Not Quite Dead Yet, page 32
But Jet had the time.
She took a breath, steadied herself, anchored herself, looked through her doubled vision, beyond it.
She pressed the pen to the paper and began her goodbyes.
Thirty-One
The hinges screamed and Jet jerked awake, still alive. She knew because the pain came next, head crushed against the wall, knees tucked to her chest.
She blinked at the open bars, at Mr. Finney with his hand on the door.
“I’m not hungry. Thanks,” Jet croaked, settling back down on the concrete.
“Jet.” He opened the door wider, another creak, an unknown word in the language of metal. “You’re free to go.”
But those words she understood.
Jet sniffed, sat up, one cheek crushed, the side she could no longer feel, a ring of salt crusted around her eyes.
“Wh-what?” she said.
“You’re free to go.”
Jet pushed to her feet, one at a time, stumbling, catching herself on the wall.
“Wh-why?” She blinked again, no idea what the time was, or how much she had left.
Jack stepped back, cleared the way.
“We had a witness come in to give a statement,” he said. “It corroborated your account. The state attorney wants us to investigate further, before considering charges. Which means…” He gestured to the open door. “You’re free to go. For now.”
“I’m free?” She took a tentative step forward. “Who was the cor-corro-cor—th-the witness?”
Jack pressed his lips together, an almost-smile. “I think you know him. Come on.”
Jet’s heart picked up, back where it belonged. Home. Her foot nudged something as she shuffled forward.
“Oh, your pen.” She bent to pick it up, the world tilting, almost throwing her off. She righted herself, passed the red pen to Jack, then looked back at her cell. Just once.
Patted her jacket pocket to feel them there, to check. Her letters, folded up. Safe. And she might not need them after all.
She was free.
She followed Mr. Finney, holding her breath as she passed by the bars, crossed the threshold, that line, into the corridor beyond.
Through the door she couldn’t see, but she could see now, into the waiting room, the bench she’d been cuffed to, the front desk.
The officer who’d booked her was standing behind it. So was the chief, eyeing her as she stumbled past, face creasing—but not because he was sorry, Jet knew.
“I’m free to go,” she said, challenging him, eyeing him back, moving her hair out of her face with just one finger. Her middle finger.
The chief didn’t say anything, just watched her go, toward the glass-fronted door, the night and the moon waiting beyond.
Mr. Finney opened the door for her.
“Thank you,” Jet said. “For the pen.”
Jack dipped his head, and Jet walked outside.
The night and the moon weren’t the only things waiting for her.
Jet’s blue truck, just there, in the parking lot.
Someone leaning against the hood, arms crossed, bunching his checked shirt, protecting his chest.
“I got your voicemail,” Billy called.
“You did?” Jet stopped.
“Yeah.” He pushed off the truck, crossed one of the headlights, glowing in front of it. “It was pretty long.”
“Well, I had a lot to say.” Jet cupped her hand over her eyes, to see Billy clearer. The clearest she’d ever seen him.
“You’ve always got a lot to say.” Billy smiled.
“Didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
Billy nodded, chewed his lip. “Do you see me now?” Raised his arms.
“Yeah,” Jet said, “I see you. Do you see me?”
“I’ve always seen you, Jet.”
Jet nodded, her heart in her throat.
“OK,” she called. “Can we stop being weird now?”
“You first.”
Jet first.
Time to be brave, time to be useless.
She kicked off the gravel and ran to him, straight into him, hard to stop, both of them colliding into the truck.
Billy’s arms wrapped around her, Jet’s left hand hooking onto his elbow, holding on as he held her. She pressed her face into his chest, harder, crushing it. Jet couldn’t feel it in her cheek, but she felt it somewhere else, felt like wings.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice lost in his shirt.
“It’s OK,” he said, voice lost in her hair. “I’m sorry too.”
“Got nothing to be sorry about.”
“I do, Jet.” He pulled back so he could look down at her, eyes pale and shining, a summer lake with no end, not even when he blinked. “You talked about having a deadline, one last week, to prove something. And I did too. Something different, something I thought was just as important—the only important thing, actually. And that wasn’t fair, on either of us.” He breathed out, let something go. “I don’t need to prove anything, and you don’t either.”
Jet thought she knew, what Billy meant. Maybe she’d already known, since she heard his song, maybe even before that too.
“I don’t hate you,” she said.
“And I don’t hate you either.” He smiled. “Shall we?”
He stepped back, opened the passenger door for her.
Jet climbed inside, struggling because Billy’s guitar was in the footwell, her legs either side of it.
“What’s this doing here?” she asked as Billy dropped into the driver’s seat.
“Oh.” His cheeks flushed. “Well, I’ve never got someone out of jail before.”
“You thought you could sing me out?”
“No.” His dark hair trailed into his eyes. “I was going to find a pawnshop, sell my guitar, sell your truck too, get money for bail, whatever it took.”
Jet gasped, but not really. “You were going to sell my baby?”
