“We need an alibi.”
Paolo passed around the burgers he’d just bought from Jack in the Box in Pacific Palisades. Maya had insisted that they didn’t stop in any public place closer to the house or to Malibu Canyon—“just in case.” All four housemates unwrapped their sandwiches.
Lucy looked at hers and put it back in the paper bag.
“Yes,” Maya said vigorously, “an alibi. Probably easiest if we say we were hanging out at the beach.”
“Or the pier at Santa Monica,” suggested Paolo.
John-Michael held his burger an inch from his mouth, waiting to hear the plan. Paolo seemed pretty calm after their ordeal. Almost happy. Whereas John-Michael had collapsed onto his knees and vomited as soon as he was out of sight of the others and dumped the various items that could link them to the two deaths. Even now, he felt queasy.
“Not Santa Monica Pier,” Maya said. She seemed a little antsy. “We need to think of a place where there wouldn’t be security cameras. But before we get into that, let’s just do one last checklist of everything else. Okay, John-Michael, rug?”
“Burned and then dropped in the second Dumpster we saw after got off the 1.”
“The burner phones?”
“Ours—crushed and dumped in the trash can right over there,” John-Michael said, pointing. “The other guy’s burner phone is on the ground beside his hand. Where he left it after he texted his partner.”
“The zip ties they used on you?”
“Trash can of the men’s room at Jack in the Box.”
“Mr. Shooter’s smartphone?” Maya said, a little insistent. “There’s a lot of evidence there. Not least of which, the GPS tracking.”
“That’s more difficult,” admitted John-Michael. “We’re going to have to hit it pretty hard with something heavy.”
“All right, but the sooner the better. I’ve already disabled the app that allows it to be traced,” she said. “Guns?”
“The revolver? Fingerprints wiped and back with Mr. Shooter. And the other gun is with Mr. Fifty Ways to Mess You Up.”
Maya frowned. “Huh?”
“You wanna take a look at my bruises?” John-Michael said resignedly. “I’m gonna turn seven different shades of purple in a day or so.” His stomach was finally settling down, so he took a bite from the cheeseburger. But when he tried to swallow, all John-Michael could think about was the yelp of pain that the hit man’s associate had made when he’d finally lost his footing on the edge.
He’d have killed us both if he’d had the chance.
Three deaths on his hands now. Unexpected, for someone who found it hard to kill a spider.
For a few moments, the quiet sounds of chewing were the only noises in the car. All four housemates seemed content to settle with their own thoughts. Or maybe they were as choked up as John-Michael. Maybe their emotions were teetering, on the verge of letting go with a scream like the one that refused to be shaken out of his memory.
Maya finished her food and wiped her fingers carefully with the napkin before speaking. “We may need to discuss the situation with the cash.”
“You want to split it up?” Paolo said.
“You better not spend a dime of that money,” Lucy piped up, adamant. “You don’t know who’s gonna come after it.”
“Who’s going to come after it?” Maya asked, frowning. “The only two people who know about it are dead.”
“Unless the money is from Dana Alexander,” said Lucy.
“All that money?” Maya said, unconvinced. “No way can it cost that much to scare one defenseless teenage girl.”
“Until we changed things,” pointed out Lucy.
John-Michael agreed with Maya. “If any part of the money was from Dana, it’s a small part. There are a ton of reasons they might be carrying that much cash. Most of them illegal. Unless Dana Alexander has a secret life as one scary-ass crime boss, all she knows is that they got whatever payday she agreed on—probably via a third party.”
There was no way the cash could be traced to them. Even if the second guy had called someone on his way out to Malibu Canyon, he couldn’t have known who he’d be dealing with when he found the hit man’s body.
Lucy shook her head. “Still, I say we get that under lock and key and leave it until this whole situation goes extremely cold.”
“You’re right that Dana Alexander’s still an issue, though,” Maya said thoughtfully.
