The Epidemic (31 page)

“Stop the car,” I murmur, watching out the window. Aaron slows, easing to the side of the road, but I open the door before he fully stops and nearly trip. I stumble but catch myself on the curb. I start to run toward Virginia’s house, disregarding any worry of being caught by Arthur.

I make it all the way to the door before an officer stops me, grabbing me hard by the arm. But I’m not scared of him—not now.

“You can’t go in there,” he says in a clipped tone. I pull away from him and glance around at the people on the porch, noting how pale and miserable they look. I’ve watched people grieve my whole life—I know what it looks like.

“Is she okay?” I ask the officer desperately. “Is Virginia okay?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t give out that sort of information,” he says. He motions for me to leave, but just then a woman is led from the house, clinging to the uniform of another officer.

“Why would she do it?” the woman murmurs. “I don’t understand.”

I glance up at the policeman in front of me, and he winces like he didn’t want me to overhear that. I stagger back a step, and he tilts his head, studying me.

“And who are you exactly?” he asks.

He’s looking for symptoms,
I think. “I’m her friend,” I say,
painfully aware of the tense when I see a flash of sympathy cross his face. I
was
her friend.

Because Virginia Pritchard is dead.

*  *  *

I walk off the porch into the rain before the officer can ask me any more questions. I’m struck down by my grief, my guilt. Before I can list all the ways I could have stopped this, I find Reed standing in the driveway next to the ambulance, staring up at the attic as rain soaks him through. He looks completely lost, alone. I’ve never seen someone look so alone. It terrifies me, but our only choice is to be brave right now. Strong.

I walk over and stand next to Reed, looking at the side of his face. “We have to go,” I say quietly.

Reed continues to watch the house, rain still falling and running over his lips. “We didn’t save her,” he says. “We didn’t close her loop of grief. It’s our fault.”

I blink back my tears, picturing Virginia, the girl who was nice to me that first day, who bought me a slice of pie. Who met a boy she liked at a party. Who was a star athlete. She promised to help me, even though she must have been suffering from her own loss. She knew that she was being erased and that she had no control over it. And I did nothing.

“We shouldn’t have let her go home,” I say. “So you’re right. It is our fault. But now it’s too late.” I look around us, feeling vulnerable out in the open now that I know what happened. “We have to go,” I tell Reed. I pause, putting voice to my other fear. “We can’t fail Deacon, too.”

Reed turns to me, seeming devastated at the thought. He reaches for my hand, and then together we hurry back to Aaron’s car. We find him waiting, still in the driver’s seat while he stares blankly at the road.

“She dead?” he asks wearily when we get in.

“Yeah,” I murmur, hearing Reed shift in the backseat. “She is.”

“Can you take me back to my car?” Reed asks, the emotion drained from his voice. “I have to grab some things from my place. Where are you guys staying tonight?”

I hadn’t even thought of it. I won’t sleep—not until I find Deacon. Aaron must have sensed that, but he answers immediately.

“I called and got us two rooms at a hotel on Curry and Fisher,” he says. “I’ll stay with Quinn. You take room three eighteen. It’s already paid for.”

“Thanks,” Reed whispers, and rests his head back on the seat and closes his eyes. We don’t talk, not even about our plan for Deacon. It’s up to me and Aaron now. Reed needs some time to recover.

*  *  *

We drop Reed off at his car, and then Aaron and I drive to Arthur’s office, even though it’s long past business hours. We don’t have to break in. There’s a
FOR LEASE
sign in the window, and a quick peek through the glass doors shows only a few moving boxes and empty desks. The place is deserted. There’s no sign of where Arthur’s gone. There’s no sign of Deacon.

A wave of hopelessness rolls over me, and I stumble back a
step. My heart is heavy, pained. “What are we going to do?” I murmur, putting my hands over my face.

“We’re going to keep it together,” Aaron says, emotion strangling his voice. “We’ll find him, Quinn. You know we’ll find him.”

I look over at him, trying to find proof of his statement in his expression. And I do. I see fierce loyalty. I see love.

And so I nod, and together, we go back to the car.

Aaron and I drive to an all-night diner so we can regroup. We’re the only people in the small, out-of-the-way restaurant. Aaron sits across from me in the booth, and we search business databases on our phones, but don’t come up with a new address for Arthur’s office.

