Page 114 of The Wicked

“No need. It was in a positive light.”

“So you’re saying that this stranger, this cat-loving vigilante sniper, would somehow get justice for Saralisa and Gracie while the entire legal system fails?”

“I’m saying that I think it’s exactly the type of challenge he’d enjoy.”

Garrett still looked far from thrilled with the idea, but what choice did we have? I knew from experience that sometimes the wheels of justice didn’t only turn slowly; they didn’t turn at all.

“In the absence of other options, how do we contact this guy?”

“We don’t contact him. If it happens, it happens.”

“So we just wait? That’s it? We wait?”

“Kind of.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that we’ve narrowed down his identity to a couple of possibilities, and last time…” Aaron glanced in my direction. “Last time, we planted a few seeds. Made suggestions.”

That was insane. “So you’re saying you suggested that Marianna wind up in jail, and then by a miracle, she did?”

“We didn’t go into that level of detail.”

“It was more of a ‘we’d like to see justice’ approach,” Blue explained.

“So he could have given her a slap on the wrist or shot her or anything in between?”

“Pretty much, yeah. He did whatever he thought was appropriate.”

Had sending Marianna to jail been appropriate? Undoubtedly yes. She’d deserved more, if I was honest, but the Bad Samaritan had shown restraint. Whoever he was, he wasn’t a bloodthirsty lunatic.

“And if we planted these seeds, as Aaron puts it, there would be no way to stop him?” I asked.

“Not that we’re aware of.”

“I’m in,” Garrett said. “Fuck it, I’m in. Let him do his worst. Mandell is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. For years, he sat at our dinner table,opposite his daughter, and pretended he hadn’t torn our family apart.”

“Who are the possible candidates?” I whispered. “Who in this town would be capable?”

I thought they’d keep that to themselves, but Luca surprised me.

“Deck or Nico,” he said, and then I understood. I understood why Deck had been with us at the house yesterday, why Luca had wanted him to stay while we opened those files. He’d been planting seeds already.

He’d known it would come to this.

Deck or Nico… I knew both of them, not well enough to call them friends, but well enough to be shocked by Luca’s revelation. Deck had done work at The Lookout. He sold sculptures in the Craft Cabin. Sometimes I bumped into him running when I went for a walk along the beach. And Nico, he seemed so smooth, so polished. Over the past several years, I’d had a number of meetings with him about events at the Peninsula, and he’d never been anything but courteous.

Neither of them had given off any dangerous vibes, and until now, I would have quite happily spent time alone with either of them, for professional reasons only, of course. More wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I thought of Congressman Mandell and the stories I’d heard, and then I thought of Seth Harless and his cold, dead eyes. I thought of Gracie’s terror and Marlie’s happiness, only possible because her mom had done her best to shelter her from the awful truth about her DNA.

And again, I nodded.

“I’m in too.”

38

SARA

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