CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Z wound her way down the back staircase of her house that night on her way to the kitchen. She’d gotten Gabby’s text about her vision of Lily at her daughter’s grave, and hours later, it was still bothering her.

There were usually several text chains a day among the group. Some were funny, like the one when Sabrina had them convinced for over an hour that Tupac asked her to solve his murder. Some asked for help, like Justin’s request that Z listen in for the questions on his English lit test the following week. And some were actually about the case, like this one about Lily’s daughter.

Why did Patricia think the Lost Causes didn’t need to know about her? There’s no way she and Nash could think it wasn’t relevant to the case. What if Lily was part of a grieving parents support group and Devon targeted her through that? What else were Patricia and Nash not telling them? How were they supposed to work on the case if they were partly in the dark?

Z knew she had a tendency to read into things more deeply than others. Her very first psychiatrist had told her parents when she was four that she had trust issues with authority figures, something every psychiatrist after him echoed. But Z had never viewed this as a problem. What was wrong with questioning people you were supposed to trust only because they were older? Her paralyzing depression might have disintegrated with the serum, but her belief that trust had to be earned remained. And Patricia and Nash hadn’t earned it.

Z could admit she was wrong about going to Devon’s apartment alone, but Gabby’s vision of the cemetery provided solid proof that Patricia had lied to them. Why was Z the only one who seemed concerned about this? The five of them had texted back and forth after Gabby told them about her vision, and the consensus (minus Z) was that Patricia must have a good reason why she didn’t mention Lily’s daughter. Justin had even texted before his game, Don’t make this Devon’s apartment 2.0, Z. Andrew was the only one who was partially on her side, but that was mainly because he loved playing devil’s advocate, telling them once that it was like giving his super-brain a workout. The most she could do was get them to agree to bring it up at the Cytology meeting the next day.

Z’s stomach growled, refusing to be ignored. When she reached the bottom of the staircase, Scott was standing there. She could hear the exasperated voices of their parents coming from the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Z asked.

“Shhh,” he said. “I’m trying to hear how long this fight is going to last so I can ask Dad for the keys to the Bentley. If he’s pissed off, he might say no.” Z didn’t bother asking Scott why his Porsche Cayenne wouldn’t cut it tonight. She assumed it was about impressing a girl.

“All I’m saying is it’s illegal!” Nicole exclaimed.

“What’s illegal?” Z whispered to Scott.

“She keeps seeing some guy driving by and sitting in his van right outside the house. She thinks it’s one of the reporters looking for a new angle.”

No wonder her mother was so amped up. The second Z’s father had been put on the suspect short list for Lily Carpenter’s murder, Nicole had taken it as a personal affront to her social status. The first thing she asked Steven was if the police were going to freeze their assets or try to cancel their American Express Black Card.

Z would never admit it to anyone, but when she’d first heard about the murder, it didn’t seem completely impossible that her father had been involved, considering that screaming match he’d had with Lily the day before her murder. Every other resident of the area that Steven planned to demolish for his new condominium complex had taken the generous buyout he’d offered without putting up much of a fight. But Lily had refused to sell her cabin. Several construction workers recounted in their police statements that Lily had said she’d sell the cabin “over her dead body,” and Steven had angrily replied, “Don’t tempt me.”

Nothing enraged him more than someone standing in the way of a lucrative business deal. Z didn’t think he was capable of the torturing and killing, but she wouldn’t put it past him to order someone else to do it. Now that she knew Lily’s murder was all about the serum and not the land she was living on, she felt a twinge of guilt about her earlier suspicions.

“You don’t think it pisses me off, too? They’ve written five false stories about me. Five!” Steven bellowed. “I’ve got investors in Russia who will pull out tomorrow if they catch wind of this. But my hands are tied here.”

“It’s practically stalking!”

“You might be out here for a while,” Z told Scott as she sauntered into the kitchen. Her parents didn’t acknowledge her presence.

Nicole sank into an armchair at the head of the kitchen table as if she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. “I just don’t understand why they’re still harassing us like this.”

“Because some liberal jackass at the paper hates anyone with money and won’t let the story die,” Steven snapped. “Probably thinks he’s going to win a Pulitzer with this pathetic attempt at journalism.”

The throbbing vein on Steven’s forehead looked as if it was about to burst. For a split second, Z wondered if he did know something he wasn’t telling the cops.

Then she remembered her mother’s thought from the other day. Nicole had no idea where Steven had been the night before or what he’d been up to.

That could be innocent enough. Who knew what kind of extracurricular activities her father was hiding from her mother? Just because he’d taken off for a few hours didn’t mean he was hiding something about Lily’s murder.

“If the guy approaches the gates, I’ll have words with him,” Steven said as he punched something into his phone. “But I can’t do anything when he’s out in his van. I haven’t even seen him.”

Nicole scoffed. “Well, I have. Several times.”

Z was about to leave with the leftover pizza she’d grabbed when she stopped short.

A van.

“What color was it, Mom?”

Nicole looked at Z as though she’d totally forgotten her daughter was in the kitchen. “What color was what?”

“The van.”

“White, I think.”

A white van driving by the house several times a day? Could it have been Nash? Was he keeping tabs on them? It made a lot more sense than a reporter swinging by every few hours.

“Have you caught him on the cameras?” Z asked. They had an extensive security system with several cameras positioned around the perimeter of the house. It was always the first thing their father had installed when they moved in somewhere new.

Her mother gave her an irritated look. “No. It’s like he knows where they are. And when I pulled up to the gate last night, he was there, but he sped off the second he saw me.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“He had dark hair. He was probably in his twenties or thirties, but he drove off so fast that it was a blur.”

It had to have been Nash. Z bristled at the violation of her privacy. Even if it was for their so-called protection, Nash could’ve at least told them he was watching them. She might not have cared so much if it wasn’t for the timing. First Lily’s daughter, now this. These small details Patricia and Nash consistently left out made her nervous.

Z wanted to solve this case with every bone in her body. She understood how destructive the serum could be in the wrong hands and in the last few days had found herself checking the news app on her phone, afraid of what she would see. That there would be an unexplainable mass killing or terrorist attack where it was only obvious to those assigned to this case that the person who stole the serum was responsible for it.

But that fear wasn’t the only thing driving her forward.

Z had asked Patricia when all of this started if the five of them would be forced to inject the antidote if they solved the case. Patricia had answered that it was up to them — it was their choice. But Z hadn’t thought to ask about the alternative. What happened if they didn’t solve the case? Whose choice was it then? Would they strip her of her newfound ability so the only things she’d wake up to the next day were bleakness and depression? It was a question she wasn’t sure she wanted answered.

She got back up to her room and debated whether to text the others about the van. They already thought she was reading too much into Gabby’s vision, though, so maybe it was better to wait. When her phone beeped with a text from Nash an hour later, it confirmed her decision.

Reminder of meeting tomorrow 8 a.m.

She’d bring up Nash’s stalking then. One way or another, she was going to get Patricia and Nash to start telling them the truth. And did Nash really need to send out a reminder? As if any of them would forget they had a meeting about how to stop a psychopathic murderer and save the freaking world.