Page 52 of I Did Something Bad
For a couple of seconds, he stares at me with an intent that I can’t decipher. Right as I’m about to ask, he gives a slow nod. “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, as in,oh,I get it now.” At my quizzical expression, he gives a small shrug. “Why you didn’t want to go to the cops in the first place. I mean, I know you told me a feweyebrows were raised—”
“Yeah, I might’ve downplayed it a bit,” I admit through a grimace, noting that he can quote me word for word from our first conversation. I don’t have time to explore the small radiator between my ribs that that observation kick-starts before he continues talking.
“I understand now, though. I’m sorry I was so… what’s the correct word here?” He turns and squints out the window, as though the correct word will float by. “Ignorant,” he decides, and turns back to me. “Thoughtless? Both, really. I’m sorry I was pushing you so much.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“But… there’s no connection here. With the, um, incident—” He pauses, and for two seconds, our guilt stretches our faces to the point where you don’t need to be a body language expert to know what the hell we’re talking about. “What does you writing that article have to do with this murder? Why are they zeroing in on you?”
“Well,” I say, understanding for the first time that he’s never been working against me, not once; the shame I feel makes me want to look away, but instead, in a gesture of truce, I give him the two things he’s been pleading for this whole time: my trust, and the whole truth. “Funny story.Ihave a small secret, too.”
I tell him about my most recent interrogation and about the photos, and his demeanor unravels with every new detail. By the time I’ve caught him up on Dipar’s girls’ night out at Nagar’s Breath, he’sshifted so much that his knee is pressed against mine, one of his palms splayed firmly across my lower thigh. And for the first time since I’ve moved into this apartment, it feels… relaxing. Good.Safe.Like a place where I don’t have to pretend, where I can fall apart.
“Let’s go,” Tyler says, checking his watch.
“Go… where?”
“The bar. What’s the name? Nagar’s Breath?”
I nod. “But—”
“We can take your car. I’ll drive.”
“Tyler.” I laugh. “First of all,youcan’t go to a bar here. You wouldn’t last twenty minutes! And I would prefer not to have a front-row seat to Tyler Tun getting ripped apart limb by limb. I don’t need to be in the center of yetanotherpolice investigation, thank you very much. Still trying to deal with the first one, remember?”
“I—”
I stop him with an open palm. “And to be honest, I’m not evenentirelycertain that talking to her will help me out. Maybe she knows why her boyfriend had been stalking me? I’m going off of a hunch here.”
“I think you’ve proven that your hunches are spot-on,” he cuts in with a playful smile.
“Well, if anyone knows why he did it,” I say, wanting to ignore but also reveling in the way he’s looking at me, “itwouldbe his girlfriend of two years. But what if someone snaps a photo of us and she’s also in it? Won’t that look suspicious to the police if they see it somewhere online?”
“Probably,” he admits. “But for one, it’s my experience that club lighting makes for notoriously grainy photos, and two, that’s only if we get caught. We’ll be careful, and seeing as how she’s our only lead right now, I think it’s a risk worth taking.”
Of course I agree with him; it’s whyIwas going to risk going thereon my own in the first place. “I need to get her alone,” I say, revealing the rest of my plan. “But she’s not going to just follow me because I ask nicely. It’s the first rule of girls’ night out: nobody leaves alone.”
After a beat of quiet reflection, Tyler says, “But… what about with a guy? Assuming everyone in the group had vetted him beforehand? Surely another rule of girls’ night out is ‘no cockblocking.’”
I snort and move back, propping myself on my elbows. My top rolls up, and as his eyes fall onto the section of my stomach that’s now exposed, warmth unfurls across my skin. “I mean, yeah, if he’s been properly vetted,” I say, snapping both of us back to attention. “But it can’t be justanyman.”
The corner of his mouth curves like,Don’t make me say it.
“What?” I ask.
“What if,” he says, pursing his lips as though he’s musing it over, “it was someone who waspotentiallyin talks to be the next James Bond?”
Thirteen
I gave Tyler exactly sixteen minutes. If he’s not out when my timer beeps, I’m going into Nagar’s Breath and dragging him out by his Hermès belt buckle if I have to.
I leap forward when my phone vibrates in the dashboard holster, in case it’s Tyler texting that he’s been cornered by a horde of fans and he needs me to come help him squeeze out of the bathroom window.
It’s not, though. Instead, it’s a text from an international number that starts with +65—Singapore’s country code—and that contains four words:How was the shoot?My first thought is,How did Clarissa get my number?But my second thought is,Of course Clarissa has my number. Before I can reply, another four-word question that makes my gut flip upside down and inside out:How is the article?
