Page 40 of Bleeding Outside the Lines

“But there was no pulse.” I pace. “And all that blood.”

Garrett slides to the floor, leaning against the vanity.

“So much blood,” he says.

Sirens go off in my head, and I call the unknown number. My single lie of omission has come to haunt me.

She answers on the first ring.

“It’s Hannah,” I say, not letting Ruby speak. “She’s the person who hired you.”

“Who is Hannah, Cassius?” Her voice is clipped, her words sharp.

“A fucking ghost.”

twenty-eight

I am pacing inthe foyer when Cassius walks in the door with Garrett behind him.

They’re both pale, but while Garrett looks as though he might fall, Cassius looks like an addict, jittery and anxious. His eyes don’t meet mine; they flit around the room without focus, which is unusual and unnerving. He always looks at me, even on the brink of death.

The air is thick with silence as I wait for him to say something, anything. Instead, he makes his way to the bar in the kitchen and grabs a bottle of tequila. He doesn’t pour a glass or a shot. No, Cassius lifts the bottle to his lips and drinks.

In my hand, my phone rings, breaking up the fog that chokes us. I blow out my breath and slide the green button over to answer it.

Here we fucking go.

“Rubes, I didn’t miss anything, I promise. I don’t know who she is,” Rowan says before I can say hello.

I shift my eyes to Cassius, who squeezes his gray eyes shut, and when he opens them, they are glazed, vapid. He takes another sip of the tequila, his knuckles white from gripping the bottle, and then slams the bottle on the counter.

“Rowan, perfect timing.” I prop my phone up on the kitchen counter so she can see all of us.

Putting my hands on my hips, I look pointedly at Cassius, who is now leaning on his elbows on the island, his chin in his hands. “One of you better start talking. Who is Hannah?”

Cassius shifts his gaze first to Rowan, then to me, and finally to Garrett, settling there.

“She’s supposed to be dead,” he says.

“She is dead,” Garrett adds.

“But it was a closed casket.”

“Dead or not dead, I need facts fellas,” Rowan commands from the screen, “because Cassius, none of my research even mentioned a Hannah.”

Garrett cracks his knuckles. “It doesn’t make sense, Cass. If she was alive, she would have contacted me. Right? I mean, I loved her, and she loved me. We loved each other. Fuck, I still love her. I always have.”

“Facts,” Rowan yells. Has she ever yelled before? I rack my brain and can’t think of a single time. “Stick to the facts.”

Cassius straightens to standing and drags his hand over his face in defeat or frustration, I can’t tell. “Her name was … is Hannah Flemming. When we were teenagers, she and Garrett were in love.”

“There is no Hannah Flemming in my research,” Rowan says matter-of-factly.

“Because what you’re seeing is made up.” Garrett moves closer to the tablet. “You’re good, I’ll give you that, but apparently not that good.”

“We grew up in New Mexico, close to the border,” Cassius says. “In a city called Echolls.”

Rowan bites the inside of her cheek, the clacking of the keyboard in front of her the only indication she heard any of what they said. How could she have possibly missed this?

---