Chapter 36

"You should leave," I tell Lainey.

She puts her hand on her hip, and before she says a single word, I'm aware she's not going anywhere.

"No," she says flatly. "Now, what are we going to do with the cars?"

Shit, she's right. The second Rex pulls up the road, he's going to know we're here. Her Dodge can be hidden in the garage, but there's no hiding the Jeep. It's a metal beast that will probably outlast the final human on earth.

Then again, Rex might not realize I can drive the Jeep—I've paid him to give me a couple of Uber rides between here and Smith House. He probably heard about what happened last week, when Declan and I kept stalling out on the road and holding up the one lane of traffic.

I tell all of this to Lainey, who nods and fishes her car key out of her pocket. "On it."

I use the interior to access the garage and open it for my friend. The space is full of Dick's crap—a broken bicycle, crates of empty beer bottles he probably always meant to recycle for cash but never got around to doing, and boxes of who-knows-what that Nicole and I still haven't gone through. Lainey pulls the car in, and it only just fits. Before she leaves the garage, stepping over junk to get out, she grabs her purse and then pauses at her trunk and opens it. After rummaging around for a minute, she pulls out a Yankees baseball bat that definitely isn't hers. My guess is that she stole it from Todd. Not because he plays baseball, but because he's the kind of rich guy who probably has a limited edition bat signed by a bunch of famous athletes.

"Good thinking," I say with a nod. Then, body whizzing with adrenaline, I follow her out of the garage and shut the door behind us.

Only the Jeep is in the driveway. Rex won't know we're home. He'll only assume it's a possibility.

"We're going to put the map back out," I say, my voice shaking. "We'll hide the money, obviously, and we'll lie in wait for him in the greenhouse with our pepper spray. Wait, you have your pepper spray, right?"

She gives me an insulted look.

"Okay, of course you have your pepper spray. I need to text Declan to let him know where we are, and the police…they need to know what's going on too."

"Are you going to call that officer sir again?" she says with a half-smile. But I know bluster when I see it. She's scared now. I'm scared. This isn't a situation I've done any preparation for whatsoever. Lainey's only brush with the law was when she watched that shoplifter walk out with an ugly, expensive shirt without saying something, and then there's me…

A livid boss and a coffee two degrees too cold? Hold my beer. But this?

My only hope is that kicking ass and taking names is somehow built into my DNA, because otherwise we're screwed.

"I will if he needs a polite shutdown," I say. "Nothing works quite like a polite shutdown." I pause, worrying my lip. "You know…this is all supposition. What if he's innocent, and Nicole really did forget when my birthday is? What if we spray an innocent person in the face with pepper spray?"

"Eh, whatever," she says, heading for the front door. I match her stride for stride. "Remember when we did a skin test with the pepper spray? Milk helped neutralize it."

"So we're going to apologize and splash him with milk?"

She stops me with a hand on my arm. "Claire. If he shows up outside the greenhouse with Nicole, we'll know. But if it'll make you feel better, we'll bring a carton of milk down there with us."

Fuck, she's right. It's only…I don't want her to be right. I liked Rex. He's always been nice to me, and I know he's basically Declan's only friend—or was before Nicole, Damien, and I whipped into town. It's chilling to think he's been keeping this from us the entire time we've known him. That he's been sneaking into our yard to try to find Dick's buried winnings while we're all tucked into our beds.

"You're right," I say, taking a deep breath in and out. I lead the way into the house, shutting the door behind us, and hand her the map from my pocket. It's dusted with dirt, so I try to swipe it clean. It's not perfect, but it's as good as I can get it. "Can you put this out on the kitchen counter? I need to get my pepper spray."

"Do you want me to put it in the porn case?" she asks.

"No, let's leave it out so Nicole knows we've been down there. Maybe she'll be able to distract him."

She takes it from me, and I grab what I need from my own purse, discarded by the front door, and follow as I take out my phone and plug in a message to Declan and Damien.

We think he's actually bringing Nicole to Dick's house. Don't worry. We're hiding.

Admittedly, we'll only be hiding so we can jump out and attack Rex, but I don't want to worry Declan. There's a chance they'll get here before we even see Rex—and also that Nicole might overpower him without any help from us.

I'm pulling up the number for the police when I hear the distant rumbling of a car on the road out front. My gaze shoots to Lainey, and she gestures to the refrigerator door.

