“The assailant’s blood?” the lead officer asked.
“Of course it’s her blood,” Caitlin snapped. “None of us are bleeding, are we?”
He turned to Michelle. “So you fought her off? You stabbed her with the knife and took her gun?”
Michelle nodded.
The lead officer gave her a long look. “Well, I guess that was pretty lucky, wasn’t it?”
“I guess so,” she said. “Look, she wasn’t exactly James Bond. Just some kind of crazy stalker.”
“What about those text messages?” Troy asked suddenly. He patted his pants pocket. “Oh, man. My phone. It’s gone. She must have stolen it.”
“Text messages?” the officer asked.
Troy opened his mouth, then closed it.
“We’ll be assigning this to a detective for a more extensive follow-up,” the officer said. “Any other details, make a note if that helps. We’ll get this whole thing sorted out.”
Not likely, Michelle wanted to say, but of course, she didn’t.
“They want us to go up to the medical center and give blood samples and get more detailed exams. Have some other photos taken if need be.” Caitlin shuddered. “I told them we’d take a cab over.” She waved at the splintered front door. “After the board-up men come.”
Michelle stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing the blood off her hand. She’d already given all the evidence she planned on giving.
Don’t wait around and try to fix things.
It was past time for her to make her move. To get away from Caitlin and Gary’s surveillance, if she could.
Caitlin managed a shaky chuckle. “You think a glass of wine would get in the way of those tox screens they want to run?”
“I don’t know,” Michelle said. She turned off the water and dried her hands on a dishtowel. “After the drugs, maybe it’s not a good mix.”
“You’re probably right about that. But you’ve been right about a lot of things, haven’t you?”
Her voice had suddenly changed. She sounded steadier. More in control. And pissed as hell.
“Why don’t you tell us the real story, Michelle? Because I know there is one.”
Michelle considered the dishtowel in her hands. She folded it and hung it on the rack next to the sink. Got out three glasses from the cupboard and filled them with filtered water.
“Okay,” she said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
She showed them Danny’s logbook, the letter of explanation he’d written. Caitlin read it first, her brow wrinkling as she did. After she’d finished, she pushed the book over to Troy without comment, the expression on her face neutral, impossible to read.
Michelle waited, counting the minutes this was taking. There was a squad car parked in front of the house, and she didn’t think Gary would try anything right now, not so soon after a major police incident. Not his style. He didn’t have a platoon of men in black to storm in here and shoot up the place. She didn’t think.
But she needed to make her move.
Pop smoke. Get the fuck out of here.
“What do you think?” Caitlin asked Troy.
He shrugged. “We’ve been saying for years the CIA’s the ones behind all that crack cocaine in the eighties. People said we were paranoid.”
“I know the person who wrote this,” Michelle said. “And I know that it’s true.”
“Okay,” Caitlin said. She still seemed oddly calm. “If this is true… I’m not sure I understand what it has to do with me.”
“The people he’s talking about…” Michelle began. “They’ve been using you and Safer America. They don’t want you changing direction. They want the propositions here in California defeated. There’s a lot of money tied up in keeping things the way they are.”
“I…” Caitlin sat very still. She abruptly shook her head, like she could shake everything she’d heard out of it. Then she straightened up.
“And you? What’s your part in all this?”
“They blackmailed me. Pulled strings to get me the job as your assistant. I was supposed to babysit you, they told me.”
“You mean, spy on me. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? Spy on me and pretend to give a shit.”
Her stillness had turned to rigidity, as if that was the only way she could hold herself together. She sounded furious.
Michelle couldn’t really blame her. She nodded.
“And when you say ‘pulled strings’-who’s fucking me over in my own organization? Is it Porter?”
Michelle felt suddenly, utterly exhausted. Her head and ear and scalp throbbed. “Probably. I’m not sure. You can’t trust any of them. That’s all I know for certain.”
“And now I’m supposed to trust you?”
Michelle shook her head. “I’m not asking you to trust me. Just… think about what happened tonight, and try to believe what I’m telling you.”
Caitlin’s head thumped back against the couch. “I don’t know what to think.”
“What do we do?” Troy clenched and unclenched his fists. “How are we supposed to protect ourselves against these people? We go to the police with this, they’re just gonna laugh at us.”
“I think you have two choices,” Michelle said. She turned to Caitlin. Caitlin was overwhelmed, Michelle could tell-who wouldn’t be? Michelle couldn’t be sure that she’d absorbed it all or entirely believed it. But Caitlin needed to understand the situation she was in, and Michelle didn’t have a lot of time to help her get it. “You forget about changing Safer America’s direction, and go back to how things were before, do the election work they want you to do.”
“I won’t,” Caitlin said. “I can’t.”
“Then you need to go public with your change of direction now. Don’t wait to get back to Houston and talk to the board. Draft a press release, send it to the board, send it to everyone you can think of. Do it tonight. I don’t think they’ll try the same thing twice, not after it’s too late for them to stop you from speaking out.”
“I see.” Caitlin nodded, like this was all some sort of normal business discussion. She sipped her glass of water. Swallowed hard. “That girl, she was here to kill me. Wasn’t she?”
It was tempting to lie, to try and make it hurt less, but she needed to know the truth.
“Yes,” Michelle said.
“To keep me from changing Safer America?”
“And to scare people, I think. Maybe influence the vote.”
“And Troy?”
“I think they wanted to blame him for it.”
The color drained from Caitlin’s face. She suddenly looked as pale and insubstantial as when Michelle had first met her.
Troy’s jaw worked. He stared down at his hands.
“I don’t know what to do,” he mumbled.
“You can walk away,” Michelle said. “Pretend this never happened. Maybe they’ll leave you alone.”
Maybe they would. It wasn’t like he had any proof of any of this. And his usefulness as a fall guy had probably expired.
Or maybe they’d kill him anyway.
Caitlin briefly rested her hand on his forearm. “You know what, Troy? If you don’t want to partner up now, I understand. You don’t need any more grief because of me.”
“You’re still going ahead?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” She laughed shakily. “Second time somebody’s tried to kill me. Either third time’s a charm, or the devil’s used up his chances.”
Troy was silent for a moment. Then he let out a chuff. “Good. Because I’m pissed off, and I want to do some damage to these assclowns. But the pretty white lady’s the one they’re gonna listen to. Not me.”