CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Gabby watched as Z pulled down the rest of the prescription bottles from Devon Warner’s medicine cabinet. The rest of the group had joined her and Justin in the apartment after he had texted them that it was all clear.

“Xanax, Effexor, Ambien,” Z said, inspecting the labels. “These meds are all for different things — anti-anxiety, depression, sleeping pills. And every single one is prescribed to Lily Carpenter.”

“What kind of doctor prescribes so many pills all at once?” Gabby wondered.

Z pulled the rest of the bottles down from the shelf. “Looks like it wasn’t just one doctor. They’re all prescribed by different ones, but around the same time. I guess Lily was a doctor shopper.”

Gabby’s impression of Lily kept getting fuzzier. Maybe she was being ignorant, but she never imagined the woman who sold her two pine-scented Christmas candles last year was so mentally unstable that she needed an arsenal of drugs. And wasn’t “doctor shopping” against the law?

“Do you think Devon took these from her house that night?” Gabby asked Z. “It’s definitely proof he was there.” The bracelet was proof, too, but all the intelligence they’d gleaned from it had come from Gabby’s vision and Z’s superhearing. This was the first piece of solid proof they’d come across that Devon and Lily were, indeed, connected.

“It’s proof he was there … or that she was here,” Z replied thoughtfully. “I mean, what if Lily slept over here a lot? Like if her and Devon were dating … who knows what secrets she might have told him then.”

Gabby frowned, the scenario feeling wrong to her. “Isn’t she a lot older than him?”

“Maybe he liked that.”

While Z continued her inspection, Gabby entered the bedroom tentatively.

Devon’s bed was unmade, a navy blue comforter lying in a jumbled mess of sheets near the end of the mattress. As odd as Lily’s cabin had been, Gabby couldn’t imagine a mature professional woman like Lily spending the night here. A solitary nightstand stood beside the bed, only a lamp and an alarm clock on top. An oak dresser was against the wall, the top devoid of framed photos or anything personal.

The one thing Devon seemed to take pride in was the tall bookshelf in the corner of his bedroom, overflowing with hardback and paperback books. She ran her finger along the book spines: everything from Tolstoy and Shakespeare to Franzen and Rowling. The pages were worn and dog-eared, as if they’d been read over and over, as Gabby often did with her collection. It was the library of a book lover, the last thing she expected to find here. It was hard to imagine Devon as anything other than a man who had beat up Sadie Webb, stole from her and maybe murdered someone else.

Gabby held her breath as she opened the top drawer of the bureau, wondering if she should call Z in for moral support. Who knew what she’d find in there? A bloody knife? A severed head? To her relief, it was just dozens of balled-up socks. Should she try to touch them? She hesitated, but nothing came of it. She was about to close the drawer when something stopped her. She listened to her instincts.

She reached in again, and this time, her fingers caught something leathery in the back corner. Gabby pulled the drawer all the way out to find three wallets, all creased and seemingly used but empty. Two were men’s wallets made of black leather, but the third was daintier, a robin’s-egg blue. It had to belong to a woman.

Gabby picked it up and the involuntary spasm began immediately, her eyes fluttering. Sweat. It was still dark and hazy, but the first thing she sensed was the acidic smell of hot sweat clinging to a body. Voices swirled around her, so close, too close. She felt confined, claustrophobic. So crammed in that she could barely move her arms.

Her eyes fluttered, but Gabby pressed her fingers more firmly on the wallet, willing herself to stay in the vision.

She was on a bus. She knew it before she could see it. Within a few seconds, the darkness had begun to dissipate and the picture unfolded around her. A crowded bus at rush hour.

She knew instinctively she was in Devon Warner’s body. Next to him stood a young guy, eighteen or nineteen, with broad shoulders and a shaved head, clicking shut a flip phone. The landscape looked unfamiliar to Gabby, but a few billboards caught her eye, one advertising the University Medical Center of El Paso. She was in Texas?

“You ready?” the guy asked Devon. It appeared they were friends.

She could feel Devon’s muscles tensing. Something’s about to happen.

Then the bus lurched to a stop, and Devon stumbled into a woman next to him. “Sorry,” he said, before heading to the exit door.

Suddenly, the vision jumped forward a few minutes, disorienting Gabby. Devon was running down a street; she could feel his heart pounding. The teenage guy from the bus sprinted next to him. They rounded a corner, the two of them slowing to enter an alley, before Devon slouched and began to vomit.

“Gabby …”

Z’s voice took Gabby out of the vision for good.

“Are you okay? It sounded like you were gagging.”

“Was I?” Gabby was surprised, but when she put her hand to her stomach, she felt it contracting as if she had been retching herself. She held up the wallet for Z. “He stole this wallet. From a lady on a bus.”

“He took the bracelet from that waitress, too. Maybe he’s a kleptomaniac.”

