Crash for Me (The Blankenships Book 7) (3 page)

She wanted to tell him to promise, but it was one step too far. He couldn’t promise that. No one could. If there was anything she’d learned this week, it was that.

She managed to sit still for a few minutes, but her stomach was tangled and twisted, and her heart was flying like a scared rabbit. She found herself opening the print outs of Cindy’s information, pouring through it, flipping pages, looking for a pattern that they had somehow missed, something that would give them a clue as to what was going on, and who was involved.

Her eyes lingered over the information about the twins. Irene and Henry Brie. The commissioner had said he’d contact their family, but had he? If he had, would he be able to convince them that something was wrong? She’d meant to ask Alex if he’d mentioned it, but it was hardly the time, and so much else had happened.

She tossed her phone back and forth from one hand to the other for a few moments, trying to think about her options. She knew she wasn’t being rational; she suspected that rational was about as far as it was possible to be from where she was right now. But now that she’d thought of them, worried about them, the fear over what might have happened to them, what might be happening to them right now, stuck in her mind like something between her teeth. She couldn’t just let it go. She couldn’t pretend that it didn’t matter, that she wasn’t concerned. She was petrified.

It took a while, but she dialed the number Cindy’d used to contact the twins parents previously.

The phone rang so many times that she thought the call was going to go to voice mail. She was trying to figure out what the hell kind of voice mail she could leave without sounding completely insane when the call suddenly connected.

A man spoke on the line. There was so much background noise—tinny, loud music, and the thick but indistinct noises of a crowd. “I thought I told you to stop fucking calling me.”

He spoke like a man unaccustomed to swearing, but willing to pull out the big f-bomb in order to make a point. He emphasized the curse with a kind of thorough passion that made Zoey inclined to giggle.

She choked back the urge and put on her journalist voice. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t think this is—”

“You’re exactly who I expected to hear from, don’t think you can bullshit me.” This expletive was less familiar in his mouth. He separated the two words, bull shit, instead of blurring them together like a most experienced cursers did. “My kids are safe, and I don’t want to hear another word from you about the lies you’re spreading.”

She took a deep breath and re-centered herself.
Just an interview, just another interview with someone who doesn’t want to talk. You’ve done this so many times, it’s on auto pilot. Just let it happen.
“We haven’t spoken before, sir. My name is Zoey Gardener—”

“And you work at a trashy rag of a paper. I know who you are, Ms. Gardener. And the last time we spoke, I told you not to call this phone number again.”

She rubbed at her temples. “This is Mr. Brie, yes? Father of Irene and Henry Brie?”

“Obviously.”

If he was so angry about the calls that he’d been getting, why hadn’t he hung up on her yet? Because he was angry and looking for vindication? Or because he was afraid and didn’t dare? After all, she certainly hadn’t been the one calling him. Who had? That was a scary thought.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Brie, but I’m going to talk to you for a moment, and ask you to really listen to my voice. I know you’ve been contacted by someone claiming to be me, but I’ve never called you before. If you’d like, I can give you my number, and you can call me back.”

There was silence, and then a begrudging sigh. “You sound different. Younger. But I have no proof that you’re who you say you are, either.”

It was a step. “Would you like me to text you a picture of my driver’s license?”

Another long pause. “No, this burner phone Cindy gave me doesn’t get picture messages.”

Her heart clenched. “You knew Cindy Walden.”

“That’s nothing to do with anything.”

“It’s everything to do with everything, Mr. Brie. Cindy Walden was murdered in the city just a few days ago. I’m worried that someone is going to target your children next.”

The man actually scoffed. “Whatever inter-office political game Cindy got herself caught up in, it’s nothing to do with my kids. They’re twelve years old. They’re innocent in all of this. I don’t appreciate—”

His voice cut off suddenly, but the call didn’t drop. “Mr. Brie?”

She could hear his voice, but it was muffled, as if he had the phone’s microphone pressed up against his shirt.

“Mr. Brie—” she said again, louder, as if that would make it easier for him to hear her.

She heard an ugly sound, a twisting, crashing sound, and then a scream. The kind of scream that was so full of agony and pain that it had somehow ceased being entirely human.  It tore at her guts and slashed through her soul.

She didn’t need to know the details of what had happened. It was enough. The connection cut out with a snapping pop—not like he’d ended the call, but as if his phone was smashed. In a crowd, perhaps, people running from some sort of disaster.

Her phone hung from her limp fingers for a full minute before she managed to pick it up and dial again. She thought of calling 911, but what would she say, really? It was Luke Pyramus’s number that she dialed, one more time.

