Page 72 of Thicker Than Water
But my thumb won’t make the call.
I’m not supposed to do this anymore, run to Wyatt like a reflex.
I swipe instead to Julia. But the thought of speaking to her now pumps my chest with pressure, a discomfort that compresses my heart. What could she possibly do to help? What would she even bewillingto do? She doubted my Henry theory the minute I told her about it.How would Henry have planted traces of blood onto Jason’s knife?As her question slices back into my thoughts, it’s as if I can feel that knife on my own skin, making a hundred little cuts.
Who does that leave me with—Detective Beck? The man who fucked this up in the first place? The man with a warrant, who considers this case already closed?
I exit out of Contacts to search for Henry’s address. I assumed, the first time I looked this up, that Home Depot would be a better place to start, that I’d have more luck with the co-worker side of the alibi than with Henry himself. Now that I know he lied to the police, I need another plan, another angle, another—
I crash into someone, hard and sudden. We grunt in sync, our phones clattering to the ground.
“Sorry!” we say as we stoop to pick them up.
The person cradles my elbow as if trying to keep me steady. With their other hand, they fumble for their phone. We check our screens for damage.
“It’s my fault,” they say, still crouched. “I was looking at my phone.”
“Me too,” I admit. We straighten—and then I freeze.
The man freezes too.
We stare at each other, as stopped as statues.
It’s the person I’ve seen in pictures, in windows, in memories of parties and courtrooms. The person I haven’t stood this close to in decades.
He knows who I am. The recognition flared so fast I have to wonder if he’s kept tabs on me. If every moment I’ve spent rage-stalking his profile, he was simultaneously hunting through mine.
Sweat pools in my armpits.
How many hours have I spent in his neighborhood? How many times have I slowed past his house? Yet it’s only now, when I least expect him, that he smashes into me, a head-on collision.
Something grazes my skin—a spider I want to swipe at. But no: it’s Clive Clayton’s hand, still on my arm, his fingers now twitching.
“Don’t touch me!” I say, wrenching from his touch.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
“Did youhurtme?”
The question shoots across the parking lot, bounces off the hoods of cars. Clive whips his head around to check for onlookers, customers suspicious of the man who’d earn my scream. But it’s early still; the lot is sparse. We’re alone out here. Together.
“Sienna, I’m—”
“Oh, you remember my name! How nice of you.” I speak through nausea, through fever, through chills that rock me even though I’ve never felt so volcanic. “Do you remember my parents’ names, too?”
He swallows before he answers, his expression stiff. Practiced. “Jim and Gina.”
My throat closes like a fist. “Don’t,” I squeeze out.
“I think of them every day.” His voice has the audacity to tremble. “I think of you, too, and your brother.”
“I’m warning you, stop talking.”
A cloud floats in front of the sun, shadowing us, but my skin practically steams.
“I will, I just—” Something relaxes in Clive, like his spine is a rope gone slack. “God, I kind of always hoped I’d run into you someday. Although, I didn’t think it would be so literal…”
He exhales a chuckle, light as the air around us, but I feel it like a brick to my face.
