by Mark Stone
“He’s not my friend,” I said.
“Whatever,” she answered. “The point is, you have enough on your plate without trying to draw connections where there obviously aren’t any. I get that this is new for you, and honestly, putting you in this position hasn’t been fair to you.”
“I don’t care about what’s fair to me. I care about keeping Gina safe, about keeping everyone safe. As far as I can tell, you’re no closer to finding out who is trying to kill her than you were when I started.”
“We have suspects in mind,” Abby said.
“You mean Rachel McClear?” I asked, practically scoffing. “I’ve talked to Gina about her. She doesn’t seem to fear her at all. I’d be shocked if—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Abby said. “Whatever you’re about to say will only make you sound more stupid. Being shocked is the nature of this game, Danny. People rarely know who is out to get them. Rachel McClear is a loose cannon who has a history of anger management issues and three violent crimes in her background. The fact that all of them happened more than twenty years ago and before she embraced the ‘Earth mother’ crap that she lets define her personality now are of no interest to me.” Abby nodded firmly. “She was there all the times Gina was nearly killed before the night at the bar, and her alibi for that is garbage.” Abby rolled her eyes. “She was in solitary meditation. What a load of bull.”
I made mental notes about everything Abby had just said, as well as the fact that she had obviously been working on this recently. To know what Rachel’s alibi was for the night of the bar incident meant she had talked to her very recently.
“Gina told me herself that she saw a man in her room the first night her life was threatened,” I said. “She saw—”
“His arm. I know,” Abby said. “That doesn’t mean anything. She could have been mistaken. Her view was obstructed, and she was scared to death. It doesn’t bode well for accuracy.”
“I’m just saying that you shouldn’t narrow your net,” I replied. “There are other people to consider.”
“Yeah? Got anyone in mind?” Abby asked.
As if the world were intent on manifesting my thoughts into flesh and blood, I saw a man walking toward us. It was the person I had in mind, the suspect I was supposed to be looking into tonight.
“Walt Jermain?” I asked, my eyebrows shooting upward.
“What?” Abby asked.
“It’s—Walt Jermain is here,” I said, my mouth going dry. My mind spun with possibilities. Did he know what was going on? Did he have an inkling that I had orchestrated the missed date between Jules and him? Had he set everything up this way? Was it he who was behind sending Chris or Edward or whatever his name was to my door tonight, and was he here to finish the job? “Get behind me!” I shouted, grabbing Abby and pulling her behind me.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
“What the hell is he doing?” I asked, my eyes zeroing in on him. “That’s the important question.”
“Did . . . did I do something wrong?” Walt asked in a voice much goofier than I’d imagined it would be.
“No,” Abby said, pushing past me. “This lifeguard is really on edge tonight.”
“It’s that lifeguard?” Walt asked, biting his lower lip. “It makes sense that he’s on edge. Sorry about your friend and what was likely a very large amount of blood on your floor. If it makes you feel any better, it ruined my date too.” Walt looked at Abby. “I was supposed to go out with the victim’s sister tonight. I saved up all week to take her to that fancy new seafood place.”
“Really?” Abby asked.
“She’s cute as hell, Abs. Way out of my league,” he said.
“Stop that. No one is out of your league,” she said.
“Abs?” I asked. “League. What is going on here? Why the hell is Walt Jermain talking to you like he knows you?”
Abby turned to me, narrowing her eyes. “Because he does, Danny,” she said, motioning to him. “This is my brother.”
24
“Why are you freaking out?” Riley asked, looking me over as he stood in front of me, straightening my tie. The last thing I wanted to do today was take part in some stupid, unnecessary interview. Still, this was the day Dateline had decided to grace us with their presence, and because of that, here I was. My hair was slicked back in a way that I thought made it look unnatural, and I was wearing a tan suit with a tie that I had no business ever trying to put on myself. The entire thing just felt wrong. If someone wanted to talk to me, if they thought what I had done over the last few days was important and interesting enough to interview me about it on national television, then didn’t it stand to reason that they’d want to talk to me?
This person, with his pocket square and leather belt, wasn’t Danny Chase. Danny Chase didn’t own suits because he didn’t wear them. Danny Chase never put product in his hair because there was no point when you’d just be out in the water anyway. Danny Chase didn’t wear belts, or pocket squares, or anything that made him more uncomfortable than he had to be. I was laid back and honest. The person staring at me from the mirror was a tense lie.
And he wasn’t even the worst part of it.
“Is it because you have to do this with Cameron James?” Riley asked, nodding at me before I even had a chance to answer.
“Cameron James has nothing to do with it,” I sighed. And while that was true, Riley wasn’t wrong. In the past, I would have rather chewed on broken glass than have to be in a room with Cameron James for an extended period of time. That hadn’t changed too much. He was still the man who ruined my life. He was still the man who was too much a coward to admit to what he’d done, and even after all these years, he still hadn’t been brought to justice for it. Still, even with all that, he wasn’t the reason my head was spinning. That credit belonged to Walt Jermain and his unforeseen connection to all of this.
