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Distress was beautiful. It made sense to him.
“We have to keep trying,” she said. “We know Master doesn’t trust us right now. But a message from his sister might convince him to at least hear us out. He has to know we’re as scared as he is.”
“He’s not going to be happy that we told someone,” Nick said.
“We’ll explain,” Breecher said. “We’ll show him that we had to.”
Nick nodded, watching her.
“Hey, listen,” he said. “Can you do something for me?”
“Sure.”
“Can you smell these?” he asked. He took the keys from the car’s ignition and handed them to her. She looked at the keys in her hand.
“What?” She squinted. “Can Ismellyourkeys?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You think they smell like soap?”
“Why in the hell would they?”
“Because someone’s taken an impression of them,” Nick said. He watched her eyes for deception but saw only confusion there. “If somebody wants to take a secret impression of your keys in order to make a copy, they press each key into a bar of soap. I think those keys smell like soap. You see if you do, or if I’m being crazy.”
Breecher lifted the keys and smelled them, watching his eyes the whole time. He felt a loosening in his shoulders. Nick was indeed worried about the keys. He had been worried about microphones, email hacks, spy cameras, someone sneaking into his bedroom at night and messing with his stuff, maybe making impressions of his keys. But he had been quite capable of keeping those concerns to himself. Most of his crazy thoughts he kept to himself. But he’d decided to ask Breecher about the keys when he saw her walking back to the car, just to see how she reacted. And although she probably did think he was being crazy, she smelled the keys anyway. She indulged him. And Nick knew she was doing that for one reason: to make him feel better. She handed him back the keys through the window.
“They do a little, maybe,” she said. “But you used the restroom back at that gas station. You probably used the hand soap, right? It’s strong, that gas station stuff. Would have come right off your hands onto your keys.”
Nick nodded, thinking.
“Plus, you can make much better copies of a person’s keys from a photograph,” Breecher said.
“Oh great. That’s good to know.”
“Just sayin’.”
“Let me come for a walk around the block with you,” Nick said. “It’s getting late. This is not a nice area.”
“I’m fine.” She smirked. “They see you coming with that haircut and those biceps and they’ll think you’re a cop. Go back to that bar we saw with the purple lights out the front. We’ll get dinner. I’ll be twenty minutes tops, then I’ll meet you there.”
Nick watched her go, checked his sideburns in the rearview. Then he sent another text to Master in the same theme as he had been doing for days.
Dude, I need you to check in,he typed.Me and KB are in Providence. We are all in this together. Holla back asap.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
BY THE TIME Susan and I arrived on the doorstep of Shauna Bulger’s two-story brick house in Manchester-by-the-Sea, the sun was falling, reflecting as red orbs in front windows lined with pots of yellow flowers. Every curtain was drawn, every light off. My truck was nowhere to be seen—probably in the garage. I wasn’t surprised. Whoever the men in the woods had been, they were after Shauna, and I could no longer believe the older woman didn’t know anything about the danger she was in. She was obviously pretending she wasn’t home in case they came looking for her here. I had to knock four times to raise her. She finally answered, carrying what I assumed was a big gun by her side, hidden behind the door. I could see the weight of it dragging at her shoulder.
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” I said. Shauna looked us over—the front of Susan’s shirt soaked in blood from her nose, both of us dirty and scratched up from scramblingthrough the woods. She backed up, pulled open the door, and let us in.
I wheeled on her immediately.
“What in the name of—” I barked.
“You guys want a drink?” she asked. “I was just about to have one.”
“I’ll have one,” Susan said. I turned on her now. She made a soothing gesture and mouthed “Chill out” as Shauna headed for the kitchen.
I watched Shauna put the shotgun on the island benchtop. She pulled a bottle of scotch from a cupboard. The strange sensation struck me that I was looking at someone I didn’t know, a stranger residing in the body of my friend. She was wearing jeans, boots, and a black leather jacket. Her close-cropped silver hair and cold, empty eyes contained a sort of war-weariness that didn’t make sense to me. It was as though the Shauna I’d known until yesterday had gone off into another universe and come back scarred and possessed.
