Page 87

Before it pointed Felicity’s biological family to Washington, DC, and eventually to them.

And now? Now I know their sister’s name. Me: the cruel, manipulative, violent bitch who helped kill their sister. Me: the person holding the wallet, the person who wants nothing more than to put Cordelia’s name out into the world. Saving myself means destroying them. Destroying me means saving them.

Not letting Morgan Slaughter leave this penthouse is basic self-preservation. If I was in their position, that’s what I would do.

Felicity lunges. Grabs me by the collar. Rears back to plunge the switchblade into my throat, or shoulder, or face.

They’re stronger than me, but they’re fucked up. I can see it in their eyes: There’s the hesitation that every person has when it comes down to it. The half-second realization that they’re going to do something they can never take back.

It gives me just enough time.

I throw my weight into their legs, the same way I took Cordelia Sutherland to the floor, and we go down. Crashing into the crinkling plastic.

They grunt. Try to kick me. It knocks the wallet out of my grasp. I drag myself up their body, catch their knife hand as they swing it up toward me, and smash it down again. It cuts the webbing between my thumb and pointer finger. They lose their grip and the knife hits the ground.

I snatch it, scramble back, and stand.

Felicity screams in frustration. Hauls themself onto their knees. Tears drip off their chin as their glassy eyes swipe around the room, darting from potential weapon to potential weapon. When their attention finally lands on the wallet on the floor, I step on it. Pin it to the plastic sheet.

“Don’t,” I say.

They cough, clearing mucus from their throat. “Fuck you.”

“Don’t do this.”

“I saw you,” they sob. “I saw you, I saw—” They stumble to one of the metal trays of surgical equipment, grief-numb fingers fumbling across scalpels still in their sterile wrappers. I readjust my grip on the switchblade, but there’s no point. They can’t manage to pick one up. “I thought—”

“You thought you could what.” That last word comes out of my mouth so ugly, so incredibly like my mother, that it would’ve shocked me if I were in any way capable of that emotion right now. My body is pure adrenaline. “What? Kill me? You thought you wanted to kill me?”

The resignation in their eyes when I say it out loud is enough for me to know. I’m correct.

They have to kill me, the same way Cordelia Sutherland had to die.

But, of the two of us, I’m the one that’s actually done it. I’m the one who knows what it’s like, and what did I get out of it? What did I learn? That hurting someone, killing someone, is ugly, and awful, and it destroys you. It fucks you up for life and you’ll never get better, I’ll never get better and I know it. Even if the person deserves it, which Cordelia absolutely did not, there will be blood under your nails for the rest of your life. Even if Felicity would be doing the right thing by putting that knife in my neck—and they might be! They might be absolutely, one hundred percent justified! I fucking get it!—they’re not the one who knows what it takes. They don’t know what they’ll have to trade for my corpse.

I know what it’ll take, and they don’t have it. They’re doing bad enough as it is.

“If you kill me,” I spit, “you’re not going to last much longer. You’re not making it to twenty.”

“Shut up,” Felicity says.

I hold the switchblade up to the weeping cut on my hand. “This is the first time you’ve drawn blood with this, right?” After a second, I add, “That wasn’t your own?” Their silence is all the answer I need. “Exactly. I’m not sure I’m making it to twenty. If you do this, you’re definitely not going to.”

The only reason I’m not screaming is because everything in my brain that isn’t breathing or blinking has completely shut down.

Felicity watches me. A strand of bleach-burned hair sticks to the corner of their lips. Their gold necklace dangles from their throat and catches the sun coming in through gaps in the industrial blinds.

“You’re not getting the wallet,” I say. “I got it first. It’s mine, fair and square.”

“I’ll send the recordings to your mom,” Felicity counters.

“Do that and I’ll track down the Sutherlands myself.”

They whimper. They’re trapped.

We both are.

I give them the wallet, and this ends with nothing. Everything I did, everything I put myself through to get here, would be for nothing. Jane Doe’s true name will never see the light of day, and the puzzle will always be unfinished, and I’ll never escape it.