Reckoning and Ruin by Tina Whittle

Author:Tina Whittle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2015-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-nine

I decided nourishment was our immediate priority, so I took him to the first place I could find, a mom-and-pop sandwich shop at the I-16 junction. Trey sat in the booth across from me, a bland polite cipher. He seemed disconnected, but it wasn’t until we tried to order our food and he couldn’t even make a decision that I recognized how much he was crumbling.

I flashed on Gabriella’s accusations—towers and death, scythes and lightning—and realized his decline was less crash and tumble than she’d predicted. It was a gentle slippage, like a mansion sliding into a sinkhole, but it was definitely slippage. He’d left behind every bit of psychological scaffolding he had—his apartment, his workouts, his nine-to-five, even his gun. And now he was in Savannah, a city as strange to him as Mars. There was one thing, however, I hoped he hadn’t abandoned, his most potent touchstone.

“Why aren’t you in the Ferrari?” I said.

He took a sip of water. “I couldn’t surveil you in the Ferrari. You’d have spotted me instantly.”

“So where is it?”

“I had it valet parked. At the Hilton.”

“The DeSoto?”

He nodded.

“You got a room there?”

Another nod. Good. He’d at least had the presence of mind to find a place to sleep. When the waitress brought our food, he cut his turkey sandwich into four triangles, then rearranged them on his plate in two squares.

I reached across the table and took his knife away. “Eat. Now.”

He dutifully picked up one of the triangles. “Why were you at the detention center? You know you’re not allowed—”

“I know. But I risked it because I thought I could pry some information out of Jasper.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. But not the information I was expecting.”

I explained what I’d seen, how Jasper had batted not one eye at the idea of Hope being threatened, but had been definitely caught off guard by the news of John’s disappearance.

“Whatever scheme he’s working, it didn’t include that,” I said. “But I’m betting it does include Shane. That boy’s playing both ends against the middle.”

Trey took one tiny bite of sandwich. “Have you created a 302 on him?”

“Not yet. But I will be, him and Ivy both.”

“Who?”

So I filled him in on the surreal Ivy Rae, on the implausible yet undeniable ring on her finger, and on the rest of my visit, including my confrontation with Ainsworth Lovett and Lovett’s definitely-not-some-old-guy investigator. In short, I spilled all of it. He listened without commentary, though I saw him clench his jaw a couple of times.

“You could have told me about all of that,” he said.

“You could have told me that you were down here.”

He put the sandwich back down. “I know. I’m sorry. And I tried to stay in Atlanta, I really did, but—”

“I know.” I reached across the table and took his hands in mine, squeezed tight. “Here’s the thing. You and I haven’t been the most aboveboard of people lately, but I’m gonna give us some credit. We were trying to protect each other.”

“True.”

“But it’s gotta stop.

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