Page 22

I bristle. “No.”

The first decade of my life is pockmarked by missing days, weeks, months. The psychological equivalent of excising malignant tumors. And the parts that remain? It’s common knowledge that eyewitness reports are shoddy at best. Not only are memories imperfect, but they’re malleable. Every time you remember something, it’s like playing a game of telephone with yourself. Things get lost or twisted along the way.

Then, my brain gets stuck. It replays things over and over and over, and the memory breaks a little more with every rerun. There are flashes of that day, enough to put a general puzzle together, but when it comes to the details? It’s unreliable. I’m unreliable.

“So this,” I say, nodding toward my catalog, “is all we’ve got to go on. Most of the crime scene photos on the hard drive were never released to the public, and Mom doesn’t have them anywhere. There’s no dental records, no fingerprints or DNA on file, no identification. Nothing.”

Felicity sucks on their teeth. “We can’t be stuck already.”

Above us, somebody clears their throat.

I open my mouth, about to offer a half-assed apology for our chatter to the librarian on duty, but instead find Alyssa standing across the table. She looks exhausted, hair thrown into braided pigtails and her eyeliner subtly smudged at the corner of her left eye.

“Hey,” Alyssa says, out of breath. “This seat taken?”

Felicity jams their finger into their phone to turn off the voice recording. “We’re busy.”

I say, “We’re not,” and shrug to tell Alyssa to sit anyway. Felicity wrinkles their nose as Alyssa slumps into the free chair. “What happened?”

Felicity says, “Who are you?”

Alyssa says, “What?”

I hold up a hand.

“Alyssa,” I say, “this is Felicity Keating, my partner for our bio project.” Alyssa frowns at Felicity, as if trying to figure out exactly what she’s looking at. Her eyes keep landing on the stitched-up ear and bandaged neck. She probably has a vague idea that I’m lying, because I always am, but she can’t call me on it without proof. “And Felicity, this is Alyssa Hanover, a family friend.”

Felicity says, “Like, DC Police Chief Warren Hanover?”

Alyssa somehow manages to deflate even further. “Hi, nice to meet you, too,” she says, shooting me a desperate look. “Please tell me you’re free tomorrow night.”

Usually, no. I maintain a strict schedule that consists entirely of being left alone so I can lie in the dark with my eyes squeezed shut.

But.

The cogs in my head are turning.

I nudge Felicity with my foot: Let me handle this. They shoot me a harsh side-eye but stay quiet.

“What happened,” I say.

Alyssa limply holds up her phone. “You know Dad’s fundraiser tomorrow? Leah’s caretaker called out and we can’t get a replacement and—look. Can you hang out with Leah over dinner? Just for a little bit. School’s been rough for her lately, and I need to cook and do dishes and all that.”

As usual, I pretend not to care. “What kind of event is it?”

“Dinner at that stupid crab place, I think.”

“So he’s gonna be out most of the night.”

“We eat late. It won’t be long—an hour or two.” Alyssa smushes her cheek into her hand. “Do you still like that Alfredo ziti Dad used to make? I can throw that together, no problem.”

If she’s pulling out the Alfredo ziti card, she really needs me to come over. Or she’s aware that, on a normal day, there would only be a fifty-fifty shot of this working in her favor. The last time we got in a fight over me not wanting to help her with Leah—not because I don’t tolerate Leah, Leah’s fine, it’s that I despise the idea of being expected to help—she called me a heartless psychopath. Or a bitch. I can’t remember. She’s called me a lot of things.

But this is a free pass into the house of Warren Hanover while he’s not home. And Warren Hanover is a sad, pathetic son of a bitch who destroyed his marriage to (unsuccessfully) chase my father. His life is a testament to his own failure. And all we need is something to nudge my brain in the right direction, right? If nothing in that house jogs what’s left of my memory, I’ll eat my left foot.

Looks like, with a little cooperation from the daughter of DC’s former chief of police, we won’t be stuck for much longer.

The bell is about to ring, so I pop my laptop shut and slide it into my bag. “Sure. Let me know when.”