Page 83 of The Mermaid Murder

Then I left and closed the door. She’d be fine.

She really will, Inner Bitch said.

Misty might not, though, I thought. I sensed clearly that the danger to Christy had passed, but my fear for Misty still lurked like a dark shadow behind my thoughts.

Minutes later, Christy came down the stairs in dry clothes, her phone in her hand. “Misty’s phone is back online,” she said, showing us the location app. I saw the little circle pinging from a dot on its screen. “She’s not far. Let’s go.” She grabbed her keys and headed for the door.

“Wait a sec, wait a sec. Let me see that,” Jeremy said.

Christy handed him the phone, but she was clearly eager to hit the road.

“It’s north,” he said. “In the middle of nowhere.”

“All the more reason to hurry!” She grabbed the phone from his hand and headed for the door.

“It’s a trap,” Mason said. “Jen turned the phone off until she wanted us to know where it was, then she turned it back on.”

I met Christy’s questioning eyes and nodded. “He’s right. But Jen Scott probably thinks Mason and I died when she blew up our car.”

Jeremy said, “Yes, and she thinks Christy died in the tank. I’m the only one she expects to show up.”

“That gives us an advantage,” I said. “Let’s use it wisely. All right?”

Everyone nodded and listened to the plan.

* * *

MISTY

Misty startled awake in a blaze of pain. Her cheek was ice cold from the water, but somehow she’d turned sideways enough not to drown. She couldn’t move, but she could feel. Her head pulsed bigger and smaller inside her skull. Her body was ice cold and wet. She was blind. Or in total darkness. Or dead. No. Death wouldn’t hurt like this. She couldn’t be dead.

God, she didn’t want to be dead.

She had to find her sister. She had to make sure Christy was okay. She had to finish making up with Jeremy. She had to finish the podcast. But she wasn’t going to do any of that, was she? Because she was lying in a culvert in the middle of nowhere, shot in the chest, probably dying.

Dying. At twenty-two. She’d only just figured out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She wanted to spend it solving mysteries. And she wanted to spend it with Jeremy.

She closed her eyes and hot tears burned. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even drag her body to the road where someone could find it and tell her family. She couldn’t do anything but lie there in the freezing cold with her chest throbbing so hard it felt like her ribs were broken.

God, it hurt!

And then there was a sound she felt even more than she felt the pain; a distant warbling howl.

The coyotes will take care of the evidence. Jen Scott’s disembodied voice rang through the culvert. And then it went on. Only two loose ends left.

She had to have been talking about Jeremy. Jeremy and Zig.

“Fuck that,” she said. And then she forced her hands to move, her arms to move, and pushed herself up onto her side. It hurt, but she had to touch her chest, to feel the damage, to see…

She slid her hand over her heart, toward the center, and then felt metal. Metal embedded in her chest. She spread her palm out, tipped her head down, and saw most of it— that metal mermaid was sunken right into her flesh. She ran her fingers down its distorted shape, gently, because any pressure on it hurt like hell. And right in the middle, where the mermaid’s waist met the top of her tail, there was a round, flattened disk of a different material. Lead, she thought.

“The bullet. The freaking bullet.”

She took hold of the chain, and clenching her jaw, she pulled the metal mermaid out of her chest, and bit her lips so hard to keep from screaming that she tasted blood.

* * *

RACHEL

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