The Epidemic

by Suzanne Young

  I press my lips together, holding back a cry. My gratitude. Aaron shifts his dark eyes to mine, and they glass over. No matter what, we don’t abandon each other. We’re family.

  “I hoped you’d say that,” Marie tells him. “Now, I need you to trail him, track him, I don’t care how,” she says. “You need to find Deacon and bring him home.”

  Aaron looks at me when he answers. “We’ll get him back. I promise.”

  Marie turns to Reed, a slight crease between her eyebrows. “We could use you too, Reed,” she says. “You in?”

  “Yeah,” he says, and forces a small smile. “I didn’t have much to go back to anyway.”

  I walk over and put my hand on his arm, grateful for his help. But he lowers his eyes at my touch, his thoughts seemingly clouded. Marie notices too.

  “And, Reed,” she adds, “stay away from Virginia Pritchard. She . . . she’s not well, and I’m concerned. So please, under no circumstances should you contact her. Do you understand?”

  “Not a problem,” he says.

  Marie studies him for another second before saying thank you. Reed’s demeanor alarms me, and I do the same, noting the strange mood that seems to plague him. As if he got some really bad news. As if he’s really sad . . . deeply sad.

  “Now,” Marie says, drawing my attention again, “I suspect Shep will tell Arthur everything we’ve said. So be careful. Get new places to stay. I know you’ll want to go searching now, but we need to be smart about this. Start by tracing his car and phone; see if you can get a location on them. Do not go charging over to Arthur Pritchard’s house. He’s a dangerous man.”

  She pauses. “In fact,” she says, “leave Arthur to me. Perhaps there are still deals to be made. Get set up and I’ll contact you the minute I know more.”

  “You’ll contact us?” Aaron repeats, taking a step toward her. “You want us to trust you . . . after everything?” The mention of Marie making a deal with Arthur has clearly gotten under his skin. In his career he never once doubted Marie. But in the last week he’s learned what she did to me, how she lied. I’m not sure he’ll ever truly trust her again.

  “You have no choice, Aaron,” she says simply. “We have to work together on this.”

  “And who do you really work for, Marie?” he asks. I look from him to Marie, scared of the answer. “Who are you running from?” Aaron adds. “We deserve to know before we get in any deeper with you.”

  Marie’s expression grows calm. “I work for myself, Aaron,” she tells him. “And part of that is making sure you’re all safe. The rest is really none of your business. Now get started. I’ll be in touch.” She turns away and grabs her laptop from the bed. “We don’t have much time.”

  We wait a minute to see if she’ll admit what’s really going on, but she doesn’t say a word more about it. It might be our training or our past with her, but we allow her silence.

  And so we walk out her door without the answer.

  * * *

  Aaron and I exit the building with Reed trailing behind us. He’s been quiet since he returned from dropping off Virginia, and I plan to discuss it with him, but I’m a fucking mess. So instead I walk over to Aaron and hug him—my friend seeming to need it just as much, because he buries his face in my hair and squeezes me tight.

  We don’t lie. We don’t promise. We give ourselves one second to fall completely apart. And then, like good closers, we bury our feelings and straighten up. Aaron turns away, wiping his cheeks. I don’t bother.

  Outside, it’s dark, and cold droplets of drizzle paint the windshields of the cars parked at the curb. I bury my hands in the pockets of my coat, and Reed pauses near us.

  “I just wanted a normal life,” Aaron says into the wind before turning around. “I just wanted to get my girl and live my life.”

  His words hit me in the chest. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have called you.”

  Aaron curls his lip. “Are you crazy?” he says. “This is not your fault, Quinn. None of us are to blame. The system, the people we trusted—they’ve wronged us.”

  “We’re trapped,” Reed adds from behind us. “Don’t you see we’ve always been trapped?”

  The words are heavy, and I look at the wet sidewalk, thinking about something my father told me before I left town. He told me that if I stayed, the grief department would find a way to get me back under contract. By any means necessary, he said. Whether it be money, or blackmail, or threats. I turn toward Marie’s building. Whether it be our advisor.

