“Fine,” I said. “What are you after? What’s your endgame? At what point are you going to say you’ve done enough — when they catch him?”
“Maybe,” Wyatt said. “Or maybe it’s more like … Have you ever walked into a room, and you know something’s different? Like your little brother’s been messing with your stuff and tried to cover it up but you can tell?”
I shook my head. “I’m an only child.”
Wyatt gave me a look. “I am, too. It was a metaphor. Do you ever get the feeling that you’re missing something you shouldn’t be missing?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I feel that way all the time.”
“That’s how I feel about these murders. Like we’re all missing something. There’s some piece of the puzzle we haven’t found yet. So I don’t know if it’s catching the killer I’m after … or just figuring out what’s off. Making it easier for someone else to catch him.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“My turn, right?”
I looked at the carpet and waited.
“What is it?” he asked. “What you’re afraid of? The thing you hide.” His voice was low and had a note of compassion in it that made me want to shove him.
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I reached up to swipe them away. “I don’t think that’s a fair use of your question.”
“It’s being angry, isn’t it?”
I stared at him in shock. I didn’t need to answer, because the look on my face was all the confirmation a person could ask for.
“I can tell…. I mean, I make people angry on a pretty regular basis,” he said, giving me a self-conscious smile. “Apparently I come across as a little abrasive sometimes. But with you, I’ve said things that make you mad on some caveman level, but it’s like … the emotion dies inside you. Without ever coming out.”
I hardly dared speak, for fear of how my voice would sound. “And what’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It can’t be healthy.”
“Lots of things aren’t healthy,” I snapped. “We do them anyway. Like devoting our lives to studying a serial killer. I have to go.”
I stood up and grabbed my backpack, then turned to leave.
Wyatt’s soft voice stopped me. “But why? What’s the worst that could happen if you let yourself get angry?”
I turned around and stared into his eyes. You want eye contact, Wyatt? Here’s your eye contact. “The worst that could happen is that someone else could die.”
When I got home, Reed was sitting in Jonathan’s office with the door open. He looked up and waved as I walked to my room.
I got the feeling that he wanted me to go in and talk to him, but I needed a few minutes to myself. I’d spent the drive home deflecting a barrage of Mom-questions, and I hadn’t had a chance to process my conversation with Wyatt, especially the things he’d said at the end — things he had no right to even think about, much less say to me.
Instead I focused on the reason we’d talked in the first place: the list of items that he insisted were worthless, because they came from an “unreliable source.” But that list was proof that my experiences weren’t just the results of my overtaxed mind finally breaking down completely. Someone else knew, somehow, that those things fit together.
And that someone just happened to be a woman who billed herself as the Psychic to the Stars. I sat down with my laptop and Googled the name Leyta Fitzgeorge. A cookie-cutter website popped up.
Her number was listed, but I stopped short of calling her. Reaching out to Leyta Fitzgeorge might seem like the next logical step, but my most pressing goal was to clear away the drama in my life, and getting in touch with a psychic was a pretty obvious move in the opposite direction. So I set my phone on my desk. Maybe I’d call her later.
I changed from my uniform into slim-fitting jeans and a teal V-neck T-shirt that brought out the blue in my eyes, telling myself that this extra bit of care with my appearance had absolutely nothing to do with Reed’s presence at the house. It didn’t matter anyway, because when I went into the hall, there was no sign of him in Jonathan’s office.
As I went downstairs, I could hear him talking to Mom in the kitchen.
“And anything that could be considered office supplies — printer ink or pens or stationery — I can arrange to have delivered from the studio. Just drop me a text or an email the day before you need them, and I’ll take care of everything.”
When I entered the kitchen, my mother looked up at me. “Oh, hi, Willa.”
“Hi,” I said, more to Reed than to her.
Mom cleared her throat a little awkwardly. “Thanks, Reed. We’ll definitely let you know if you can help.”
“Absolutely,” Reed said. “Anytime.”
He gave me a little eyebrow raise on his way out, and I had to fight to keep the corners of my mouth from turning up as I went to the sink to get a glass of water.
“He’s very nice,” Mom said, after he’d been gone for a minute.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’m going to have to talk to Jonathan, though,” she said slowly. “I’m just not sure how I feel about having him in the house all the time.”
I set my glass down with a louder clatter than I’d intended. “What do you mean? He’s not here all the time.”
“You know what I’m saying.” She shrugged. “This is our home. Having a stranger here doesn’t seem like —”
“He’s not a stranger,” I said. “He works for Jonathan. He’s just trying to save money for college. You don’t have to kick him out. Where will he go?”
“Oh, Willa, don’t be so dramatic,” Mom said. “He can work at Jonathan’s office.”
“But there’s stuff that needs to be done here,” I said. “He doesn’t just do work on the movies. He handles a lot of random stuff around the house, too.” I fought to keep my voice light and unemotional, when really, I was flipping out at the thought of not getting to see Reed on a regular basis. It wasn’t that I had a crush on him — I mean, maybe I do, but so what? — but he was the only person in California who seemed to see me as the person I wanted to be.
My mother stood up to her full height (which was the same as my full height and therefore not terribly intimidating). “Anything that needs to be done here can be done by me.”
“Why?” I asked. “Because you’re suddenly some little wifey? What is this, 1950?”
She frowned, her eyes searching my face. “What on earth has gotten into you?”
Her question hit me someplace deep and raw. I looked down quickly, embarrassed.
Mom put the back of her hand against my forehead. “Are you feeling all right? Is it a headache?”
For once, it wasn’t a headache, but I nodded anyway. “A little one.”
“You’re not getting them a lot, are you?”
I backed away from her gentle touch, shaking my head. “No, I’m fine. Forget it.”
Her eyes flashed, a little wounded. “If you have something to say to me, then we should talk about it. But I feel like what you’re trying to say doesn’t have anything to do with Reed anymore.”
I swallowed. Mom was always good at getting to the heart of things. But I wouldn’t even know where to begin now.
“Willa?”
I shook my head. “I’m not trying to say anything. I just wanted a glass of water.”
Mom’s cell rang, and it was Jonathan, so she excused herself and went out the sliding door into the backyard. I let out a breath, put my glass in the dishwasher, turned to leave — and saw Reed standing in the kitchen doorway.
He was hovering, like he didn’t know what to do with himself.
“Oh … hey.” My words felt all stumbly and loose. “How much of that did you hear?”
“How much of what?” Seeing the skeptical look on my face, he gave me a sheepish smile. “All of it. Sorry I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to embarrass your mother.”