“What?” His voice was clearly irritated, clearly exhausted. In a place far, far away, she felt something for him that had a passing acquaintance with sympathy.

“I think that someone killed the Brie children,” she said. Her voice sounded so numb. As if she wasn’t talking about—she shuddered, and an image flooded her mind. In her mind, the children looked like a young Alex and Claire, though she had no idea whether or not the children would have been from the same racial background. The image pulled her apart, and she heard a weak sob fall from her lips. “I called their parents. Someone has been posing as me, talking to them, I think. I think they might be dead.”

“Ms. Gardener—”

“Alex is at AEGIS,” she said. “He’s a good man. You have to keep him safe. Please.”

Pyramus kept talking, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. She pressed End Call, and when her phone started ringing again after a minute, she powered it off.

CHAPTER FOUR

She wasn’t entirely sure, after that. Things felt blurry. Sensations were dull. Off. She wandered through the penthouse, her fingers trailing over surfaces as if they were all that were reminding her of which was she might find “down.” She fell against a wall at one point, her limbs simply refusing to cooperate.

She found herself in the shower. The water was streaming down into her face. She’d stripped off her pants, underwear, and bra, but inexplicably still had her T-shirt on, the soft jersey cotton plastered to her skin. The water was scalding hot, and she was sitting on the floor of the shower, her hair around her like a wavy curtain, stretched by the weight of the water.

Zoey reached up to turn the water to a more reasonable temperature, and then left it where it was. Let her be scalded. Let the water burn her until the memories faded. Cindy. Claire. The twins. These people, all of these people, dying so close to her, yet she had been unable to do anything. Paralyzed. Paralyzed by fear. By disorientation. By proximity.

She was useless.

The water poured down over her, and if she cried, she didn’t notice the tears. She didn’t let them sink in; she just let them flow away in the wash of water and sorry.

After a while, the water cooled down, becoming a cold wash of misery instead of a scalding flood of redemption. She forced herself to stand before it got really cold. She didn’t feel better, only emptier. She leaned forward into the spray, flipping her hair over her head to soak it one more time and get her hair moving in the right direction. There was nothing like having your scalp hurt because your heavy curls were pulling it in a different direction than your scalp was used to, and she didn’t want to deal with it today. She flipped the heavy wet wash of hair back over her head, feeling the satisfying, reassuring thump as the mass of it landed on her neck and back, and she felt just a tiny bit more herself. She shut off the water before she started shivering.

Zoey opened the shower door, and jumped a little when a large, fluffy blue towel was held out to her. Sophia stood on the giving end of the cotton, tears streaking her cheeks. Zoey didn’t know what to do for a long moment. She was completely naked, which didn’t embarrass her precisely, but it also wasn’t something she did, comfortably or often. The towel twitched in Sophia’s hand, but whether it was from fatigue at holding her arm out like that, or irritation, Zoey couldn’t quite tell. Still, she took the signal, however it was meant. She took the towel, unfolded it, and wrapped it around her body.

“Well,” Sophia said. It sounded like irritation in her voice at first, but a fresh wash of tears that she had to try and wipe away told another story. “Go on. Dry off, or you’ll catch your—” She cut off abruptly, her face twisting in agony.

Zoey pushed her small remaining modesty away and dried herself off. Sophia plucked a robe from somewhere, and Zoey slipped it on. She went to wrap her hair in the cotton towel, but Sophia made a disgusted noise and took it away from her. A microfiber towel was pressed into her hands. “Better for your curls,” she said. “Miss—” her voice trailed off again, and then she pulled herself back to the moment. “Miss Claire said they were much more useful. Less frizz.”

“She was right,” Zoey said. She tried to smash as much as she could into the simple statement. That she’d loved Claire too, that she understood Sophia’s pain, that it was all too much to handle.

She didn’t know if the older woman got the message, but she gave a sharp nod. “Come,” she said. “You didn’t eat a thing Mr. Blankenship prepared. I will make you some better food. Thick, hearty breakfast. In the south, you call it soul food?”

She thought of her mother’s chicken fricassee, warm and thick and delicious, food she could curl around and feel safe. Her mother hadn’t been an amazing cook, but the things she made, she made well. “Yes,” Zoey said. “Please.”

“Come,” Sophia said again. She reached out, and Zoey let herself be folded into Sophia’s embrace, even though she was taller than the woman by several inches. 

Back in the breakfast nook, Zoey wondered if Sophia had been cooking since Alex left the house. The sideboard was covered with waffles, eggs, crepes filled with some sort of chocolate. Sophia stood by the feast for a moment, her hands fretting with the hem of her shirt. “I didn’t have time to make cornetto,” she said. “Or strudel. Tomorrow. I will make more tomorrow.”

