Gorgeous Misery (Creeping Beautiful)

And if she could just find this cure, she would stop being Creepy Wendy and start being the person she was meant to be.

It killed me. That entire conversation broke my fucking heart. “Wendy,” I said. “Just tell me where you are and I’ll come get you, and we can do this together.”

Because yeah, this idea that she needs to be cured is nuts. But it doesn’t matter. If she believes it to be true, it’s true. So I was on board. I came up with a plan. We were gonna hook up with Megan via Johnny Boston. I was gonna put everyone who owed me on this mission to find Wendy’s cure.

But that wasn’t what she wanted.

Oh, she made promises. She said we’d meet up but after we hung up that night, she disappeared for eighteen months.

Not exactly disappeared. She’s not like Indie. She doesn’t flip out, go insane, and then go rogue. No. Wendy Gale is far, far, far too professional for shit like that.

She just ignored me. Completely.

It wasn’t until last Christmas, #24, that I finally convinced her to see me again.

This was when I made the real promise. The one she believed.

Because this plan would work, and she knew it.

It wasn’t gonna be easy, and she was gonna take all the hits, but she didn’t care.

Once I told her my plan, she was on board.

I had the cure.

Or, at least, I had access to it.

And even though, in my eyes, Wendy Gale is the most perfect woman I’ve ever known, I was gonna get that fucking cure and then we were gonna be together forever.

Right now I’m in the parking lot of the Mount Pleasant Americana Motel. My convo with Indie was yesterday and the moment she hung up on me, I drove here.

Wendell had a package waiting for me, a large padded yellow envelope. And inside was a phone. The phone had one programmed contact.

I press the screen and call the number.

A voice I recognize answers. “Very, very interesting life you’re leading… Nick.”

It’s Merc.

And there is only one way he would know how to contact me at the Americana.

Indie was right.

He’s the reason Wendy is missing.

CHAPTER NINE - WENDY

FOUR DAYS AGO

Transcendent, everlasting, whole, perfect, beautiful, sweet.

I am on the hunt for Nick Tate.

He’s not taking my calls. He’s not picking up my messages, he’s not on the board, and he didn’t leave me an envelope in Mount Pleasant so I had no choice but to come all the way out here.

It’s a nice summer day. Bright blue sky for as far as the eye can see. It’s not even that hot today, even though it’s August. There are wheat fields swaying in the wind, row after row of corn fields, and lots of other fields with short plants I can’t identify. This is why they call it the breadbasket, I guess. Food just coming up out of the ground everywhere you look.

I am in Nebraska. Perkins County, to be specific.

This part of the state butts up against the very eastern edge of Colorado and just the mere fact that this is where Nick bought land is enough to trigger me. Because he’s not fooling anyone, is he? No one says ‘I think I will buy a twelve-thousand-acre farm in Nebraska worth almost twenty million dollars’ when they are twenty-eight years old and need to disappear.

You go to the Seychelles, the Maldives, or fucking Thailand like every other on-the-run rich asshole in the world. You do not buy a farm. He’s not even a farmer. He’s just an owner. And he doesn’t even live in the main house—which is a mansion, by the way. No. He lives in one of the falling-down shitholes typically reserved for farmhands.

The only possible reason he could have for buying this massive working farm that produces like a billion pounds of food every year is its proximity to Colorado.

And we all know who lives in Colorado.

Sasha. Cherlin.

I can’t even think her name in my head without the full stops. And when I picture her face, I want to give up my recently acquired Zen lifestyle and slip back into full-on assassin mode. I don’t even understand why she makes me feel this way. I’ve never met this woman. I haven’t even seen a picture of her since her face was in the fucking newspaper for shooting ‘Nick’ in the head nearly a decade ago.

Of course that wasn’t Nick. It was his twin brother, Santos. But that’s not the point. The point is, why do I care about her? Why? Why do I get so angry when I think about this stupid farm? It’s not that close to where Sasha lives. She’s in Fort Collins. It’s a three-hour drive away.

But come on. Three hours? Are you kidding me? Three hours is nothing. Hell, I’ve been driving for thirteen right now.