“I knew I should have just let Jules do this,” Riley sighed. “Wasn’t she supposed to be here?”
“She was,” I said. “She even came by to wish me luck, but she didn’t have time to stay. She has a lot going on.”
“We all have a lot going on,” Riley said. “Top Chef marathons don’t watch themselves, and the tequila in my liquor cabinet has been sitting there for almost a week. People are gonna start to think I’m an actual grownup or something.”
“He’s her brother. Walt Jermain is Abby’s brother,” I said, shaking my head and pulling at the tie around my neck until it stretched into a long, single ribbon across my chest.
“People have brothers, dude! Don’t take it out on the tie! It took me forever to fit it around your stupid, freaky neck,” Riley said, grabbing the tie and starting to work at it again.
“My neck is fine,” I said, grunting and shaking my head. “It’s a perfectly normal human neck.” I took a deep breath and looked at myself in the mirror again. Whoever this man was, laidback honest Danny or the tense Danny of lies, he was in this up to his eyeballs, and if he didn’t act quickly, a woman could very well die because of it.
“Then keep it still and let me make you presentable looking,” Riley said, pulling the tie tight again. “Which is no easy task, I’ll have you know.”
“Shut up,” I muttered. “I’m just saying, this is big.”
“What’s big?” Riley argued. “The fact that two people who live in the same town are connected to each other? It doesn’t seem like anything to get worked up over.”
“No,” I murmured. “It’s more than that. Abby is a detective on this case, and she brought me in to help with it. You mean to tell me she didn’t think it was necessary to tell me that her brother used to date the subject of that investigation?”
“Maybe she didn’t know,” Riley said, shrugging. “Do you know everybody your sister has ever gone out with?”
“I don’t have a sister,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Really?” Riley asked, narrowing his eyes again. “Who is that hot chick who comes to
visit you every October?”
“That’s my cousin Margo. She comes to hang out for my birthday. You’ve met her three times,” I replied as he finished straightening my tie again.
“Oh,” Riley said. “You think she’d go out with me?”
“I don’t,” I replied. “But mostly because you ask her that every time you see her, and she always shoots you down.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Your memory is garbage,” I said.
“It isn’t. I simply choose not to remember the hurtful things,” he said. “Most of the early 2000s are a blur, I’m telling you.” He took a step back and looked me over. “Whatever. All I’m saying is that the detective chick might not know her brother dated this girl.”
“You don’t think it might have come up when she took the investigation?” I asked.
“Maybe Walt Jermain doesn’t know what cases his sister takes. It does seem like a sensitive subject,” Riley said.
“That’s not what I mean,” I corrected him. “I found out that Walt dated Gina, and I’m just me. She’s an investigator. It should have taken her all of ten minutes to come across that info, whether her brother wanted to tell her or not.” I took a deep breath. “No. She’s keeping it from me.”
“Maybe she is,” Riley said. “Maybe it’s because she’s already looked into that possibility and found out there was nothing there.”
“You really think she could be trusted to investigate her brother objectively?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know her,” Riley said.
“Could you investigate your brother objectively?” I asked.
“My brother is a loser who asks me to help him with his child support payments every month,” Riley said. “I’m constantly surprised that someone isn’t actively investigating him, but yeah. I understand what you mean. It could be difficult for her. That doesn’t mean she’s covering up anything.”
“She pushed me to look into a woman,” I said. “An old flame of the mayor’s who Gina thinks of as a mother figure. Abby was adamant about her being responsible.”
“Did you look into her?” Riley asked.
“I didn’t,” I said. “Gina doesn’t think she’s responsible, and I don’t either, really. I am starting to wonder about something, though.”
“Wonder about what?” Riley asked.
“Why is she pushing me to look into it?” I asked. “She’s a detective. It seems logical to me that she would be better suited to deal with investigating that woman than I am.”
“So, why do you think she asked you to?” Riley asked.
“I think she’s trying to push me to make some discovery, and I don’t think it’s going to be a legitimate one,” I replied.
“I’m not following you,” Riley said.
“I think Abby is trying to cover for her brother, and I think she’s using me as a scapegoat to frame someone else for his crimes,” I said.
“That’s . . . that’s not good, bud,” Riley said, his eyes widening. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’m gonna prove it,” I said.
The door of the dressing room opened, swinging open so widely and fast that it slammed against the interior wall. “Come on! The newscaster is asking for us and she’s a Nobel Prize winning journalist. You simply do not keep a woman like that waiting.”
Looking to the doorway, I saw Cameron James. As I took him in, my stomach turned. His hair was slicked back, just like mine, and draped across him was the exact suit I was wearing.
“Well,” Cameron said, looking me up and down. “This is embarrassing.”
25
I fidgeted, moving around like there were ants in my shirt as I sat beside Cameron, across from a camera with a blinking red eye and a set of industrial lights that made us look like we were about to be presented at the Ice Capades or something.