Billy ran his hand over the dashboard. “Would have hurt me too. We’ve bonded.”
He shifted, his elbow accidentally bumping the steering wheel, a hiccup of the horn.
Jet laughed. “She says, Hands off.”
“That’s fine,” Billy said, dropping his eyes. “You can love something without needing it to love you back.”
Jet nodded, looking at him as he looked away.
“How did you do it?” she asked. “Get them to let me go?”
Billy’s cheeks flushed harder, still not looking. “Don’t be mad.”
“What?”
“I…I said we were together, in the truck.”
“Doing what?” Jet pressed, just enjoying this, watching him squirm.
“Screwing like teenagers,” they said at the same time, burst into laughter, Billy accidentally hitting the horn again.
“Me too.”
Billy sniffed, swallowing the laugh. “Good thing we got our alibi sorted beforehand, huh?”
Jet shifted around the guitar case, felt Billy’s gaze on her.
“You know,” he said, gripping the wheel with both hands, even though they weren’t going anywhere. “I think this has been the worst week of my life, because I’m going to lose you, and I don’t want to lose you.” He cleared the lump in his throat. “But, it’s also been the best week of my life, because I got to spend it with you.”
“Me too,” she said again. Same words, completely different somehow, another language.
“Good.” Billy clicked his tongue. “Glad we agree.”
“Yep. Same page.”
Billy caught her eye and Jet smiled, just out of one side.
He caught the other half, turned the key in the ignition.
“So. Whaddya want to do tonight?” he asked. “Should we go solve a murder?”
Jet scrunched her nose, glanced down at her nonexistent watch. “I think we have time.”
“Where to, Detective?” Billy did up his belt.
“Luke,” Jet said, losing the smile. “He’s the one who took that photo of my truck, sent the police after me. But if he was there at that time, it means—”
“—He’s the one who set the fire,” Billy finished. “Tried to kill you the second time. But we know it wasn’t him on Halloween, he was with Henry Lim at the same time.”
“No.” Jet nodded. “Luke didn’t murder me. But he might have murdered Emily. I have to know, Billy. My whole life…I just have to know, before…” She coughed. “Where’s your phone?”
Billy pulled it out of his pocket, handed it to her.
Jet scrolled through his contacts, looking for Luke Mason.
Found it, just above Mom. Pressed the call button.
It rang.
Three times.
A click.
Jet didn’t wait for him to speak first.
“Where are you? You at home?”
“Jet?” Luke’s voice at the other end, low and gravelly.
“I’m out of jail, by the way. Thanks for that,” Jet spat. “Are you at home?”
“No. Not home.”
“Where are you?”
Luke hesitated, the cold rattle of his breath.
“I’m at Mason Construction.”
Jet nodded, clicked for Billy’s attention. “You’re at Mason Construction.”
Billy started reversing, out of the spot.
“OK, stay there,” Jet said into the phone. “Do not move, Luke. I’m coming.”
She hung up.
“On it,” Billy said, pulling out onto the main road, headlights carving through the darkness.
Jet leaned forward as the night sped past the window, pulled open the glove compartment.
Henry’s gun was there, waiting, hiding in the shadows.
Jet reached in, fingers closing around it, its metal shell cold enough to sting. She pulled the gun out, catching Billy’s eye as he took another turn, ripples in the lake.
“Just in case,” she said. “Luke can be scary.”
Jet opened her window, breathed in, filled herself with the darkness, a new shape now. Breathed it out.
They didn’t talk.
Jet turned the radio up instead.
“Hey, this is the song you like, Billy.”
She turned it up some more.
That song, about Vermont and sticks.
Billy kept driving, started to hum. Jet did too. Then more.
Singing.
Loud.
Louder than that.
Turned the radio up again.
Almost shouting.
Jet making up the words because she didn’t know them, Billy laughing at her, singing even louder to make up for it.
Out of tune but not out of time.
Jet cradled the gun in her lap, the night in her hair, closed her eyes and she just fucking sang.
* * *
—
“You never heard that expression, Luke? About not returning to the scene of the crime?”
Jet walked over to her brother, feet crunching in the fallen leaves.
He didn’t move. He was standing just before the gate into Mason Construction, his back to them. The gate locked and padlocked, yellow-and-black tape strung across it in a crisscross. Another crime scene. DO NOT ENTER.
The burned-down husk of the building behind it, none of it left standing. Piles of blackened bricks. Bent, curling metal that might once have been the stairs. A collapsed section of the roof, bite mark through the middle. Ash. Soot. All color leaked away except black and gray. The parking lot full of white vans and blue logos looked otherworldly, out of place, still alive, here in this graveyard.
“Luke,” Jet called, tearing her eyes from the burned building where she’d almost died, back to her brother. “What are you doing?”
The truck behind Jet and Billy was still running, still breathing, beams on, lighting up their stage. Luke in one spotlight, Jet three steps behind in the other.
“I’m just looking,” Luke said, a crack through the middle of his voice. “It’s all gone.”
