Page 131 of The Next Lie

Do not over-explain.

Do not fill silence.

Do not show which wound matters.

“You have always been efficient,” she says. “That is why your sentiment disappoints me when it appears.”

“There is no sentiment in a dead courier route.”

“No.” She leans back. “I suppose not.”

The fire snaps.

Then she says, “Tell me about Ruben.”

The name hits with the force of a fist. I lower the glass.

Inside my head, a hallway appears. Dark wood. Blood on the banister. A child’s breath behind a closet door. Ruben’s hand reaching for the knob while he laughed under his breath because he liked fear best when it was small.

I killed him before he touched the handle, leaving Reva on the phone in that closet for the paramedics to find. To rescue. To deliver to Cal.

Then I carried Delia through the back of the house with my hand covering her mouth so she wouldn’t scream and give us both away.

That is the messy truth.

The official story is cleaner because it gave the police a monster. Murkier because the monster was already dead when they found him. They never figured out who put the bullet in Ruben’s head, but once ballistics tied his gun to the rounds recovered from the victims, no one pushed the question very hard.

“Ruben was slow,” I say. “A cop shot him.”

“Yes,” she says softly. “I remember the report. It’s confusing, though.”

I wait. She has read that report more than once. I know her questions.

“Ruben was never careless,” she says. “Or particularly slow.”

“Everyone is careless once.”

“Not Ruben.”

“He was dead. That limited my ability to question his process, but I feel like he must have been careless if the police got him.”

Her mouth curves, but the humor does not reach her eyes. “The police came. You told me the girl called the police.”

“She must have done so. That’s the only way they’d have known to come.”

“The younger one.”

“Yes. Not that thirteen minutes difference matters, but I had Delia⁠—”

“Seniority matters. After Ruben found her?”

Before.

I see him again. One hand on the closet door. Pistol loose at his side. The house full of sirens still distant enough that he had time.

Kill the younger girl.

Delia was downstairs, crying soundlessly beside a dead man and a dead little girl, but something had given Ruben pause. Something in the mother’s expression, or maybe Delia had said something…I don’t remember what it was.