Felice
Lucky for everyone involved, Kenneth Vanderbilt was free that morning, and was willing to make the thirty-mile hike out to Felice’s home in the desert. Felice didn’t really know how to feel about any of it, the flurry of emotions just under her skin made her feel like she was lost at sea.
Feeling empty and listless, she called the only person in the world that could make her feel better and could keep a secret: Jenny. Her best friend would show up to help, no questions asked.
Jenny flew in the door without even knocking after only about ten minutes, looking like she’d just poured herself out of bed, into some shoes, and come right over. She had a little leftover makeup from the night before, and her pretty, super-long hair was up in the messiest of messy buns. She still managed to look cute as hell though, with made Felice a little jealous. But she instantly felt better with her BFF by her side.
All in an instant, she realized she completely forgiven her best buddy for any error she may have made with Clay. It was all water under the bridge, and Jenny would always be her best friend, no matter what.
It took the whole rest of the thirty minutes they had remaining to catch Jenny up on the news of the morning. She took it better than expected and was the shoulder Felice needed more than anything to cry on. Pierce smartly made himself scarce and even Dolores found somewhere else to be. Felice told Jenny everything, her speech only interrupted a few times by Dolores yelling at the TV remotes for not working how hers worked at home.
She was ready to face the world by the time Kenneth arrived. It was a good thing, too, because Kenneth came with a world of bad news.
“I feel for yah, girly,” Kenneth said, pilfering a cup of coffee and a plate of snacks off of the table. He’d managed to drain two pots of coffee, a whole plate of cookies, and a floral arrangement made out of flower-shaped pieces of fruit, and he still looked around for more to stuff into his ugly maw. “Unfortunately, I can no longer help you.”
Felice never liked Kenneth; he was a slime ball and worked with circles of people she wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, but sometimes, a celebutante needed a slimy man like him to keep the dirt from getting on her own Dior pumps. “What do you mean you can no longer help us?” Dolores asked, slamming her hands down onto the table.
“I gotta work on the right side of the law for a bit; have some law men watching me a little too tightly right now. So I’m 100% clean as soap until the vultures find a different corpse to circle,” Kenneth said, picking his yellowed teeth with his fingers. “So, as much as I want to, I can’t get your young man a new social security number or passport or anything. I can’t even refer yah to someone else without making some problems for my friends, yah see? And probably problems for you all, too.”
Felice couldn’t seem to keep her head above water long enough to catch all of his words. Everything seemed to blur in and out of focus. Why were they doing this? Pierce had to tell the police everything. They shouldn’t be covering this up. She didn’t even care about the half a million dollars or Clay or anything else anymore. Forget pride. No, this was far more important.
But she couldn’t seem to formulate a proper argument, so she kept her mouth shut, letting the others speak instead. She was too tired to argue with anyone, anyway. So while Pierce, Jenny, Dolores, and Kenneth argued over their next step, Felice just walked away from the table and found a quiet corner of the TV room to be alone.
How had everything gone so completely wrong so quickly?
# # #
Pierce
“I don’t think you understand what you’re saying, Felice,” Pierce said, trying to keep his voice even. He was careful not to interrupt her when she spoke; she got enough of that from her mother without getting it from him, too. But it was incredibly difficult to keep himself in check when she was spouting nonsense.
Jenny was watching the two of them with curious eyes, but she didn’t interject. Thankfully, Kenneth and Dolores had already left, finally bringing a modicum of peace back to the white house in the desert.
“Then explain it to me,” she whispered, her face a map of anger and strain. “Please.”
“I can’t go to jail; police won’t take my word. They won’t trust me. I’ve seen it before. It’s why it’s so easy to set one of us up if you want his place. They don’t care which one of us actually did it. They just want someone to serve the time. In jail, I won’t be able to do anything.” Pierce sat back in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest to keep from taking Felice’s hands. “If I don’t find evidence for what Gunner has done, I can’t go to the police.”
“But if you go back to Boston, Gunner could kill you.” Felice was clutching a bunch of tissues like a lifeline, her eyes clear of tears. She just seemed to be holding them just in case. Either that or she desperately needed something to hold onto.
“But if I go back, maybe I can clear my name and clean things up instead of hiding. I’ve never been good at hiding, and maybe if I do the right thing, then I can get my life back.”
Felice’s head snapped up, her emerald eyes searching his own. “What do you mean the right thing? The right thing would be to go to the police and tell them — ” She was nearly hysterical, ready to start screaming. He was close to that point, too, and he fought to keep his head on.
“Felice, please. This is my life we’re talking about here. We can’t just — ”
Standing up, Felice nearly knocked her kitchen chair over. Jenny’s eyes narrowed as she watched the two of them in careful silence. Pierce couldn’t blame her. But he wanted to defuse this situation and move onto a planning stage, but Felice seemed to refuse to take a deep breath.
Her beautiful, terrified body was hyperventilating, and he couldn’t do anything.
“You’re wrong!” she was screaming. “You need to go to the police. You can’t leave them chasing you; it’ll be even worse if they catch you on the run!”
“I’m already on the run,” Pierce snapped, finally losing his temper. Why wouldn’t she listen to him? “No matter what I do now, I’m screwed unless I find some evidence to defend myself with, as soon as possible. And that means finding Gunner and figuring out why he did this to me.”
Felice’s tiny fists beat against his chest. It barely even hurt, but it hurt more than she would hit him. “You’re wrong, goddammit, listen to yourself!”
“Felice! Pierce! Please stop.” Jennifer finally cut in, her voice ragged and unhappy. “This is literally getting us nowhere. How about instead of jumping in feet first, we make a damn plan?”
Felice turned to her friend, her body quivering like a rabbit’s. She took a deep breath, then another with her eyes locked on Jennifer’s. Once again, Pierce was blown away by the depth of their friendship. All Felice needed was Jenn by her side and she could handle anything. Even if that thing was the man she’d been sleeping with wanted by the police for a murder he didn’t commit.
It made Pierce want to punch Clay in his stupid face all the more. “Look at what he almost ruined; one of the best relationships I’ve ever seen between two people.” Pierce wished he had someone back home that he could trust so completely.
Jenny rubbed her hands over Felice’s arms as though she were warming her up. “See? Deep breaths. Now, Pierce. You can’t go just running back home without a plan. And Felice, you can’t just send him to the police without a plan.” Jennifer looked back and forth between them for a long moment, her nose crinkling as she thought it through. Suddenly, her face lit up and she snapped her fingers at Felice. “That private investigator your mom has on speed dial for her boyfriends, you think he might have contacts on the east coast?”
Felice sniffed exaggeratedly, her chest heaving with the depths of her breaths. “Maybe. I could ask. Why?”
Jennifer smiled at her friend, obviously happy that she was starting to calm down. Pierce was pretty happy about it, too, to be honest. “Now, here’s my idea…”