“So where’s Deacon?” I ask him, my hands wrapped around my coffee cup. “Because if he’s with Arthur . . . it’s bad. Arthur could be—”

“Don’t go down that path,” Aaron interrupts. “Focus on finding him, not on what could be happening to him.”

“And what about Reed?” I ask. “What if he’s not at the hotel when we get there?”

Aaron sets his phone aside and exhales heavily. “What do you suggest we do about Reed?” he asks, looking tired—overwhelmed. We’re barely surviving this.

“I think Virginia said something to him.” I lean forward. “When he dropped her off, he said they talked. Whatever it was . . . she killed herself after. Now Reed is nearly catatonic. What did she do to him?”

“He might just be upset,” Aaron asks. “We’re all in a shitty situation, but Reed’s a good closer. Maybe you need to trust him.”

“And maybe he needs our help,” I point out. “Don’t forget, we came here because Virginia’s last two friends killed themselves. It’s one thing for us to willingly put ourselves in harm’s way. It’s another to let our friends walk blindly into it. Aren’t you a little concerned?”

“When you put it like that,” he says, “yeah. I guess so.” He reaches over to grab a container of sugar, dumps a spoonful into his coffee. He sets the sugar down with a clank next to his cup. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he adds, staring down. “I sure as hell wish your boyfriend were here right now. He’d have a plan. But he’s the one that’s fucking missing.” Aaron’s face scrunches up, and he turns away from me, staring out the window toward the street.

His small breakdown brings on my own tears. Deacon never used to cry. Even in the really dark assignments, the heartbreaking ones, he was always level-headed. Only once did he ever crack while on assignment.

He was playing the role of Ethan Gallagher, a freshman football player in Albany. Ethan’s family had been broken by the death—a heart attack after a practice. Ethan’s seven-year-old sister held Deacon’s hand whenever he walked in the room—as if she refused to see the difference between him and her brother.

I went in to extract Deacon from the case and to bring him to Marie, but he asked me to take him home first so he could shower.

I found him crying on the bathroom tile, saying that he should have been the one dead instead of Ethan—as if they were tradable. Deacon needed therapy after that assignment. He didn’t break down again.

So what would he think if he saw me crying in a diner instead of out looking for him? How disappointed would he be? Guilt begins to eat away at my conscience.

For now we have no real way to track Deacon. Our best shot will be following Arthur Pritchard when he goes into work tomorrow. But would he really go to work the day after his daughter’s death? I won’t underestimate his callousness.

“What should we do about Reed?” Aaron asks, drawing my attention.

“You need to tell Marie,” I say, earning a disgusted look. I hold up my hand, asking him to let me finish. “I don’t care who she’s working for,” I tell him. “She wouldn’t let any of us die. I know you believe that too. Ask her what to do about Reed.”

And although he hates the idea, Aaron nods and picks up his coffee, taking a loud sip.

“Fine,” he says. He stands, and we pay at the counter and head to the new hotel. Aaron said we should wait for morning to get our things, especially since we really don’t need anything beyond a change of clothes. Right now I just want to check on Reed.

And then I’m going to cry myself to sleep.

I DRIVE AARON’S CAR WHILE
he calls Marie. She hasn’t heard about Virginia, so Aaron relays what we know and then asks for her advice. When he hangs up, he rubs roughly at his face. “She wants to meet,” he says.

I’m about to flick on the turn signal to turn around, but Aaron shakes his head no. “You go to the hotel and check on Reed. Stay with him. I’ll go see Marie myself.”

“Are you kidding?” I say, and look at him. Deacon did something similar and now he’s missing. Aaron must realize the circumstances too, because he shrugs one shoulder helplessly.

“Our options are limited,” he says. “But man—I wish Deacon had gotten his hands on some truth tea. It would be nice to know exactly where Marie stands.”

“And I wish we didn’t need to,” I say. But obviously, Marie’s
motives are shady at best. Still, I won’t even entertain the thought that she had something to do with Deacon’s disappearance. It wouldn’t make sense.

I pull up to the hotel and get out, leaving the engine running. Aaron walks around the car, stopping to give me a hug in the glow of the headlights, and tells me to call him after I talk to Reed.

