Page 79 of Save a Wish

“It sounded crazy as I was saying it all out loud,” I admitted after scrubbing a hand down my face. “Like something in a video game.”

“So what are you going to do?” Joshua asked.

“Do?” I frowned at him. “There’s nothing to do. I fell in love with a lying, criminal princess who got shipped back to her home country.” I huffed out a breath. “I think the only thing I can do is hope for sudden amnesia so I can forget this ever happened.”

“But do you want to forget Sadie?” Jimmy asked.

I shot to my feet. “Sadie doesn’t exist! She was a role Princess Aislinn played. And I was the fool who believed she was real.”

“She seemed pretty real to all of us,” Isaac said.

“And watching the two of you together seemed pretty real,” Logan added.

“Yeah, well . . . I guess we’re a pack of gullible idiots, all of us.” I jammed my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, wanting to be done with this conversation.

The doorbell rang again and Darius went to answer it. A police officer stood outside.

“What can I do for you, officer?” Darius asked as we all gathered around behind him.

“We’ve tracked that vehicle here.” The officer pointed to Jimmy’s pickup truck. “It belongs to Mr. Elijah Jameson Slater III. Is he here?”

Jimmy wiggled to the front of the group so the officer could see him. “That’s me.”

“Your name is Elijah?” Vanessa asked.

“Yes,” Jimmy said. “As was my daddy’s and my granddaddy’s, hence the III. I’ve gone by Jimmy since I was a boy because it was easier than being a third Elijah in the house growing up.”

I thought about the rumors involving Jimmy. Had keeping his real name from all of us been a part of his serial-killing lifestyle? I’d recently learned that a name change could be synonymous with being a criminal.

“Mr. Slater, what do you know about the disappearance of Sadie Rodgers?” the officer asked.

Jimmy looked at me. “Only what Beckett here has told us all today.”

The officer turned his gaze to me. “Which is?”

“She’s not Sadie Rodgers,” I said. “She’s Princess Aislinn Síomóin of Verdalach and she’s been arrested and taken back to her country. That’s all I know.”

“That’s all you think you know,” Vanessa pointed out.

Ignoring her, I said, “How did you know she was missing?”

“Hank Faraday called us to say he was concerned that she’d disappeared,” the officer said.

“He saw the arrest order, same as me,” I said.

“He expressed concern for her safety,” the officer explained. “Then a client of Miss Rodgers called to say she didn’t show up for an appointment. The client was upset because they pre-paid. Accused Miss Rodgers of swindling her.”

Join the club, lady. The royal princess had swindled us all.

“What does Jimmy have to do with this?” Isaac asked.

The officer pulled a small rectangle of torn paper from his vest pocket. “We found this in Miss Rodgers’s mailbox. The mailbox was open and the paper got wet in the rain last night so some of it was destroyed.”

I took the paper where the words I’ll get you were scrawled across it. The paper’s bottom half was torn away from getting wet, but at the top it said From the Desk of Jimmy Slater.

“Did you write this note, Mr. Slater?” the officer asked.

“Well, yes,” Jimmy admitted, “but the note had more to it. I wrote I’ll get you the money later because I lost my wallet.” He looked around at the rest of us. “Honest. I stayed overnight in New Hampshire on a logging job and I left my wallet in the hotel room. My buddy is still there and he’s bringing it to me when he wraps up his work.” Jimmy showed the officer the pendant necklace. “The money I owe Sadie is for this necklace she made. I picked it up from her mailbox when I got back to Vermont early this morning.”