surprised you even know her name.” He razed every whisper with a stare. “If a single one of you can look me in the eye and tell me Kylie Rutherford was a friend— that you know anything about her except the color of her hair—you may be excused from my exam. The funeral is on Wednesday and I shall see you there.”
No one spoke. I felt a few sets of eyes turn in my direction. I didn’t look up from my desk.
“Precisely what I thought,” he snapped. “Turn your papers over. You may begin.”
I lost myself for the next hour in black-and-white Scantron bubbles and the scratch of lead against paper. TJ was first to put down his pencil and hobble to the front of the room. Anh and I didn’t look at each other when we finished at the same time. We turned our papers in facedown and walked out wordlessly.
Jeremy waited in the hall. For Anh, no doubt. He hadn’t been picking me up for school and it was the first time I’d seen him since the rave. I plastered on a neutral smile just in case and squashed the seed of suspicion Reece had planted before his arrest. Lonny had to be wrong. It was someone else’s Jeremy on that list. Not mine.
I crossed the hall toward him and called out his name, but he didn’t seem to notice. He reclined against the wall, one foot propped against it, head back as though he had all day to wait. Eager Jeremy, the one who would have followed me anywhere, was gone. This Jeremy didn’t even look up.
“I need to talk to you.”
He looked through me, straight to the chem lab door. Then his face came to life and he waved at Anh behind me. Jeremy pushed off the wall, moving around me as if I weren’t even there. He’d dropped me. But I wasn’t expendable. I threw myself in front of him, tripping him up enough to earn a dark look and taste of his bitterness when I grabbed his hand.
“There’s this crazy rumor going around. Someone said you’re buying drugs from Lonny Johnson.” I held tight, riding out the rush of disbelief, fear, and rage that mirrored the shifting expressions on his face.
He jerked away. “Would you rather I’d bought them from your boyfriend?”
My mouth fell open and I stared at him, dumbfounded.
“I don’t understand,” I uttered in complete denial. “You’re kidding, right?”
He kept walking, but I stood my ground, letting him crash into me, desperate to make him look at my face. I lowered my voice to a frantic whisper. “Lonny is dangerous. The drugs he sells are dangerous. Why are you doing this?” I reached for his hand, but he wouldn’t let me touch him. I saw his lip tremble a second before he clenched his teeth. What was he hiding from me? Why was he buying roofies? He couldn’t be the one responsible for these crimes. I knew Jeremy. Didn’t I? “I don’t get it, J. This isn’t you.”
He laughed through his teeth. “Yeah well, this isn’t you either! You put on one hell of a show Friday night.” His sneer felt like a mask. I hardly recognized him under all his disdain. “I guess it’s true what they say. You really can’t take the girl out of the trailer park. You’re more like your mother than you give yourself credit for.”
“Go to hell.” I shoved him hard enough to knock him back. When he righted himself, his arm was wound back. His gray eyes were hard and unapologetic. This wasn’t my Jeremy at all.
“Jeremy, stop.”
The small voice belonged to Anh. She stepped between us, turning her back to me to look at Jeremy. Did she know what he was involved in? Had he told her more than he told me? All this time I’d been trying to protect him by keeping my distance, but I’d only succeeded in pushing him away.
“It’s okay.” Jeremy smoothed his shirt where I’d pushed him. “Our conversation was over.”
He reached out to her. She hesitated before slipping her hand in his and letting him lead her away. She looked back at me over her shoulder, unspoken apologies on her perfect guilty face.
The bell rang and I was alone. Just like that, he’d let me go.
I was intentionally late to Respite Meadows cemetery. Sweat trickled over my neck and I peeled off my hoodie, tying it loosely around my waist. Kylie Rutherford’s funeral had ended hours ago, but the air was still heavy with grief. I weaved carefully between the angel-topped stones and mausoleums, inscriptions obscured by colorful arrangements. Loving mother. Adored father. Beloved brothers and sons.
The rows narrowed until the perfectly level landscape felt less like Astroturf and more like the crabgrass that thrived in Sunny View. It was neatly trimmed, but bare in spots and smelled of onion weed. I slowed and raised my head in a grove of less ostentatious memorials. Some only headmarkers, devoid of color and ordered in neat, tight rows. I stopped by a mound of soft brown soil. The small temporary plaque read Kylie M. Rutherford. 1998–2014.
Damp grass had been crushed into the earth a few brief yards in either direction, bearing footprints of those who’d come to pay respects. I studied them, kicking at the ruts and feeling like an intruder on their grief, because it had been my name etched in her skin. I fought back a deepening sadness, tripping my way backward over shallow stones, regretting my decision to come.
I gasped as I backed into something hard, too tall to be a headstone. A hand clamped down on my shoulder. The fingers were covered in tattoos. I turned slowly and swallowed hard, looking into the dark and shining eyes of Lonny Johnson.
I put two quick steps between us. “What are you doing here?” Wind blew my hair across my face, and I left it there like a curtain, hating the way he looked at me.
He grinned, as though amused by my discomfort. His steel-toed shoes stepped forward until they almost touched mine. He squeezed my shoulder, brushing a thumb over my collarbone until I tasted metal and blood, anger and violence, and the saltwater burn of his grief. Beneath it all was a barely perceptible sting of regret. It hardly felt like enough.
“Came to pay my respects. She was a good girl.” He tipped his head. “Like you.” His cool smile disintegrated as he took in the fresh dirt on her grave. “This should never have happened.”
My face twisted, anger welling up from some dark place inside me. It wasn’t fair that I should feel so guilty when Lonny was the one dealing the drugs. He’d sold the ketamine that was at least partly to blame for her death.
“Don’t you feel even the least bit responsible?” My hair stuck in the corners of my mouth, muffling my words. I swatted at it, feeling clumsy and childish.