I shake my head and mouth "fuck the milk." Then I grab the lockbox, and we hurry to the back door in the kitchen, the phone still pressed to my ear. Seconds later, we're picking our way down the hill, Lainey still barefoot and clutching the Yankees bat. My eyes widen as the phone clicks over to voicemail—I hadn't even realized police stations had messaging systems. So I leave a quick message, explaining that Rex is probably on his way to the house, then hang up the phone as we reach the heart-shaped rock.

Lainey takes bags of money and runs them to the greenhouse while I return the lockbox to the hole and start shoveling. I try to time it in my head. If that was his truck, they'll be going into the house now. We have, at most, a minute to pack the dirt and push the rock back into place. She emerges from the greenhouse to help me, and fifty seconds later, we have the rock mostly shoved over the spot where we dug. It looks…

"This looks bad," I hiss. "What are we going to do?"

There's dirt everywhere, like a pint-sized excavator came through, and the rock has clearly been moved.

"This isn't one of Agnes's photoshoots," she says, giving me a push. "We need to get into that greenhouse, now."

She's right. We can't spend twenty minutes out here setting the scene. They'll be down here any minute, presuming we're right about all of this.

We bring the shovel inside and hide behind the wrought iron door. My heart is pounding so hard, I feel like Rex can probably see it from the house. I've never been this worked up, this worried. Everything I've been building here could come tumbling down so quickly…

It could all be over in a matter of seconds.

I realize something in a flash of clarity brought on by adrenaline, the scent of rosemary, and the fear of death—

I'm in love with Declan. It's ridiculously quick, and we have dozens if not hundreds of things to figure out, but it's there, and it's true, and in this moment of potentially facing death—again—I'm not afraid of it. So I pull out my phone and click into our conversation.

Leave the house, Claire. I'm begging you. Leave the house.

I love you.

Lainey, who was shamelessly reading over my shoulder, gives me a wide-eyed seriously? look. I nod and tuck the phone away, only then realizing that I must have just scared the shit out of Declan. He probably thinks I sent that because I was about to do something stupid.

Of course, I did send that message because I'm about to do something stupid.

There are a couple of open spots in the door's pattern of twisting metal vines, and both Lainey and I press an eye to one. We can see out, but unless he takes a profound interest in the door or approaches the greenhouse directly, he probably won't notice us—and if he does, with any luck it'll give Nicole enough of a distraction to whack him over the head.

Then I see two figures coming into view as they weave between the trees on the hill, one tugging the other by the hands. Bound hands. It's them. Nicole's wearing her beanie, but she's far enough away that her features are still crisp, and Rex has the kind of gangly figure that's not easily mistaken for someone else. Worse, it's pretty clear he's either really attached to his cell phone or is holding a gun. I don't have any satisfaction from having been right. I would really, really have preferred to be wrong.

As they get closer, it becomes increasingly obvious that he's not messing around on his phone but is, in fact, holding my sister at gunpoint. Shit. Half an hour ago, this whole situation felt almost fun. At the very least, it was a treasure-map-reading, mystery-solving adventure. But now, it's very real. There's a chance we won't all survive this. There's a chance that I or someone I love will be seriously hurt or even killed.

But I can't back down. I'm not going to. Because not acting would be the most dangerous decision of all.

Lainey squeezes my hand with the hand not currently wrapped around a bat, and I squeeze back, then pull out my pepper spray. Hers is now shoved into the back pocket of her cut-offs.

It's go-time.

Part of me wants to chicken out, to try waiting until a responsible adult arrives. But I am an adult, and right now Lainey and I are the only people who can save Nicole. Because if Rex plans on shooting her, he's not going to wait for help to arrive to do it.

"You already dug it up?" I hear Rex say as they get to the bottom of the hill, his voice different than I remember it. Not jovial at all.

"No, but this is a greenhouse. In greenhouses, people do gardening work. I'm told there's usually dirt involved."

"I've had about enough of your bullshit," he says, waving the gun at her.

"That's too bad, because I was really enjoying this exchange. I thought we were becoming buddies. Stockholm Syndrome for the win."

"You're just like your old man," Rex growls. "Everything's a fucking joke."

"You certainly are."

He shoves her with his free hand, and she staggers back a couple of steps, then glances up the hill and shouts, "Down here!"

I don't think, and I'm guessing Lainey doesn't either, because both of us barrel out of the greenhouse.