She nearly jumped out of the bathrobe when the phone on the table rang, and she was puzzled when her thumbprint didn’t open it. Shit. Jenny had grabbed the wrong phone on her way out, and left her own behind. The screen told her: Fred. Fred Kesser worked at the same firm that their father had worked at, where Jenny worked now. Trust Jenny’s work to be calling at oh-god-hundred in the morning on a Monday.
Jenny…
Jenny was gone.
Laura buried her face in her hands and sank into a chair at the tiny table. She should never had sent Jenny to go shopping in her car. Had they blown it up? Sent a sniper? Shit. She never thought these things through.
Getting involved in the mob-like organization of the LA cartel had been so easy, so innocent. John had offered her good money at a tight time, and everything they asked for had been so simple and easy. In her small, gray wolf form, she could make discreet deliveries and pickups. She never saw what was in those little packages, never asked questions, never wanted to know.
But some part of her always knew, knew at least that it was bad news, and that she was being willful in her ignorance.
Then, finally she’d heard too much, seen too much, and she knew she couldn’t continue.
Getting out was harder than getting in, of course.
She swallowed to remember John’s eyes, and his threat. “You tell anyone about this, and shifting won’t save you.”
And now Jenny, Jenny was gone and there was no way it wasn’t related.
Laura hadn’t smoked a cigarette in two years now, and she had never wanted one so badly.
Hours later, when the cops finally knocked on the door, she had still not found anything to drink.
“Ma’am, are you Jennavivianna Smith?”
Laura blinked. “Jenny,” she said weakly. Jenny hated her full name.
“Ma’am I’m afraid there’s been an accident. Your sister’s car was just pulled out of the water by Handle’s Curve.”
Laura gripped the doorframe tighter. She’d known, of course. They’d probably cut the brake lines, or tampered with the steering or something. In the dark, in the spring rain… and Jenny wasn’t as good at driving as Laura was — she commuted by bus or train and didn’t even own a car.
“No body has been found, yet. The search is ongoing.”
Then it hit her. They thought that she had gone off the road. They thought that Jenny was standing here, and that her hapless, screw-up sister Laura was the one who had died. Laura gave a little moan of pain.
The second cop reached out a hand to her and offered words of sympathy and support that Laura brushed off, not even hearing over the buzzing in her head.
“Yes, thank you. I’ll be okay. I’ve got… friends, yes. I’ll be okay. Yes, please keep me updated.” She brushed them off as best as she could, going through the puppet-motions as she imagined Jenny might.
They didn’t say a word that implied they might think it wasn’t an accident and Laura said nothing to suggest it, either.
When she’d finally shut the door behind them, she leaned against it for a long moment. It had all been one long lie, from ‘I’ll be okay’ to ‘Thank you.’ But it had been easier than she guessed to put herself in Jenny’s shoes.
Jenny’s phone showed a voicemail alert. Laura unlocked it with the code they’d used for bike locks when they were little and listened to it.
“Marty thinks you should go to Costa Rica to represent the firm,” Fred said after a brief opening ramble about contracts and files. “You’re the one who got the old contract annulled and the new one ready in time. And you’re totally due a break. Give it some thought, and find your passport. The World Mr. Shifter finals are just next week, so we’ve got to make the airline reservations right away.”
It was one of the few things that the sisters had in common — a weakness for ridiculous pageants. Mostly, it meant snarking together over pints of ice cream on the couch. A shifter pageant — was it just a gimmick, or was it actually a male beauty contest for shifters? And Costa Rica… she had always dreamed of going there.
It suddenly occurred to Laura that Costa Rica was more than just a tropical destination — it could be her escape. She wouldn’t be able to maintain the facade of Jenny’s life very long; she could fit what she knew about contract law in a pen cap with room leftover. But she could start a new life in a foreign country where no one knew either of them.
It didn’t take Laura more than a few moments to find Jenny’s passport — the whole apartment was ridiculously tidy and well-organized, and passports and important cards were thoughtfully filed at her desk. The same passcode that had opened her phone unlocked her laptop, but Laura couldn’t bear to look through it.
With a deep breath, Laura called Fred back.
She didn’t have to feign the tears that came as she explained why she wouldn’t be in to work. “My sister… there was an accident.” It was my fault, she didn’t say. And it wasn’t an accident.
Fred fell all over himself trying to comfort her as she choked out the parts of the story that she could.