“Maybe …” Gabby said, but something about that answer didn’t fit. She’d spent a long time researching mental illnesses when her OCD had first taken hold. Kleptomania was a compulsion, too, possibly even a variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder. But this wasn’t a compulsion for Devon, Gabby was pretty sure. It had felt like pure, scorching desperation.

“No. He’s not a kleptomaniac,” Gabby said firmly. “He’s not doing it for the rush. He needs the money … I have a feeling what I just saw happened a long time ago, though.”

“Why do you say that?”

Gabby paused, letting the details of the vision come back to her. “The billboards.” Z looked at her for more. “Out the window, I saw some billboards. One was for Ratatouille — that movie with the rat chef. That came out when we were kids, right?”

“You guys! Come here!” Sabrina called from outside the room, interrupting.

Gabby and Z found the others gathered in the tiny hallway by an open closet.

“I found a safe in here,” Sabrina said, peeking out of the closet. “A tiny one under the carpet.”

“How did you think to do that?” Z asked, impressed.

Sabrina shrugged. “The edge of the carpet was already coming up a little. I pulled it back and there it was. It’s bolted in pretty good, though.”

“Yeah, it is,” Justin said as he crouched down, trying to lift it up. “I don’t think we can move it without some kind of electric screwdriver or something. If I try to move it with my mind, I might blow a hole in the floor.”

“Do you think you can just open it?” Sabrina asked him. “Undo the lock with your mind?”

“Maybe …” Justin said, leaning back. Gabby clicked her tongue nervously, her inner radar growing stronger again. Get out while you can.

“You guys, we should go,” Gabby pleaded. “It’s already been a while.”

“If the serum is anywhere in this apartment, it’s probably in the safe,” Sabrina said. “Two more minutes and then I promise we’ll go. Andrew, stand by the window as lookout.”

Andrew moved quickly to the small kitchen, standing behind the faded sheet that served as a curtain.

“Let’s see if I can make this happen.” Justin focused on the safe door. For several long beats, it was completely silent, nothing happening.

Gabby bit her lip, the knot in her stomach growing to the size of a grapefruit. But before she said anything, she heard a scraping sound from the lock, metal against metal, the latch unlocking.

“You did it,” she said, astounded. Justin looked pretty shocked himself.

They huddled in the cramped space to get a closer look as Justin pulled open the safe door all the way. There was no vial of serum in the small velvet-lined safe. There was just one thing.

A small silver handgun.

Justin reached out to touch it, but before he could lay a finger on it, a creaking noise from the living room stopped them all in their tracks.

It sounded as if someone had just walked through the front door.

The footsteps crossed the apartment quickly. Gabby tried to control her breathing. Justin stood up in the closet, flexing his body, preparing to attack.

“Who’s there?” a gruff, familiar voice called out.

Nash.

“Just us,” Gabby croaked in relief.

Nash entered the hallway. Though his face bore its usual impenetrable expression, there was anger in his eyes. “What the hell? I could’ve killed you.”

Gabby swallowed. There was a pistol in his right hand. His knuckles were bruised and caked with blood. Where had he just come from?

“Way to look out, Andrew,” Justin grumbled.

Andrew defended himself. “I swear, he came out of nowhere.”

“What are you guys doing here?” Nash asked.

The five of them shared an uncertain glance.

“We got Devon’s address,” Sabrina said, taking the lead. “We figured we’d take a look.”

Nash glared. “Without telling us? Do you know how much danger you all put yourselves in?”

I do, Gabby wanted to shout.

“But why haven’t you told us about this place?” Z asked.

“Because I’ve been conducting surveillance and collecting evidence for the last two days. It appears Devon Warner hasn’t been back to his apartment for at least a week. We wanted to make sure there was no immediate danger before we brought you in. I came back tonight to grab a safe I discovered last time and then we were going to call you all.” He stopped, as if he suddenly knew why they were huddled around the closet. “I see you found the safe, too.”

They nodded and he pulled a drill from his black backpack. “You want to let me at it?”

“We managed to open it up ourselves,” Z said. “Or Justin did.”

“With what?” Nash asked.

Justin shrugged. “My brain.”

Even through Nash’s annoyance at finding them there, Gabby could tell he was grudgingly impressed. Nash kneeled at the safe and carefully examined the gun. “It’s a .357 Magnum.”

“What does that mean?” Justin asked.

“It’s the same type of gun Devon stole from Sadie Webb,” Andrew said.

Nash paused, as if debating what he was about to reveal.

“What is it?” Z prodded him.

“It’s also the same type of gun used to kill Lily Carpenter.”

*    *    *

Later, as they trudged down the dark street toward Z’s car, the eerie feeling returned to Gabby, even more strongly than before. It was a prickly sensation, a taste in her mouth.

But finally she was able to recognize what it was.

It wasn’t fear. It was the distinct feeling of being watched. And someone had been doing it all night.