“When?”
“Two bodies ago. The papers weren’t the first to wonder at the connection. The department saw it. You had to have considered it.”
He pauses, and I nod. I considered it. I chose to reject it. Thinking that the Carolina Creeper was watching me felt solipsistic . . . and paranoid. I’d prefer to be neither.
“So, we paid attention. Checked out your associates.” Henry’s speaking to me the way I speak to the bereaved. “We want to keep you safe, Jules.”
Uncle Micky makes a sound that might be a gasp or a cry. I can’t tell, and I can’t look at him right now. I reach out and rest my hand on his arm. His other hand covers mine, holding it there.
My gaze is fixed on Henry, though. “I’m not going to stop doing my job, Revill.”
His brows raise at my reversion to his surname. “No one thinks you will, Miss Campbell. That doesn’t mean you can stop us from doing ours either. I gave you a few days without pointing out that we’ve started keeping an eye on you, but—”
“You’re following me?”
“Protecting you.”
I snort, and despite myself, I look away. I don’t feel comforted by the idea of my colleagues trailing me, studying where I go and what I do. I especially don't feel comfortable that Henry is doing so. It makes me feel weak. Admittedly, a part of me also cringes when I realize that they'll all know that I deal with bad days by running to Andrew’s bed. I don't want anyone to know that—or maybe I’d just rather Henry not know that detail. I feel a flash of guilt, like I'm betraying Henry.
“Jules?”
I look back at Henry and shake my head. I can't do this, none if it. Henry saying my name like that . . . it's too much. I am not a girl in need of a rescue. I am not a woman in search of a man. I am a professional who just happened to catch a killer's attention. "Back off, Revill."
“I need to do my job. If it were Micky in danger, if it were anyone else, what would you say?” Henry says, more kindly than I might deserve. “Don’t make this about—" He stops himself, takes a breath, and tries again, "Don't make things difficult.”
There’s no way for it to be anything but difficult. I don’t want to be a victim, but I don’t relish the thought of years under surveillance either. Nothing I say right now will matter, though. Henry will do what he believes is right, regardless of what I say. He would no matter who the Creeper targeted. The fact that the letter was sent to me complicates matters further. I know it. I suspect a lot of people know it. Henry and I might not address the thing between us, but it’s still there.
“Uncle Micky?”
“Yes?”
“Sort out whatever details the detective wants to put into place. I need to look after . . . her. I need to do my job.” I stand and toss Darren’s letter to Henry. “Deal with this while you’re meddling. It came here to the house.”
Then I walk away.
15
A Girl with No Past
My mother had been sending messages. She twisted guilt and demands together into what her string of husbands have always heard as “things I must do to appease Sterling.” Unlike all of her men, I know that nothing appeases my mother. If she’s ever satisfied, it’s only a state she’ll linger in long enough to weigh and reject it.
I haven’t been to my apartment in weeks. Today, Edward had his oldest brother, William, drive me here to get a few more of my things. I was packing them when she called again. I shouldn’t have answered, but I did.
“Tessa, how are things?”
“Why?”
“Darling . . . Shouldn’t a mother ask?”
“What do you want, Sterling?” I close my eyes. I’m not hurt. I remind myself every time I hear her tinkling laugh or crisp accent that I’m not hurt. She can’t hurt me now. Edward keeps me safe. Edward protects me.
“Does a mother have to want something to call her own daughter?”
I wait in silence. It is the only answer that works. Engaging her in arguments serves no purpose, but acquiescing is beyond me now. Silence is my defense.
“I want you to come home the month after next,” she says after a small sigh that is the Sterling Morris equivalent of giving in.
“I live in North Carolina now, mother.” I look around the dive of an apartment. The carpet is a vaguely brown color darkened by dirt and stains. The furniture is thrift store bargain, made tolerable by a lot of Febreze and cheap but new blankets as furniture covers to hide the age and stains.
My mother’s skin would crawl at the mere thought of standing here.
I have money. A fund that comes with oh-so-many strings. But using it would give her hope that my defection was temporary. All I’d need to do is tell her I wanted an allowance from my fund, and I could live alone and in a far nicer place.
I’d rather try to prove that I can survive on my own than concede anything.
“Please come for a visit.”
“What’s in it for me, mother?”
She sighs again. “I’ll pay you to come.”
I laugh. It’s the closest she’s come to admitting that she’s willing to use her money to control me.
“You’re asking to hire me, Sterling?” I tease, crueler than I am with anyone else. She makes me that way. She made me that way. “Shall we draw up a contract?”
Another sigh.
“Fine. Tell me when. I’ll come if I can get off work.” I resist telling her where I work. That detail may be too much for her to overlook. I know she still thinks my independent streak is temporary. Hearing that I’m working at a strip club, that I’m dating a man who frequents the club, would provoke fights I’d rather skip.
The Red Light is temporary, too. I’ll get a degree. A career. Freedom. That will be enough, and then I’ll be old enough to access my account, too.
“And you’ll dress appropriately,” Sterling adds. “Use my account. Indulge yourself—”
“Indulge you, I believe is what you mean to say.”
“Dress like my daughter,” she continues blithely. “Speak like my daughter. Give me three days of—”
“How much?”
Sterling sighs yet again. “Don’t be vulgar, dear.”
And I wonder if that sigh used to work on me. Admittedly, she wasn’t going to win any parenting awards, but most people’s parents fail in something. Sterling Morris wasn’t particularly awful, but when she accused me of trying to seduce her latest windbag of a boyfriend, I realized that she was everything I never wanted to be.
A mother doesn’t turn on her daughter.
A mother doesn’t choose money over her child.
Her needs weren’t ever particularly deep. She wanted to be dressed in the designer du jour, seen at the right restaurants, and fawned upon by men who could afford her—or who were embarrassingly young. The latter were the ones who met her at the beach house rather than in public.
“Shall we discuss vulgarity then?”
“Two thousand, Tessa. That’s what I will pay my child to pretend to be an adult.”
“Five.”