Page 192 of The Exit Strategy

Surprisingly,I pull into The Haven three days later completely undetected. There’s no welcome committee this time, no Stanley, only silence as I make my way down the peaceful streets and park at the clubhouse.

I’ve only been gone a week, yet everything has changed.

I’m not sure why I don’t go straight to Cole’s, but honestly, sneaking in will give me a little more time to figure out what to say when it’s time to face him.

I’m not even surprised when I end up outside of Bea’s house. It’s Wednesday, but I’m thirty minutes late, and Bea isn’t outside.

“Juniper,” Bea calls, out of breath and rushing onto her porch before I can make it three steps. “I was just reading and needed, ah, I’m here.” Perhaps I didn’t arrive undetected after all. What did this old lady do? Run a mile to make it look as though she’s been ready for me all along?

“Hi, Bea.” For some reason, when she places a book upside down in her lap, I smile.

“You missed tea,” she says conversationally, finally getting a grip on her panting. “It was at three, dear.”

“Sorry,” I mumble.

“Don’t be. The kettle doesn’t require an audience to boil.” She turns a page in her book she only now realizes is upside down but stubbornly refuses to fix it. “You’ll come next Wednesday. Or you won’t. Either way, the kettle will boil.”

“Okay.” I study her for a moment while she continues to pretend she’s reading. “Bea?”

“Hmm?”

“What do you do…when you don’t know who you are?” It’s like tiny dinosaurs are dancing on my chest.

Bea doesn’t look up from the book she’s not reading.

“You go talk to the people who know you,” she says. “Not so they can tell you who you are, but so you can hear yourself say it out loud to someone who won’t flinch. The hearing yourself say it is the work, sweetheart. The flinching is the test.”

She turns another page without bothering to right the stupid book, so I leave her to her non-reading and walk home.

The flinching is the test.

What does that even mean?

It’s still running through my head when I’m almost to the apartment staircase, but laughter makes me pause.

Hudson’s laughter, specifically. It’s a sound that occurs in nature roughly four times a year and is the sound of a man who’s too tired to maintain his typical professional restraint. Or when he’s with his sister.

The laughter is coming from the open side door of Cole’s garage.

Keep walking, Junie. Just keep walking.

“My colleague at the firm thinks the cases are connected,” Hudson says, making me pause. “We won’t even have to do much.”

“He can’t be that stupid.” That’s my brother’s voice. “She thinks Tommy’s done this before?”

“Yes,” Hudson says. “She said he’s probably been doing this for over a decade. If it’s true, we won’t even have to get our hands dirty. Just a few strategically placed—fuck, that hurt—tips, and he’ll go down without ever having to involve Junie, the Brookline house, or what fucknuts did to cover it all up.”

“I don’t care what we have to do,” my brother growls. “Tommy will pay.”

I’ve never heard Nolan sound so…vicious.

“Goddamn it,” Hudson curses again, and I round the corner to peek inside.

The men in Cole’s garage all appear to have been drafted into a small war.

Hudson’s at a folding table with both hands bandaged. Two of his fingers brandish fluorescent green Band-Aids that look as though they were applied without supervision, and a hot glue gun sits in front of him like a weapon he hasn’t defeated yet. There’s a cluster of small wooden objects beside him.

“Hurry up,” Stanley whispers. “I’ve got to get it over there.”