Page 83 of Wicked Games

I try to relax. “I thought they⁠—”

“One of them did, but not there.” Anger zips through me again, but she puts her hand on my arm, cutting off a curse. She glances at the stove. “Are you making us soup?”

I try to calm down. “Yeah. Go sit in the den. I’ll bring you some. Are you thirsty?”

“I’ve had enough water, I think,” she says, trying to joke, “but maybe a glass of wine?”

She’s acting normally, but tired, like she said, and I decide a little wine won’t hurt her.

“Okay. I’ll be right there.”

I can’t carry two bowls of soup and two wineglasses at once, and I bring hers to her first. She’s sitting on the couch with a throw around her shoulders. “Here. Don’t spill it, okay? You’ll burn yourself. It was boiling when I took it off the heat.”

“Thanks. It smells good. You’re not eating?”

“Mine’s in the kitchen. I’ll be right back.” I shove the sheets in the dryer first, then sit with her on the couch with my soup and wine.

We eat silently, and I’m relieved when she reaches the bottom of her bowl. She sips the rosé, rests her head against the cushion, and closes her eyes.

“When I called Violet and told her what happened, she said she would send a couple of men from our security team out to watch the house until we leave. You said you’d go to Brooke’s funeral with me. Is that still good?”

“Yeah. Did you talk to Detective LaSalle, too? What does he think?”

It’s difficult not to scoff. “Nothing. He doesn’t know anything. I brought up the leak in the police department again, but he said there’s no point in harping on it, and there’s not. It doesn’t change the fact that someone’s doing this, and it doesn’t matter how they get the information.”

“Unless they’re a cop,” Avery says, her eyes fluttering open. “That would make sense. They’d have access to Jenkins’s gun, and they’d know about the GPS in the bag. It would have been easy to track Hattie, and Brooke too. They found out about your employee. If she has a record, a cop would have quick access to it. Anything to turn the screws into you, right? Did Detective LaSalle say anything about her?”

“No. With everything going on, I forgot about her.” Something doesn’t sound right. “Why would you say a cop would have access to Jenkins’s gun?”

“Oh, well. I’m sure that he had more than one, being he was a gang leader and all, but he was carrying when he was arrested. It was placed into evidence.”

I’m trying to put the pieces together. LaSalle would have told me if evidence had gone missing. Wouldn’t he have? Maybe he doesn’t know. “How was he killing those sex workers?” I sip my wine. I need the alcohol to smooth out some of my rough edges. It’s been a fucking shitty day.

Grimacing, she says, “Strangulation, during, you know.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I feel like we’re missing something though. Those men who tried to drown me, they mentioned Hattie. They knew we were sisters and they must have assumed she told me something, but I don’t know how they found out.”

“Maybe they didn’t figure it out until now. If you and she kept it buried, it would’ve taken a little digging.”

“Okay, but why would they have thought to look at all? Hattie never mentioned me, and the only public ties to her that I know of is that I wrote the last post on her blog.”

“She did a story on you when you won an award,” I remind her.

She pushes back a smile. “You’ve been digging too. I told her not to write it, but she was so proud of me and I couldn’t stop her. It wasn’t her usual fare.”

“It’s a link, at least.”

“For whatever good it does.”

“Right now, anything is better than nothing.”

She sets her empty glass on the coffee table and crawls into my lap. “I never thanked you for saving my life.”

I cup her bruised cheek in my hand. “I’d do anything for you, Avery. I can’t live without you, and I know better than to try. Besides, I owed you. You saved my life first.”

“Then I guess we’re even,” she says, pressing her lips to mine.