“Well, someone had to take Volodya’s place on our shit list,” Brad chirps.
“Agree.” I laugh to myself. Where’s the fun in having no enemies at all? Now, where the fuck is Amber?
34
ROSE
I peek over the top of my magazine to Beau. She looks as comfortable as I expected as she messes with her cell—not comfortable at all—her attention elsewhere. As it has been since we arrived. A distracted Beau makes me uneasy. I can only imagine how it makes James feel.
Today is just meetings. That’s what Danny said. I don’t believe him, and now I’ve somehow gone from trying to keep Beau busy to buying a beauty spa. I’m rolling with the fates.
If she pulls one of her disappearing stunts again, it could fuck everything up, Rose. We’re getting somewhere here.
Getting somewhere. Does this mean this nightmare will soon be over? And . . . does Beau know?
I slam the magazine shut with more force than I planned, silencing the room. Esther and Lawrence look back over their shoulders, their nails half painted, and Pearl and Anya lift their heads from the massage chairs. Beau, though? She doesn’t look up from her cell next to me where her toes are under a UV lamp. I wait for everyone to get back to whatever treatments they’re having and reach over, poking her. She looks up at me, vacant.
“What color did you go for?” I ask.
She blinks and peeks down at her feet, reminding herself. “Nude.” But of course. “You?”
I don’t look down. “Red.” But I do look at the ruby on my finger. This is the only red I want to see on you. I frown, seeing the red, slutty dress I was wearing the night Danny took me. The slutty red lipstick he rubbed off my lips when I wore it simply to piss him off. “Excuse me,” I say to the therapist working on my toes. “I’ve changed my mind. I’d like pink, please. Or maybe coral.”
Beau goes back to her cell, and I make sure she hears my exasperation. “What?” she says, dropping it in to her lap heavily.
“You’ve not spoken a word since we arrived. This is supposed to be a girlie pamper day.”
“Oh, please. You are my best friend. You know me, and this”—she points at her toes and then around the lovely spa—“is not my bag.”
“I know,” I grate.
“So why am I here?”
I feel like she’s goading me, pushing me into a corner, pressuring me to confess. “I already told you, I’m buying it.”
She laughs, prompting Esther to look back at us. She knows shit’s going down too. In fact, we’re all here doing a terrible job of pretending we’re blissfully unaware that our men are murderers who are quite possibly murdering someone right now. Just meetings. I snort to myself.
I turn to Beau. “What’s going on?” I ask. She’s not mentioned a word since her meltdown in the kitchen when she thought James had left. Nothing.
Her attention remains on her cell, and it’s beginning to piss me off, like I’m not worthy of an explanation. “Rose—”
“And last night? Danny said James was trashed. He never gets drunk, Beau. Ever.” She’s disappeared before. They’ve argued before. It’s a constant challenge not to become a bag of nerves in this life. Beau’s an integral part of what keeps me sane, and I know I am for her too. But she’s distancing herself. It’s not helping with my nerves. “Are you and Ja—”
“He found my birth control pills.”
I shoot back in my chair like I’ve been hit with an arrow, and Beau closes her eyes, hiding from my reaction.
“What?” is all I can muster. “I thought you—”
“I don’t.” She won’t look at me. Face me. Face the truth.
Self-preservation. She’s trying to control what she can’t control, and she doesn’t even know if it needs controlling. “So that’s it?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“You’re a dick.” I sit back in my chair and open my magazine, roughly turning the pages, not reading the words, but staring at the pages briefly. Then I slam it shut and face her startled face again. “Is this why you’re playing cop again?”
“What?”
“Running off around town telling yourself your dad’s been murdered so you have something to do? A mystery to solve? Something to focus on instead of you and James and the…”
Her lip quivers. “Amber’s inherited it all. You don’t think that’s suspicious? And Dad’s friend, Cartwright. He washed up on the beach. Not suspicious?”
Okay, very suspicious. But . . . “You’re not a cop anymore, Beau.”
She withdraws, looking stung. “I know, Rose. Everyone keeps reminding me.” She removes her toes from the lamp and gets up, walking off toward the changing rooms, and I look down at the young girl who’s tapping my toenail to check it’s dry.
“You have a massage,” I call, desperate, jumping up and going after her, feeling everyone watching us. I push into the changing rooms and find Beau getting her Converses on. “Beau, come on,” I beg, not because I’ve been told to keep her busy, but because I hate this. Us fighting. I hate it.
“I’m okay,” she assures me, swinging a shirt on over her tank and fastening one button.
“You are not okay,” I say through my teeth as she bends and turns up the bottom of her frayed jeans. She can’t leave. I’ll never forgive myself if something happens. “Beau.” I grab her arm as she tries to pass me, and she freezes. “You’ll never know if you can have a baby if you don’t allow your body to tell you.”
Biting her lip, she stares at the floor, the silence roaring. Short of tackling her and tying her up, I’m fucked. “James doesn’t want one, so this is a pointless conversation.”
“He doesn’t?”
She looks back. “No, he doesn’t, so actually this is all for the best, right?”
I laugh. Anyone who has to end a confident statement with a right? is either not confident at all, or totally full of shit. Beau is both. “Right.” I cannot believe what I’m hearing. “You’re maddening.” I retie my robe, with a lack of anything else to do with my hands other than strangle my best friend, and I can’t do that because I fucking love her. Everyone in this family knows James was mad for a baby. Everyone knows it broke him. Everyone knows he’d do anything to help Beau stay in the light. He was simply worried about her. “So fucking maddening,” I mutter, wrenching on the tie. I suddenly don’t feel like being pampered anymore. “So where are you going now?” I ask, my voice strong. She knows I can’t stop her. “To chase around in circles some more? Put yourself in danger? Leave us all here worrying about whether we might see you alive again?” I disregard the wideness of her eyes. The hurt on her face. Or I try. Goddammit, guilt flares within, and I quickly leave the changing rooms before Beau detects it. She needs to be told.
I close the door and growl, catching Esther’s questioning eye. I shake my head and have a quiet, stern word with myself. I walked into this place filled with excitement. A girlie day. It didn’t matter that my husband engineered it to help his cause. It was something normal in a world where we can’t do normal. I knew I wasn’t getting Beau here for a pedicure or massage unless I made my cause believable. So I told her Danny was buying me a business and I needed help on the interior design. It escalated from there. I listened to Pearl tell me how she studied hairdressing at college. And Anya, apparently, is a super talented nail artist. It was like the fates were talking to me. Hope. I had hope. It’s probably going to cost my husband a few million, but . . . we need something.