It was a good point. Alexander would find out soon enough that her attempt to silence Lucy hadn’t worked. Better that she found out from inside a jail cell. “Grace’s dad will get taken off death row,” John-Michael added. “It’s win-win.”
“Not necessarily,” mumbled Maya. For a second or two it seemed to John-Michael like she was maybe thinking of saying more, but she didn’t elaborate.
John-Michael just nodded and took another bite. How much would Lucy tell the cops? If they knew what had happened tonight, they’d probably take her into protective custody. Much as John-Michael worried about not seeing her again for who knew how long, Lucy needed to be safe. And simply telling the cops that Dana had planted a spy in their household wasn’t likely to cause all that much concern.
“Maybe we should tell the cops that Mr. Shooter threatened Lucy,” he said cautiously. “And that he went away.”
“I don’t know,” Maya said, shaking her head. “Seems to me that if we say anything about him at all, it could come back on us. What if they investigate?”
“Why would they?”
“When they find the body,” Lucy said, sounding jaded.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh yeah. Well, maybe you make up a description? How would that be?”
“Uh-uh,” Lucy said. “For once, I’m gonna agree with Maya. We keep quiet about the whole thing. The guy was never there and we don’t know anything. Same goes for telling Grace and Candace what happened tonight,” Lucy said, sounding more confident. “We say bubkes.”
“Bubkes?” echoed Maya.
“Nada. Zip,” said Lucy. “If you expect me to go to the cops, you’d better be damn sure that everything that happened tonight is inside of a full-scale Armageddon containment field. The ‘vault’ won’t cut it here—I’m talking Pentagon inner-circle-level secrecy.”
“Also, it’s kind of unfair to expect the others to keep this secret,” Paolo said. “It’s not that I don’t trust them, that’s not it at all, it’s just that—”
“Yeah,” Maya agreed, grimacing. “It’s a burden. And they don’t deserve to have this dumped on them.”
“Also, they weren’t here,” Lucy added pensively. “They might not understand.”
The housemates seemed pretty unanimous, at least on this point. “So that’s decided then, is it?” said John-Michael. “We’re protecting them?”
“And ourselves,” said Lucy.
“Yes,” Paolo said. “But where do we tell them we’ve been all night?”
John-Michael thought for a moment. “Why don’t we just tell them that we can’t say? That way we admit that bad stuff went down, but we don’t get them in any deeper.”
“Yeah,” murmured Paolo. “That might work.” Maya nodded her agreement. John-Michael looked across at Lucy, hoping for a reply. She’d lapsed into a pensive silence, staring at her hands, folding and wringing them in her lap. After a minute she went for the door handle. “I need a milk shake. Anyone want anything else?”
“I could go for a chocolate milk shake,” Maya said with more than a hint of relief.
John-Michael said, “Can you get me a strawberry?”
“I’ll help, Lucy,” agreed Maya. She unbuckled her seat belt.
The minute the girls were out the door, John-Michael was astonished by the sound of Paolo whimpering, as though he were gulping back a sob. Watching him, John-Michael inhaled sharply. The moment passed mercifully fast. Whatever emotion had risen so hard and fast to swamp Paolo was soon under control.
“I’m sorry, man,” Paolo managed to say, struggling to breathe across his gasps. “I don’t know what got into me.”
John-Michael watched his friend for a moment. He resisted the temptation to reach out with a hand and touch Paolo’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said after a while. “This is how . . .” John-Michael paused, swallowed. “You’re going to feel up, and then you’re going to feel down. This is how it feels after something like . . . like what we did.”
Paolo said nothing. His eyes were large and round, open with sudden understanding as he studied John-Michael’s face. For a second or two, John-Michael could practically read his thoughts.
Maybe John-Michael actually did kill his father.
You couldn’t blame the guy for thinking that way. Not after what had happened tonight. After tonight, Lucy, Paolo, and Maya had to be thinking the same exact thing.