This wasn’t my scene, not even a little. As much as I hated being followed around the beach or the parking lot of the police department by hungry photogs with phones in their hands, this was worse. This was something I was consenting to, something I was agreeing with. In a way, it meant that I was okay with all the talk, with all the people looking at me, with all the ruckus. That couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, it was all I could do not to jump out of my seat and run out of the room.
“Would you calm down? She’s going to be here any minute, and the last thing we need is for Ellis Winters to think you’re some idiot bumpkin who can’t hold himself together at the sight of a camera,” Cameron sneered, looking over at me like I was holding a stick of dynamite and actively considering lighting the fuse. “Even if it’s true,” he murmured in disgust, turning away from me as he scoffed.
I didn’t care about being called a bumpkin by the likes of Cameron James. If being his particular type of convictionless jackass was the price you had to pay to be considered cultured and worldly, I’d take ‘bumpkin’ every day of the week.
“Let’s just get this over with. I have work to do,” I said, letting my mind move to the revelation I’d just come to. If Abby was trying to protect her brother, then that might have also meant that running into them the other night was a problem. What if she’s figured out what I’m thinking? What if, after seeing her with her brother, Abby figures I’m onto her? It could open up an entirely new set of troubles. I shook my head slightly. I needed to focus. I was about to be on camera, for God’s sake. I was about to sell some half-truth to a nation who would eat it up like it was some sort of soup du jour.
“I’ll say you do.” Cameron groaned. “What the hell is your problem, anyway?” He looked back over at me, as disgusted as I had ever seen anyone. “You just couldn’t take one night off?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, honestly confused.
“You had to take out an armed robber last night?” Cameron said. “All by yourself, and of course, you wait until I’m at the opening of Club Palms downtown. There I am, posing for photographs all night, and what are you doing?”
“Defending myself?” I asked.
“Calling the police!” he said intently. “Do you know what happens when you call the police, Danny?”
“Usually, they take care of the problem. All they had to do then, though, was slap handcuffs on this guy and drag him out. I had already done the heavy lifting.”
“No. They do paperwork,” he said, ignoring everything I had just mentioned. “They do paperwork that has timestamps on it. There’s a record of when all of this happened now. So now I can’t say I was there, and I certainly can't say I helped you take that guy out.”
“You mean you can’t lie?” I asked, the smallest spike of anger rising in me.
“It’s not a lie if you do it for marketing,” Cameron said. “It’s just creative narrative control.”
I looked deeply at the man. “Did you ever have a soul, or has it always been a sucking sinkhole in your chest?”
“Mighty high horse you’re sitting on for someone who's about to take part in some of the lies he was just chastising me for,” Cameron said. “But that’s what you do, isn’t it? You blame me for things that happen to you, for things you do, so that you don’t have to take any part of the blame yourself.”
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked, turning to him in a quick enough way to let the man know I meant business.
“You know what it means,” Cameron said. “You’ve spent half your life blaming me for something I didn’t do, hating me for something that’s not my fault.”
Now the small spike of anger exploded into a full-blown storm raging inside me, lighting me up in an instant.
“You’re not seriously talking to me about that night right now, are you?” I asked, feeling my entire body tense up. It was like venom was filling me, slowly burning my veins as it flushed through my system.
“Can’t think of a better time than the present,” he said. “Especially since you would never talk to me or Nate about it, regardless of how much
we asked.”
“I don’t ever remember your asking,” I argued. “But you’re right. There wouldn’t have been much of a point. You ran me over, and Nate covered for you. You took my future from me, and Nate made sure you never had to pay for it. Why would I want to talk to either one of you about that?”
“Because things aren’t as simple as all that, are they?” Cameron said. “I didn’t run you over.”
“I saw you there that night, Cameron,” I argued.
“You were as drunk as possible that night. You have no idea what you saw,” he said.
“I had two beers,” I said. “That’s hardly drunk.”
“Drunk enough that you didn’t want to risk driving,” he said. “Otherwise, why would you be walking?”
“That’s not what—”
“Hey!” a voice chimed in from in front of us. Looking past the glaring lights, I saw a woman with hair the color of untouched snow walking toward us. Her tanned skin was flawless and unblemished, and her lips were painted with the lightest pink I had ever seen. She would have been beautiful if there were anything genuine about the woman at all.
Cameron stood up quickly, putting on the same sort of fake smile that the woman was wearing. “Ellis, my darling!” he said, wrapping her with a hug so brief and removed that I wasn’t really sure it happened. “Seeing you again is like coming home.”
“Really?” she asked, pulling away from him. “I would have assumed that since you actually did come home, that would feel more like coming home, but I guess to each his own. How long has it been since we’ve spoken?”
“Six months ago, in Barcelona,” Cameron said, looking at the woman with bright eyes.
“Six months? Is that all?” she asked. She looked him up and down, and the same sort of disgust he used while looking at me now covered her face. “I suppose a lot can happen in six months.”
