“Why—?” she began, then stopped herself. “Charley, she has to be tested. Dextrocardia raises her chances of other complications dramatically. We can’t just—”

“We’ll figure it out,” Reyes said, ushering me down the stairs. But I could tell he was as worried as I.

When we got to the bottom, I took him aside as quickly as I could and said, “I meant to tell you, I found out something while I was … you know.”

He bristled at the reminder of my trip to his hometown.

“Your dad isn’t home.”

After waiting for Denise to pass, he asked, “Then where is he?”

“From what I gathered, he’s here.”

It took a few seconds for him to respond. “If he’s on this plane, we need to move quickly.”

“We can’t leave yet. Beep needs to be tested first. She could have a serious medical condition, and that’s something we’ll need to know no matter where we go.”

He lowered his voice even further. “If they find her, it won’t matter how healthy she is. She’ll be dead before they can run a single test.”

“Then they can’t find her,” I said, imploring him.

*   *   *

Before the hour was up, I was back to pacing. I couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t stop worrying about the tests Beep needed. Couldn’t stop marveling at the map imprinted beneath her skin. Couldn’t stop hoping they’d find Faris. Reyes paced, too, only he did it outside, his mind racing for a solution. Unless he planned on buying all the equipment the doctor would need, we would have to take Beep in for tests. We had no choice. Our escape-to-an-island-paradise plan would have to wait.

The phone rang at last and I lunged for it.

“She’s alive!” Kit said before I even said hello.

I gave Cookie a thumbs-up and she rose out of her chair in elation—carefully, as she was holding Beep.

“Just barely, but we’ll take it. Charley,” she said, her voice cracking. “I just— I don’t know where to begin. Jonny is very … appreciative of your help. We both are.”

“Tell him it was my pleasure. And by the way, you realize he’s still in love with you, right?”

The phone went silent for a moment before she spoke again. “He— He was never in love with me.”

“You keep telling yourself that.”

“Charley, I—”

“Celebrate. Take him to dinner tomorrow to celebrate finding his niece. If ever there was a reason … See where it goes from there.”

“He’ll be celebrating with his family, I’m sure.”

“And you are a part of it.”

“I have to know. How?”

Though I knew what she was talking about, I said, “That’s a mighty broad question.”

“How did you know where she would be?”

“I promise to tell you someday. But today, it’s kind of a tender subject around these parts.”

“I’m sorry, hold on. What?” she said, speaking to someone else. “Okay, I have to go, Charley. Thank you again.”

“My pleasure. Give her a hug for me. And just so you know, he didn’t—She wasn’t violated. Not in that way.”

A relieved sigh, then, “Thank you.”

“Oh, one more thing. There’s something about Faris’s birthday and the girl he killed while he was in high school. Some kind of connection.” After a moment of silence, I said, “Kit?”

“Charley, how did you know?” she asked.

“Know what?” I asked, suddenly intrigued.

“Faris was born the same day Olivia Dern went missing. The exact same day.”

“That’s what he meant. He took that as a sign that—”

“Who?” she asked.

Since Colton Ellix died two days ago, I couldn’t exactly tell her the truth. Not yet, anyway. “My … gardener.”

After another moment of silence, she said, “One of these days, you are going to tell me everything.”

“Okeydokey. Go. Celebrate.”

I hung up, then almost collapsed onto the couch we’d stuffed into the corner for just such occasions.

“Charley,” Cookie said, “you realize you have to tell me everything. And I do mean everything.”

“You sound like Kit.”

“Charley Davidson—”

“I will. I promise. Once I absorb it all myself, I’ll tell you. I don’t know if you’ll believe it or not, though.”

“I’ve seen too much not to.” She turned her attention to Beep. “Yes, I have,” she said in an animated voice. “I’ve seen enough to make a grown man wet himself. And they don’t wear diapers like you do.”

I couldn’t wait to tell her about the birthmark. That’d keep her up at night.

14

I HAVE COMPLETELY MASTERED THE RIGHT WAY

OF DOING EVERYTHING WRONG.

—T-SHIRT

Garrett, Osh, and I sat around the reassembled kitchen table and gazed down at little Miss Beep. She was trying to decide if she wanted to fuss or catch some Z’s. It was a hard decision for most of us. She made baby sounds. Nothing on earth made sounds like that. They were a ruse. A ploy. A way to get adults to fall in love.

They worked really well.

But the reason our little moppet was lying on the table—on a blanket, of course—was so that we could see the birthmark. Or, more accurately, so that I could show them the birthmark. Barely visible, she had the lines, the map to the gates of hell, marked on her body just like her father.

“How?” I asked no one in particular. “I mean, those were put on Reyes when he was forged in hell. How did they transfer to Beep?”

Nobody answered. It was a fairly rhetorical question anyway.

And Reyes wasn’t there to give his opinion. He’d been pacing outside, but I lost sight of him a while earlier. He was probably off dragging hellhounds around. I bet they hated that. And he was probably still mad at me. So, I went to hell. I’d needed information. That was the quickest way to get it. The only way to get it. And because of it, we saved a girl’s life. Sure, it was dangerous, but that was my middle names. I’d assumed he was used to that by now. Figured he even liked that about me. Apparently not.

Of course, the thought of a family reunion right here on earth was the most likely culprit of his agitation. Coming face-to-face with one’s evil father after centuries apart was enough to put anyone in a bad mood.

Speaking of bad moods, with all the unwanted attention Beep was getting, even she’d started leaning toward the fussy end of the spectrum, so I wrapped her up like a burrito, warmed up a bottle of breast milk I’d collected earlier, and walked around the house crooning and crowing about this and that. It was like dinner theater.

Uncle Bob had taken Quentin back to school in Santa Fe, and Cookie and Amber left, too. Amber had school in the morning, much to her chagrin, and Cookie wanted to get some shopping done. She’d been cooking quite a bit and bringing it out to us.

I thought about cooking once.

Beep and I walked around the house as she ate, partly to look out the windows in the hopes of seeing her daddy. And partly to work off some nervous tension. I’d hurt him by going to hell, and that was only the half of it. We wandered into the laundry room and I explained the washer and dryer as best I could. I turned on the dryer and put her on it. The vibrations lulled her to sleep again.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I said, picking her back up again. “You have to be burped. If I don’t burp you, I’ll get arrested by the burp police, and then—”

I stopped midsentence. The wall Reyes broke was adjacent to the locked closet door. He must’ve triggered a latching mechanism when he broke the stud, because it stood slightly ajar.

“At last,” I said as we walked to it. “Are we ready for this?” I asked her.

She didn’t reply.

I slid open the heavy door. It creaked along rusted tracks. It was a pocket door, which explained why it hadn’t opened when we pushed on it, but as tall and narrow as it was, it had to be at least three inches thick. I peeked inside and, wow, was I not impressed.

“This is it?” I asked Beep. After fumbling in my pocket for my phone, I turned the flashlight on and took a closer look. It was a tiny round room, dusty and cobwebbed. Nothing special about it. The ceiling formed an arch overhead, so that was almost interesting. But there were no shelves. No nooks for storage. No dead bodies. Nada.