Lonny’s face lit with something I could almost mistake for affection, his own sinister brand of warmth. “I like you, Boswell. You’ve got guts. A lot of people wouldn’t talk to me like you do. Even fewer while threatening me with a baseball bat.” Lonny lowered his head to mine, brushing back the stubborn wet lock of hair. My flinch didn’t faze him as he tucked it behind my ear.
“Because I like you,” he said, “I’ll tell you a secret.” His goatee tickled my cheek when he leaned in close. I shivered, completely aware that we were alone. His confession was a whisper in my ear. “I do feel responsible. And someone’s going to pay for that.”
Lonny pulled back slowly and reached behind himself. A voice inside me screamed “Run!” but it was too late.
• • •
Lonny retrieved a single black rose from his back pocket and held it delicately poised between his fingers. I fell hard on my knees, legs numb with fear. Lonny strode past me, stopping just short of Kylie’s grave.
He tossed the rose onto the clump of dirt, near where her headstone should’ve been. It could have been mistaken for such a callous gesture, but his shoulders sagged. He paused a moment, lowered his head. His arm moved almost imperceptibly in an up-down-side-to-side motion. Blessing himself, I realized, stunned that he might recognize a power higher than himself.
“Be careful, Boswell,” he said, head bent over the grave. “It might have been a game before, but now it’s gone too far.”
“What do you mean?” Knees still watery, I pulled myself up and followed him through a winding maze of headstones, stubbing my toes on the low plaques that Lonny seemed to float over like a ghost.
“Think about it,” he said without slowing. “Steckler? Washington? Marshall? . . . Kylie? . . . They only had one thing in common.”
Like I needed to be reminded.
I gritted my teeth and scrambled after him. “I didn’t do this.”
His laugh rumbled through him. “Don’t have to be a genius to have figured that out.” He paused beside a gleaming white stone. Slipping his hands in his pockets, he eased back against it, leg stretched out to the side like he was leaning on a barstool. He pushed and pulled the barbell through his lip while he studied me, a catlike curiosity behind his eyes. “You didn’t do this, but you know who did. Someone’s trying to frame you. It’s personal.”
“I don’t have any enemies. And if I knew who was doing this, I’d have told the cops.”
“If I’ve learned anything, Boswell, it’s that you can’t trust criminals or cops. You can never be sure whose side they’re on.” Lonny kicked the headstone with the heel of his boot, drawing my attention down. Ryan Whelan. Beloved Son. July 13, 1995–March 25, 2013. The stone was crowned with a sagging thistle and said nothing about a beloved brother, though it was large enough for the sentiment. Reece’s brother’s grave. He’d been telling the truth when he said he didn’t have any family . . . not anymore.
“Thistle.” Lonny massaged his knuckles, watching my face. “Interesting choice.”
I looked again between Lonny and the stone. Lonny knew something about Reece. Something I didn’t know. His eyes lit with a crooked smile at the curiosity he must have seen on my face.
“Old legend . . .” Lonny studied his fingernails and looked past me, over the flat expanse of a thousand graves. “Norse soldiers planned a night raid on Scotland. They infiltrated barefoot, which might have worked except one stepped on a thistle and screamed. That one thistle”—Lonny lifted a single finger—“one insignificant thorn in the heel—alerted the Scotts. The Norse were slaughtered.”
I touched the thistle’s hanging head. “Ryan Whelan was a thistle?”
“Ryan Whelan was a narc. His little brother, Reece, was trying to break himself in as a dealer. Reece was young and full of himself. He never thought his brother would turn him in. A little over a year ago, Ryan blew the whistle on a deal his little brother was involved in, and the police set up a team of undercover cops to make the buy. Reece figured it out and got spooked and blew big brother’s cover. The bust became an ambush. Shots were fired, and Ryan took a bullet for some undercover lady cop.”
An undercover lady cop?
I think he’d take a bullet for me.
It all made sense. Gena was more than a narc, she was a cop. She said she’d met Reece a year ago, and they both worked for Nicholson. That was why she was so protective of him. Why she treated him like a little brother. Reece’s brother had taken a bullet for her.
“Reece’s brother saved her life?”
“He died doing it. And Reece got nine months in juvie. He was only supposed to serve six for the drug charges, but rumor has it that the lady cop’s boyfriend came after him during the trial, and Reece got an extra three months for assaulting an officer.” Lonny’s eyes were adrift in a memory. “The thistle doesn’t get to win, Boswell. Doesn’t matter who steps on him first, he gets crushed.” Lonny scratched his chin and shook his head. “A lot like us, you know. Stuck by the roots. Up until a few nights ago, I wasn’t sure what side your boy was on. An enemy can make himself look like a friend. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
I kept quiet, determined to hold Reece’s secrets close to the vest. He’d been responsible for his own brother’s death, lost his family, and now he’d thrown away his future trying to make it right. Trying to balance the equation by protecting me. I didn’t care whose side Reece was on. I only knew he was on mine.
“I know who he is, Boswell.” Lonny stood up slowly, rolling his shoulders. “It’s not hard to figure out. Reece sold his soul to Nicholson to get even with anyone who had anything to do with his brother’s death. He wanted revenge. He’s setting us up and rubbing his hands together as Nicholson hauls us off to jail. Reece Whelan is my wolf. My thistle. Who’s yours?”
Lonny watched me, his brows arching up.
“Don’t you get it?” he said. “These murders are a set-up. It’s about revenge. Someone’s sold his soul to get even with you. Whoever it is, he’s close. He’s close enough to know you, to watch you. Maybe even someone you trust. He’s setting you up for a reason. It’s personal.” Lonny shook his head while I struggled with his theory.
Lonny handed me a card, empty except for a number. “Call me when you figure it out.”