I met his curious gaze and shook my head. “No one.”

No one. Keeping out wasn’t the intent. The door was for one purpose. To keep myself in.

I shut the door behind him and palmed the key. Walked to the center of the empty apartment and looked around. Too big for me, it dwarfed the size of my dorm room. Yet, when I looked at the space and thought about FOREVER, it seemed entirely too small. One year, I decided. I would stay in this place for one year. By then I’d come to grips with who I was. By then I’d figure out whether I was crazy or going through a phase. By then I would find myself again, and she and I would move on to the next phase of our lives. A good plan. I just, looking at empty cabinets, a lone mattress on the floor, boxes stacked with a hundred cute outfits yet nothing helpful to a recluse… I just needed to learn how to live it. I pulled my laptop from my bag and sat on the floor. Logged in and found an unsecured Wi-Fi connection close by. Brought up my bank’s website and entered my credentials. Stared, for the hundredth time, at the low balance.

Correction: I need to learn how to live as a recluse and make money. Feed myself. Devise a way to keep myself inside no matter what.

It would be hard, I knew that. I’d be poor, I understood that. But, if this plan worked, at least I’d know that others were safe.

I stared at the door and already wanted to go out. One year. How would I ever make it?

I had moved into apartment 6E as such a confused girl. There had been early nights when I had scraped holes in plaster, had screamed myself to sleep, not necessarily from the crazy, but from the solitude. From the realization that I was stuck there, staring at those walls, all by myself. For a nineteen-year-old girl used to parties and normality, it was terrifying.

I stare at the ceiling now and think of the day I first logged on. When I first became Jess Reilly. Dr. Derek would have a field day with that transition. Would say I was sliding into the skin of my old life, playing house to fool my mind into thinking that everything was all right. And maybe that’s what I’ve been doing every day since. Maybe that’s why the thought of leaving camming, of leaving JessReilly19, is so terrifying. Maybe Jess Reilly has been the only thing keeping me sane this entire time.

I laugh and SumbitchWoman looks over at me, her jaw flapping shut. Sane. Is that what I think I’ve been? I sit up, rolling my legs off the side of the bed and speak to no one in particular. “Will they let me make a phone call?”

Beneath me a woman’s face appears, white and pasty, her eyes mean, the folds of her eyelids cupping the hatred into place. This woman could smile, every piece of her face cooperating, and those eyes would still scream hate. “Shut it,” she snarls, and her voice matches her eyes, the vowels asphalt black and scratchy, the next words harder to hear because I choose that moment to lift my foot up and smash it down onto her face.

I don’t know why I did it. I’ve been told to shut up before. A hundred times, in fact. And this woman is no doubt stronger, wiser than me. She has to know people, have family who know people, has to have a hundred advantages over me in this space. What was it that other woman had said? Right before she bent me over and pushed her fingers inside? Keep your head down and color. That was it. I keep my head down as I push off the bunk, the howling woman’s eyes following me from her position on the ground where my kick put her. One of my shoes landed on an outstretched hand, her scream almost loud enough to hide the crunch of her bones. Hand bones are so, so delicate. I color across her face with my heel as I give one last relatively gentle kick. I step off and away, moving forward, my view of her disappearing, the scrabble of her nails on this dirty floor the sound of a woman trying to get up. I hope she does. I hope she stands and brings that broken face closer. I hope she lunges out with that destroyed hand. I hope she tries to kick my ass. Really. Please.

I try again. “Will they let me make a phone call?”

SumbitchWoman just stares at me. I watch her jaw move, but nothing comes out. Finally, there is a wheeze of a breath from behind and I turn, looking past MeanEyes, her good hand pushing on the ground, her other lifted to her cheek, pain behind the blood on her face, a gash open on her right cheek, her nose similar to mine yet a hell of a lot worse. The fourth woman, her knees spread unladylike, her heavy girth comforting, the elbow she places on her knee thick and fat. “You could ask them,” she huffs, her words hard and heavy, the effort made not lost on me, and I smile in thanks as I turn.

Oh, them. Three black uniforms at our door, one barking into a chest walkie, one unlocking the door, the other standing, eyes bouncing across the room, collecting details like trading cards. I walk to the door and wait for it to open. I speak to the only one who doesn’t seem busy. “I’d like to make a phone call.” I smile politely.

My smile must be broken, because in this place, no one yet has smiled back.

CHAPTER 63

Present

THE BEAUTY OF confessions is that they are one checkmark made. One task completed. One less case in a caseload of hundreds. Jeremy Pacer was avenged. When he, if he, wakes up, he will be happy to know that his attacker is behind bars. Brenda Boles can go on with her life and have one less blood-spattered crime scene to think about.

A confession. Beautiful. Except in this case, when it is not.

“I know that look.” David stops before her desk, and she lifts her eyes.

“No you don’t.” He’s holding two bananas. She reaches for one; he holds it out of reach. “No.”

“You’re telling me you’re eating both of those?”

“Mattie says I need more potassium in my diet.”

“Bullshit. You’re punishing me.”

“Damn right I’m punishing you. We closed a case, she’s been booked, we’re supposed to be celebrating over something fried and delicious right now.”

“You’re the one with the bananas.”

“And you’re the one with that damn look on your face.” He sits down in the chair of the closest desk. “What is it? Is it the Henderson audio? ’Cause I told you the judge would—”

“No,” she interrupts shortly. “It’s Madden. The confession.”

He frowns. “What’s your beef with that?”

“It’s wrong.”

“But you said—”

“She’s guilty but it’s wrong.”

He sighs and sets down both bananas. Her eyes follow them. The shit thing of it is, she doesn’t even really like bananas. Yet withhold one and she’s drooling all over the place. “Then we dig into the explosion. Go over it too.”

“You know she only called one person? During her phone calls? One.” She holds up a finger and David nods.

“Yes, I know, you told me. The hospital.”

“The hospital. She didn’t even know what happened to him till we told her.”

“So she’s blocked it out. It’s traumatizing to try and kill someone.” He shrugs. Peels open his banana. She follows suit.

“I called booking. To get an update.”

“And?”

“Waiting on a call back.”

“It’s booking. She’s sitting in a cell trying not to get her white ass kicked. What are you expecting them to say?”

She takes a bite of banana. Too ripe. She eyes his. It looks better. “Maybe we should call the shrink.”

“For what?”

She has a sudden recollection of his voice, the comforting drawl in the tones, the way his voice had changed when she’d said Deanna Madden’s name. “An update. Let him know his client has been charged.”