Page 81 of You'll Be the Death of Me

He took the paper and studied it. “I did say that, and yes, this is him. Why?”

Dell smacked her hands on the granite bar top and cheered. “I knew it!” She turned to Cole. “We were right! It was you!”

Cole beamed at her as she leaped off the stool into his arms. No matter she was in Robbie’s body, he still squeezed her tight.

“Wait, what’s going on here?” Jason asked. “You’re hugging the air right now. What do you meanIt was you?”

Dell reluctantly pulled herself from Cole’s grip and turned back to the counter. “Jay, this ishim. The man in the pictureisCole—the same guy who crashed into me on the slopes! We’ve met before!”

At this, Jason jerked his head back. “Oh shit, really? That’s...”

“Kind of unbelievable?” Dell filled in for him.

“Uh, that’s one word for it.Thisis the guy you’ve been hanging out with for the past day and a half?Damn.” He flipped the paper over as if to see if there was more of an explanationhiding on the back, or perhaps another picture. “So what does this mean?”

“It means we know who he is now! All this time, he had no memory, and he still doesn’t, not really, but we’ve figured it out. We think this was my wrong turn.”

“Like what, like you guys were meant to be or something?” Jason asked with equal parts hope and skepticism.

“Maybe!”

He studied the printout again. “D, hediedthe day you met him. I remember it was Saturday of that weekend when he hit you. Look at the date on this.”

“I know, and that’s probably important, but we haven’t figured out how yet. The article also lists his parents, and we want to go talk to them.”

“How are you going to—?” He started and stopped when he figured it out. One of his thick eyebrows rose up into an arch. “You need me.”

“Please?” Dell said, pulling Robbie’s smile as wide as it would go. “They live in Berkeley. We have the address; we just need a means of talking to them. I’ll go with you, as Robbie.”

Jason cast her an interested but reluctant gaze. “And who would we say we are, their deceased son’s client in a body-snatched Zoomer and his... babysitter?”

“I don’t think that would land very well,” Dell said, not really having thought through who they’d say they were. “Maybe we’re old friends who hadn’t seen Cole in ages and somehow just heard about his death.” She turned to Cole to check if this story would go over well with his parents, but of course he didn’t know.

“I guess it could work,” Cole said with a shrug.

“And what are we hoping to learn from them?” Jason said.

“Anything that could help us,” Dell responded. “Maybe with more information about Cole’s life, and his death, we can fix everything.”

Jason folded his arms and drummed his fingers. “Seems like a shot in the dark, but also like the best shot we have. Okay, I’m in. But you have to let me fully wake up and get ready. I’m not showing up to Mama and Papa Cole’s house in my jammies.”

Dell almost quipped about having run all over the city, and even to the top of the Golden Gate, in her jammies, but remembered he couldn’t see her in that form. Instead, she said, “We’ll be ready when you are,” and settled back on the barstool to wait what she hoped wouldn’t be an unreasonable amount of time.

Chapter 14

Jason took a long but still reasonable amount of time to prepare to leave. Dell and Cole filled it with researching what they could about Cole’s life. They didn’t have Robbie’s wall of hacker computers, but Jason let Dell borrow his laptop. With it, they found Cole’s alma mater, his archived faculty profile, a private social media account with a hundred or so followers, which Dell didn’t find surprising. Cole didn’t seem like the type to chronical his life online. Even if they could have gotten into it, it would have been inactive for more than a year. What little evidence they had helped them form a cover story for why Jason and Robbie were going to show up on his parents’ front step.

When Jason finally appeared, fresh-faced and dressed like he was about to go meet someone’s parents—a neat button-down and jeans—Dell eagerly popped up from the couch where she’d been sitting with Cole.

“Ready?” she asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Jason said with a shrug. He poured morecoffee into a to-go tumbler and snapped on the lid. “You owe me big time after all this, D. Making me think you were dead, convincing the hospital staff you weren’t actually dead, and now pretending I’m someone’s long-lost friend showing up to mourn their death over a year later. A lot of death going on.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I’ll do the same for you, should the situation ever arise.”

He snorted. “Let’s hope I never need this favor returned. Other favors though...” He grabbed his sunglasses off the counter with a grin and slid them on.

“Anything for you, Jay,” Dell said, and she meant it, despite the mischievous note in his voice.