  “She’s the one who brought us together,” I say, mostly to myself at first. But then I furrow my brow as the thought comes together in my head. I look at Aaron. “Marie gathered all of her scattered closers. Sure, I tracked her down—but was it really that hard?” I ask. “Her number was practically waiting for me. She said she was warning us, but instead . . . Deacon was right,” I say, my voice ticking up in volume. “She’s trying to make us into handlers. And now two of us are missing.”

  Aaron curses, and glares up at her building. “Then we have to find Deacon on our own,” he says darkly. “We’re done trusting people.”

  “Agreed,” I say, courage building in my chest. “And I think I know where to start looking.” I turn to Reed. “You want to drive or do you want to jump in with us?” I ask, motioning to Aaron’s car.

  “I have something to do first,” Reed says, taking a step back. “It’s stupid and dangerous and I don’t want you involved.”

  “You should know by now that stupid and dangerous are exactly the kinds of things that Quinn does best,” Aaron says.

  Reed hesitates, but I reach out my hand to him. Both as support and a plea for help. I need him right now. And after another second of thought he takes it and lets me pull him along to Aaron’s car. The rain has started to pick up, so I flip up my hood while we wait for Aaron to unlock the door. He opens the passenger side before rounding the front to get in.

  I push the seat forward, and Reed climbs into the back, his confidence and humor now missing. I get in and close the door. As Aaron starts the engine, I look back at Reed, concerned.

  “You sure you’re okay?” I ask him. I want to ask what else he had to do, but as closers, we don’t demand people’s secrets. It may end up hurting us in the end, but privacy in our world is something we covet.

  Reed smiles, and I can’t decide if he’s faking it or feeling genuinely glad he’s riding along. “I’m good,” he says. “Thanks for asking.”

  I nod and turn toward the front. Next to me Aaron glances in the rearview mirror at him. “You know what?” he says, maybe picking up on the same melancholy that I am. “When this is all over, I’m going to miss you, you handsome bastard.”

  Reed sniffs a laugh. “We’ve had quite the summer-camp romance, Aaron,” he responds.

  The misery of our moment is temporarily replaced with care and compassion. This has been the most twisted, heartbreaking week of my life, but Reed has become one of my best friends. And for that I can be grateful.

  “So where do we start?” Aaron asks, looking sideways at me. When he sees my expression, he laughs. “You’re just like him,” he says, shaking his head and shifting the car into gear. “You and Deacon have always had that in common—dumbass plans.”

  And at the mention of his name, all the air is sucked out of the car. We can’t hide our pain and worry. A small whimper escapes from between my lips, but I pinch them closed with my fingers. Keep your head. Be a goddamn closer.

  I pull myself together. I harden myself against my fear and turn to stare out the windshield. And I tell Aaron to head straight to Arthur Pritchard’s house.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I HAVEN’T SPOKEN TO MY father since I called him at the taco shop. Marie said she hasn’t been able to get in touch with him—although at this point I have no idea if she’s telling the truth. Still, as we drive my thoughts turn to my father, replacing one fear with another. If something’s happened to him, if he’s really gone—I’l
l be an orphan. Unless my real parents are alive.

  But even if they are, I don’t know them. They didn’t raise me. I’ve set in motion a series of events that have taken everything from me. It wasn’t worth it. I had a father—and yeah, he was messed up, but he loved me. And I had Deacon. We could have run. We could have saved ourselves.

  I was stupid to think that finding my identity would change me. Now I might have lost who I really am. But once I get Deacon back—and we will get Deacon back—I’ll set it right. We’ll be on the run for the rest of our lives, but at least we’ll be free from the control of Arthur Pritchard and the grief department.

  I try to call Virginia, but there’s no answer. Despite Marie’s warning, we can’t stay away from her.

  “So what exactly are we thinking?” Aaron asks from the driver’s seat. “Virginia is in some sort of negative loop, right? She’ll be fine for a while, but then she starts spiraling down. And whoever’s around . . . they sort of catch it. A behavioral contagion.”