“I will,” I promise. But just before he gets in, I call his name. Aaron meets my eyes over the roof of the car, almost like he knows what I’m going to ask.

“You still think Deacon’s okay, don’t you?” I need to hear it. I need him to say it.

“Yeah,” Aaron says. “I really do.”

I close my eyes, relief flooding my chest. I thank him and turn away, knowing that I’m just like one of my clients: I’ll cling to any thought right now. Any hope—even if it’s a lie.

Aaron pulls out of the parking lot, and I check in at the lobby and get a key. I take the elevator and hit the third floor; when the door slides closed, I dial Deacon’s number again, just like I’ve done at least a dozen times tonight. The sound of his voice on his voice mail gives me one millisecond of hopefulness each time. It also tears me apart.

I just want him back. I don’t care about the rest of it anymore.

When I get off the elevator, I decide to stop at my room first, wanting to wash the dried tears off my face and compose myself before going to Reed. I feel broken—empty. Useless. I swipe my key card through the lock and push open my door.

I gasp when I find Reed sitting on my bed. His head is
down as he writes in a small journal on his lap. When he hears me, he puts down his pen and closes the book.

“I was just coming to find you,” I say. I shut the door behind me and walk in. But I don’t get more than two steps before Reed lifts his head, startling me with his appearance. His clothes are still wet from the rain, and there’s a slight pink on his cheeks, almost like windburn. He sits rigidly, uncomfortable in his own skin.

“Hope you don’t mind that I let myself in,” he says quietly. “I wanted to talk to you.” Reed’s eyes are so bloodshot they’re almost entirely red. His lips are dry and cracked, with a small sliver of blood where they split. I think he’s been crying for a while.

“You should have called me,” I say. “I would have come back sooner.” I sit across from him on the other bed, but my heart is thudding hard against my ribs. He’s gotten worse since we dropped him off. I’ve seen this lost look before, the one he wears like a mask. I’ve seen it in grief counseling, and I saw it on Roderick when he killed himself at his party.

Reed sets the journal on the nightstand and folds his hands in his lap, looking me over. “I always thought you were different, Quinn. Different from the other closers.”

He smiles, but there’s no humor behind it. “Do you know that your father once asked me to take you out?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You already told me.”

“Did I?” he asks, sounding surprised. “Well, Tom told me you were mixed up in something; he hoped maybe I could bring you back. I thought he meant an assignment. But I guess he meant your whole life, huh? You aren’t Quinlan McKee.”

My skin chills. “How did you . . . ?” I stop, knowing who told him. “Virginia,” I say. He nods.

“She found your file,” he tells me. “After we talked in my car, Virginia checked the house while I waited. When she came back out, she had the papers. It was in her father’s office. She said he must have brought it home earlier in the day. We were going to give them to you. But . . .”

“But what?”

Reed rubs his face roughly, as if he’s got a headache. And the change is there. Virginia Pritchard made him sick. Whatever secrets she told him before she died, she made him ill. Panic, bright and red, blooms inside my chest. “Reed, what did Virginia say?”

“That it’s too late now. None of us are getting out of here. Not fully intact, at least.”

“What are you talking about?” I demand. “Jesus, Reed—what did she tell you?”

Reed looks down at his lap, lost in thought. “Arthur has already started. You, Virginia.” Reed pauses and looks up. “His new program has been passed. This is step one. We’ll all be rounded up in the morning. Remaining closers have been flagged as a danger to ourselves.”

“When did this happen?” I ask.

“Earlier this afternoon. Marie already knew.”

“She
what
?” She betrayed us. She knew Arthur’s plan but didn’t warn us—didn’t send us away. “Why would Marie do that?” I ask.

Reed shrugs as if it doesn’t matter—as if nothing matters to him anymore.

I cross the room and sit across from him on the other bed. I lean forward and touch his knee. “Reed?” I whisper, panicked.

I think Tabitha found out and ran. We’ll never get that chance, though.”

“Please—”

“Do you know that for an instant,” he says, as if I’m not talking, “I considered it? I considered letting Arthur take her away from me. I didn’t think I could live with the pain anymore.”

“Take Katy?” I ask. I knew he was grieving for his dead girlfriend, but I didn’t consider how much it’s been eating him up.