“Sophia,” Zoey said, filling a plate and sitting down at the spot she’d only just started to think of as hers. “Sit down with me. Eat with me.”

The woman glared at her. “I can’t. I wouldn’t.” It wasn’t the manufactured rage of an actor in a British upstairs/downstairs drama. Sophia seemed genuinely hurt that Zoey had suggested such a thing.

Instead of trying for the determined socialist approach, Zoey let herself wilt a little, just a touch more of the miserable cyclone in her heart showing through. “Oh,” she said, as soft and sad as she felt. “All right, then. I understand. You’re probably busy.”

Sophia made a sound in her throat. The sound, thick and guttural, said that she’d raised children; she knew what Zoey was up to, and she was going to give in, but it wasn’t because she had to, it was because she didn’t want those delicately rolled chocolate crepes to go to waste. She put some food on a plate, but before she sat down, she also presented Zoey with a small cup of what had to be cappuccino. The foam was elegantly shaped into that iconic arrow shape, and cinnamon was dusted off to the side. Sophia’s hand shook as she placed the mug down. She offered Zoey a small smile. “It was Miss Claire’s favorite,” she said. “I’d wake her up with a cup, because she always slept through her alarm otherwise. It doesn’t feel right to not make it in the morning. I wander through the day, sure I have forgotten something.”

It was strange, to lift a dead girl’s coffee to her lips, but when the delicious burst of flavors brushed her tongue, it felt like a memorial. “Thank you,” she said to Sophia. “This is wonderful.”

Sophia smiled, but it was a sad, lonely gesture.

“How are you?” Zoey asked. “Are you holding up all right?”

The older woman started with a nod of her head that turned into a shake before she was properly finished. She set down the fork she’d only just picked up and held up her head with her hands, as if it had suddenly grown too heavy to be supported on its own. “I’m sorry,” she said. For the first time since Zoey had known her, her accent thickened. “I am sorry. This is not how I am to behave.”

Zoey set down the mug of cappuccino and touched the back of Sophia’s hand with her fingertips. Sophia grasped Zoey’s hand so tightly that the bones in her fingers ached. She didn’t make a sound, just held the woman’s hand, giving her a lifeline, a connection to someone warm and breathing.

“I’ve buried my parents,” Sophia said, after a time. “And that was all right, because they were old and ill and it was their time. I buried a baby, and I hated God then, but I also knew that the baby was sick, and that he died in my arms, and I loved him as much as I could until he was gone. And it was not all right, it was never all right, but it stopped hurting so bright. But this—this. Someone should have been there to hold her. No one should die without someone holding their hand.”

“I held her,” Zoey said, squeezing Sophia’s hand. The woman’s eyes darted up, bright with tears, but also hope.

“The papers—they said it was a random shooting—”

Zoey’s stomach twisted, and for just a moment, she wondered how much Alex would want her to tell his housekeeper.
Screw it
. “It wasn’t. It was very deliberate. I don’t think they were gunning for her, I think she was just there, or the shooter got confused. But we were there with her. Alex was unconscious, and I couldn’t stop the shooter, but I held her. She wasn’t alone.”

Relief washed over the other woman’s face like the tide coming in. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, whispering something in Italian, and then burst out into teary laughter.

Zoey tried to share in the woman’s relief, but couldn’t quite find it on her own. She could hear Claire’s voice, crying out at the pain that was tearing her apart as her heart tried valiantly to pump blood through her body. She remembered the girl’s eyes, locked on hers, but somehow unseeing. Claire had not been physically alone when she died, but Zoey couldn’t help but feel that the girl hadn’t known the difference. She’d died in pain, sorrow, and loneliness.

Something deep inside her heart twisted, tightening down like a star, burning up the gasses that kept it afloat. It collapsed in on itself, burning hotter and brighter and more horrible as it consumed itself. Part of her mind watched the process with a detached interest. Would it go supernova, exploding through her soul with nuclear force, leaving her completely shattered and unable to recover? Would she be left with a black hole, or a neutron star?

I’d rather be a nebula.
She shook her head and forced herself back to focusing.

Sophia was smiling, though, and even though it was a sad smile, a lonely one, it didn’t hold anything like the agony that Zoey had seen before. She let Sophia pat her hand and begin to eat, and didn’t tell her the truth. For herself, Zoey found that what little appetite she’d had was gone. She ate a little, mechanically, and sipped the cappuccino. She tried to focus on what she had, not what she’d lost, but it felt more and more like things were slipping through her fingers.