  “Pretty much,” I say. “It’s like Arthur’s studies—there are certain behaviors that inspire copycats. This is one of them. It’s been true for years: clusters and outbreaks with only death as the trigger. Somehow the emotional state of others affects us, affects our behavior. But this is slightly different from the usual suicide cluster. Here you have a person who tells you there’s no way out. Virginia feeds that misery, and by doing so, maybe she feeds her own. She digs into it. That’s why her father resets her after each death—she gets too deep into the pain. She can’t get out. But her hopelessness . . . In one way or another, Virginia is encouraging hopelessness. She’s causing this outbreak to spread.” It’s a crazy theory, but I believe it wholeheartedly. It makes sense . . . enough sense, at least.

  And now this is our world. People are killing themselves for no apparent reason other than the loss of hope. Or maybe there is another reason. Maybe we’ll never know the actual truth.

  I turn to Reed in the backseat. “How did Virginia seem when you dropped her off?” I ask him.

  His jaw tightens. “I ended up parking around the block. She was worried her dad would see me. We talked for a bit.”

  I narrow my eyes slightly. “What’d you talk about?” I ask.

  He seems taken aback by the question. “Uh . . .” He hesitates before answering. “We talked about her father. I asked her what his plan was to stop the epidemic. I wanted to know if it would work.”

  My heart skips. “Did she know?” I ask.

  “No,” he says simply. “She didn’t.”

  But something about the way he says it . . . I kind of think he’s lying. I look at Aaron to see if he heard the same thing, and he swallows hard and stares at the road. Although I want to give Reed his privacy, his state of mind has me worried. I turn to ask him to elaborate, but just as I do, bright blue and red lights flash across his face. He squints against them, and I spin around.

  Police cars line Virginia’s street, sending the light into the shadows. I sit forward, and Aaron tenses next to me. There are four police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance parked diagonally in the driveway of the Pritchard residence. One of the lights flashes in my eyes as we get closer, and I hold up my palm to block it.

  Every interior light in the house is blazing, including from the attic window—a bright circle cut into the siding. There are half a dozen people crowded on the small front porch; a small, older woman cries as an officer consoles her.

  The ambulance. Arthur knew Virginia wasn’t really kidnapped; we got her home in time. That’s not why they’re here. A chill starts up my arms, and I feel the blood drain from my face.

  “Stop the car,” I murmur, watching out the window. Aaron slows, easing to the side of the road, but I open the door before he fully stops and nearly trip. I stumble but catch myself on the curb. I start to run toward Virginia’s house, disregarding any worry of being caught by Arthur.

  I make it all the way to the door before an officer stops me, grabbing me hard by the arm. But I’m not scared of him—not now.

  “You can’t go in there,” he says in a clipped tone. I pull away from him and glance around at the people on the porch, noting how pale and miserable they look. I’ve watched people grieve my whole life—I know what it looks like.

  “Is she okay?” I ask the officer desperately. “Is Virginia okay?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t give out that sort of information,” he says. He motions for me to leave, but just then a woman is led from the house, clinging to the uniform of another officer.

  “Why would she do it?” the woman murmurs. “I don’t understand.”

  I glance up at the policeman in front of me, and he winces like he didn’t want me to overhear that. I stagger back a step, and he tilts his head, studying me.

  “And who are you exactly?” he asks.

  He’s looking for symptoms, I think. “I’m her friend,” I say, painfully aware of the tense when I see a flash of sympathy cross his face. I was her friend.

  Because Virginia Pritchard is dead.

  * * *

  I walk off the porch into the rain before the officer can ask me any more questions. I’m struck down by my grief, my guilt. Before I can list all the ways I could have stopped this, I find Reed standing in the driveway next to the ambulance, staring up at the attic as rain soaks him through. He looks completely lost, alone. I’ve never seen someone look so alone. It terrifies me, but our only choice is to be brave right now. Strong.

  I walk over and stand next to Reed, looking at the side of his face. “We have to go,” I say quietly.

  Reed continues to watch the house, rain still falling and running over his lips. “We didn’t save her,” he says. “We didn’t close her loop of grief. It’s our fault.”

