Page 42 of Sinful Reality

“Fragments.” She crunches on something on her side of the line. “I paid more attention once you mentioned calling his witness, since the cops I know would’ve saidfuck no, stay out of it, and don’t fucking touch.” She smiles. I don’t see it, but I feel it in my gut. “Detective Gilbert sure thinks highly of you, Chief.”

“Mmhm.” She purses her lips, side-eyeing me as though to make sure we’re not about to start fighting again. “There seems to be a break in the case, though it’s damn small. A crack, really. Each of the victims and their mothers had a thing for free entertainment.”

“Like zoos and stuff?”

“Yeah, like that. Single moms rarely have spending money left over at the end of the month, so it seems these mothers monitored promo deals and cut coupons when they found something worth visiting.”

“Any particular place?” She has an investigator’s brain, whether she admits it or not. “Where do they lead?”

“None that cross over so far. Lots of different free places that offer a variety of perks and giveaways. While Pax is following those down, I wanted to talk to Beatrice and… the, uh…” Minka rolls her wrist again. “Um…”

“Gloria?”

“Gloria! Yes.” She closes her eyes and drops her head back. “Jesus. It’s like I’m working with half my brain. Gloria. Coffee cart, juice cart. Both women, both present on or around the time of the first handful of disappearances. I asked Pax if I could call Gloria, specifically. But I wanna talk to, the uh… um…”

“Beatrice,” Aubree inserts with a grin. “Coffee.”

“Yes. Her. I’ll call Fruit Lady after that.”

“I suggest you let the other doctor speak,” Soph taunts. “And record the call so you can come back to it later. I’ll ship some of my magic pills over, anyway. We have day and night options. Take the night one before bed, and you’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

“She’s not taking your backyard lab meds,” I growl. “Don’t send them, or I’ll tip the Feds off that you’re shipping drugs across state lines.”

“Cool. And I’ll return the favor by telling them you shot Laramie Fentone in the forehead. Oh…” Sugary sweet, she hums while my panicked eyes swing to Aubree’s. “Sorry. Was that uncalled for?”

“You’re an asshole,” Minka drawls, “and you’re lucky no one else was in this room just now. We had an agreement, and you might’ve blown it because you felt like getting big.”

“I know who is in the room with you, Mayet. I know where you are,when you’re there, and how many times you use the bathroom in a day. Not enough, by the way. Which means your water intake is too low, which is probably why you feel like death warmed up today. But…” She’s just playing with us now, singing in the back of her throat and slinging facts like they don’t set our worlds on fire. “I wanna know more about the other doctor.”

Surprised, Aubree brings her hand up and jabs a thumb back in her direction.Me?

“The hippie one. So innocent looking. So… colorful. Now she’s hitched totheTimothy Malone, and I heard things not so long ago. Things that are based neither in fact, nor are physically attainable or testable.”

“Oh, so it’s a bit like how you collect people,” Minka counters. “The husband who can shoot an apple off a rock from five hundred yards away.”

“Eleven hundred, actually.”

“The biochemist, who makes medicine on Mondays and explosives on Tuesdays. The lawyers and doctors and hell, even the mayor of our city. But you don’t have an Aubree.” For possibly the first time today, her lips curl into a taunting smirk. “You don’t have her, you can’t buy her, you can’t learn her skills, and you’re pissed her loyalties are with me. Shucks, Solomon. That sounds like a situation you can’t control. And thus, you can’t handle.”

“Shucks, Mayet. Shut your damn face, hop on a plane, and come visit me in my town for a few days. I’ll show you around, take you out for a burger, and strap your best friend to my neurofeedback headset. All totally normal things.”

“No.”

“It won’t even hurt!”

“I said no. And my FDA approved meds are finally kicking in, so I’m hanging up and calling… um…”

“Beatrice.”

“Yes!” She exhales and grins. “Beatrice. See ya.”

“No, I?—”

She hits the red button and swipes across to her texts, but before dialing, she looks up to Aubree, not nearly as smiley anymore. “You cango wherever you want, just so you know. Talk to whoever. Be whoever you want to be and help anyone you choose. You’re not mycollection. I was just messing with her.”

“She wants what Felix wants.” No longer hiding her intentions, she glances back down at her pile of bones and picks through them. “They think it’s some kind of superpower. But it’s just…” She selects a small bone, no longer than my finger, no more than a half-inch thick. “It’s intuition. We all have it. It’s just that some of us pay closer attention.”

“I think Sophia pays attention to hers, too. She just sees it through a different lens than you. A different lens than me. It’s like reading a book, ya know? Or watching a movie. All three of us could consume the same entertainment, same time, same room, even. But our pasts shape the lenses through which we absorb information. Soph’s intuition was honed after her sister’s disappearance. Mine came after Diane. Or my dad. Or maybe Alana, since she was my first official Body-In-The-Bag case. Yours is a little crunchier. A little purer, considering the family you came from. We can consume the same material and still come away with three different perspectives, and that doesn’t mean the others are wrong. It just means we get to bring different experiences to the table.”

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