Page 128 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘Holding.’

She turned up her laptop’s brightness, and again, shapes emerging in the darkness outside the window.

‘That orange thing is a streetlamp.’ Billy pointed. ‘So we’re on a second floor. A bedroom?’

But Jet was looking at something else behind it. A blurry white square. A house. Faint little lines for the panel siding, the windows arranged almost like a face. A little triangle roof above the front porch and a red car parked outside. Did Jet know that house?

‘Do I know that house?’ she said aloud this time.

‘I don’t know, do you?’

She did. Her heart got there first, climbing her ribs, making itself at home in her throat.

‘Shit,’ she hissed. ‘That’s the house on River Street. Right on the corner, where my phone’s last known location was.’

Billy’s eyes widened. ‘You sure?’

‘I saw it a million times on Google Street View, drove past a million times too. I’m sure it’s that house. It’s River Street.’

Billy’s eyes darkened, another storm. ‘But if we can see that corner of River Street from this window, that means we’re on –’

‘– North Street,’ Jet finished for him, throat tightening around the words and around her heart, her head not too far behind, filling in the gaps. ‘We’re in Andrew Smith’s house. Before it got knocked down. This house,again.I swear, if houses could be prime suspects.’

Billy glanced over at his front door. ‘So … it’s Andrew?’ he asked, still a few seconds behind.

‘No.’ Jet lifted Billy’s chin so he’d look at her. ‘It’s his daughter.’

‘Nina?’

‘Remember what the cat said.’ But Jet couldn’t remember exactly, so she dragged the cursor back, pressed play, and let it run, that dark demonic voice vibrating the laptop and the table.

‘– offering too much money to people who are too weak to say no. What’s the difference between that and stealing? You’re still predators.’

Gerry next: ‘Milly, I think we should –’

‘– Pull out of the sale. You know which one. It’s not too late.’

Jet paused it.

‘Andrew told us Nina was devastated when he sold their family house to Luke. This was her, trying to stop that sale.Too much money to people who are too weak to say no.She’s talking about her dad.’ She swallowed. ‘It was Nina.’

Billy nodded, seeing it now. ‘But Nina, she’s … when did she –’

‘– She shot herself last Christmas, a few weeks after this.’Jet zoomed back out, stared at the cat face, into those fake green eyes, trying to picture Nina’s real ones beneath, all that pain she was hiding under a filter.

Billy sniffed, deflated. ‘But Nina’s been dead for eleven months, so she can’t be the one who burned down Mason Construction last night, or who attacked you on Halloween. So this is a dead end.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jet said, following a new train of thought, past all the broken bits. ‘It’sNina.’ She leaned on the name, as though that explained it. ‘Nina was Emily’s best friend. And what do best friends tell each other?’

‘Secrets?’ Billy guessed.

‘Right.’ She hooked her arm through his. ‘And something else Andrew said. That Mom got Nina fired from her job at the hotel. We didn’t know why my mom would do that. But now …’

She left it open for Billy. He pointed to the cat.

‘Dianne figured out that this was Nina, the one threatening her? And then she got her fired to punish her?’

‘Or silence her,’ Jet said. ‘This was not just a prank, and my mom knew it. Look at her face, Billy. She’s scared. And if she really did get Nina fired, that means whatever Nina was threatening to tell, it was true. Doesn’t it?’

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