  I blink back my tears, picturing Virginia, the girl who was nice to me that first day, who bought me a slice of pie. Who met a boy she liked at a party. Who was a star athlete. She promised to help me, even though she must have been suffering from her own loss. She knew that she was being erased and that she had no control over it. And I did nothing.

  “We shouldn’t have let her go home,” I say. “So you’re right. It is our fault. But now it’s too late.” I look around us, feeling vulnerable out in the open now that I know what happened. “We have to go,” I tell Reed. I pause, putting voice to my other fear. “We can’t fail Deacon, too.”

  Reed turns to me, seeming devastated at the thought. He reaches for my hand, and then together we hurry back to Aaron’s car. We find him waiting, still in the driver’s seat while he stares blankly at the road.

  “She dead?” he asks wearily when we get in.

  “Yeah,” I murmur, hearing Reed shift in the backseat. “She is.”

  “Can you take me back to my car?” Reed asks, the emotion drained from his voice. “I have to grab some things from my place. Where are you guys staying tonight?”

  I hadn’t even thought of it. I won’t sleep—not until I find Deacon. Aaron must have sensed that, but he answers immediately.

  “I called and got us two rooms at a hotel on Curry and Fisher,” he says. “I’ll stay with Quinn. You take room three eighteen. It’s already paid for.”

  “Thanks,” Reed whispers, and rests his head back on the seat and closes his eyes. We don’t talk, not even about our plan for Deacon. It’s up to me and Aaron now. Reed needs some time to recover.

  * * *

  We drop Reed off at his car, and then Aaron and I drive to Arthur’s office, even though it’s long past business hours. We don’t have to break in. There’s a FOR LEASE sign in the window, and a quick peek through the glass doors shows only a few moving boxes and empty desks. The place is deserted. There’s no sign of where Arthur’s gone. There’s no sign of Deacon.

  A wave of hopelessness rolls over me, and I stumble back a step. My heart is heavy, pained. “What are we going to do?” I murmur, putting my hands over my face.

  “We’re going to keep it together,” Aar
on says, emotion strangling his voice. “We’ll find him, Quinn. You know we’ll find him.”

  I look over at him, trying to find proof of his statement in his expression. And I do. I see fierce loyalty. I see love.

  And so I nod, and together, we go back to the car.

  Aaron and I drive to an all-night diner so we can regroup. We’re the only people in the small, out-of-the-way restaurant. Aaron sits across from me in the booth, and we search business databases on our phones, but don’t come up with a new address for Arthur’s office.

  “So where’s Deacon?” I ask him, my hands wrapped around my coffee cup. “Because if he’s with Arthur . . . it’s bad. Arthur could be—”

  “Don’t go down that path,” Aaron interrupts. “Focus on finding him, not on what could be happening to him.”

  “And what about Reed?” I ask. “What if he’s not at the hotel when we get there?”

  Aaron sets his phone aside and exhales heavily. “What do you suggest we do about Reed?” he asks, looking tired—overwhelmed. We’re barely surviving this.

  “I think Virginia said something to him.” I lean forward. “When he dropped her off, he said they talked. Whatever it was . . . she killed herself after. Now Reed is nearly catatonic. What did she do to him?”

  “He might just be upset,” Aaron asks. “We’re all in a shitty situation, but Reed’s a good closer. Maybe you need to trust him.”

  “And maybe he needs our help,” I point out. “Don’t forget, we came here because Virginia’s last two friends killed themselves. It’s one thing for us to willingly put ourselves in harm’s way. It’s another to let our friends walk blindly into it. Aren’t you a little concerned?”

  “When you put it like that,” he says, “yeah. I guess so.” He reaches over to grab a container of sugar, dumps a spoonful into his coffee. He sets the sugar down with a clank next to his cup. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he adds, staring down. “I sure as hell wish your boyfriend were here right now. He’d have a plan. But he’s the one that’s fucking missing.” Aaron’s face scrunches up, and he turns away from me, staring out the window toward the street.