Jet sniffed. “Yeah. That tends to happen, Luke, when you cover something in gas and set it on fire.”
She took another step forward.
“Did you know we were inside when you burned it down? Were you trying to kill me?”
Luke didn’t answer, but one of his shoulders tensed, flinching toward his ear.
“Did you know I was inside?”
Luke sighed.
“You did,” Jet said, reading the answer in his silence, the wind howling through it. “You tried to kill me.”
“No.” Luke found his voice. “I knew you’d have time to get out. I was just trying to stop you.”
“Stop me from finding out about the invoice fraud?” Jet said. “The workers’ comp insurance, the payroll taxes? What happened with Henry Lim? Well, you didn’t stop me. We found them all. You’ve been busy, Luke.”
He turned suddenly, face rearranged around his rage, blinking against the headlight.
“I was saving the company!”
“Someone should have saved it from you!” Jet’s left hand was in her pocket, around the gun, her letters folded behind. Luke could be scary, but she wasn’t scared. “And you did, by the way, almost kill us. Me and Billy. Me. You probably think it doesn’t count, because I’m dying anyway, but it does count, Luke. It matters. Some things are more important than a company.”
Luke shook his head.
“They are, Luke.” Jet hardened her voice, tightened her grip. “You know, it’s because of Emily. Why you’re like this.”
Luke laughed, a breathy, hollow sound.
“Why does everyone always want to talk about Emily?”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because it doesn’t matter, it was seventeen years ago. Grow up, Jet.”
Jet pressed forward, leaves rustling, whispering under her feet.
“It matters, Luke. Emily dying changed everything. Mom blamed me, you know?” She sniffed. “I overheard her, after the funeral. Said that if I hadn’t gotten to the final of that competition, if I hadn’t won, she and Dad would have been at home and Emily wouldn’t have drowned. Do you know what that did to me?”
Her chest seized, squeezed her heart for just a second, and then she let it go, that guilt, because it wasn’t hers anymore.
“But Emily’s death wasn’t my fault.” Jet tilted her head, stared her brother down. “It was yours, Luke.”
His face folded up, a scowl, made uglier by the shadows from the beam. “What are you talking about?”
“You drowned Emily, didn’t you?”
Luke laughed.
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“No, it’s still just about in there, Luke. Tell me the truth. Did you kill her?”
Still laughing.
“Emily’s death was an accident, Jet.”
It was the laughing that did it.
“Did you kill her?!” Jet screamed.
She pulled the gun out of her pocket, pointed it at Luke, straight through his chest.
Not laughing anymore.
“You have a gun?” he said. “Why the fuck do you have a gun, Jet?”
“Jet,” Billy said, behind.
“Tell me!”
“You’re not going to shoot me, Jet.” He stepped forward, hands raised.
“I have about twenty-four hours to live,” she said, gun shaking in her hand. “You think I care about shooting you after everything you just did to me?”
“You won’t.” Another step.
Jet aimed the gun, pulled the trigger.
A crack that split the night in half.
Luke’s eyes snapped wide.
The leaves exploded at his feet.
Jet pulled the gun up again.
“Did you kill Emily?!”
Luke fell to his knees, hands up, the scowl gone, replaced by fear.
“Luke!”
He closed his eyes and screwed his face.
“I didn’t mean to!” It started as a shout, ended as a whisper. “I didn’t want to, I swear. But once I started, it was already too late, because she’d tell, and I had to just keep going. Just hold her head under, until she stopped struggling.”
Jet stepped back, breath heavy in her chest, weighing her down. She’d already known, but now she knew. Bile up her throat, tears too, breaking out of her rubbed-raw eyes.
“She was fighting you,” Jet said. “She wanted to live.”
“Scratches all up your arms.” Billy’s voice behind her, standing in the darkness.
Luke slumped, two handfuls of leaves.
“Why, Luke?” Jet said, lowering the gun. “Why would you do that to her?”
He started to cry. “Because she said something. You know Emily could be cruel. It made me mad. I just…I lost my temper. Then it was too late to take it back. Couldn’t take it back. I wish I could take it back!”
“What did Emily say?” Jet eyed her brother like a cornered animal, not trusting his tears, not all the way.
Luke wiped his face. “All I did was jump in the pool, splash her a little bit. That’s all. She didn’t need to say that, she didn’t need to—”
“—What did she say, Luke?” The gun rattled against her leg.
“She said I wasn’t even a Mason anyway. That Dad wasn’t my real dad, that I shouldn’t even be here.” He finally met Jet’s eyes. “I just got mad. I thought she made it up, to be mean. I thought that for years, wanted to believe it. But now…”
“Now what?” Jet said. “Now you know it’s true?”
This was it, wasn’t it? The secret Emily had overheard, the one she’d told Nina, the one Nina threatened Mom with and Mom got her back. About Luke. Emily told Luke that day, and she died for it. Luke wasn’t really a Mason, and Dad wasn’t his dad.
“Is it true, Luke?”
He stared down at the grass, and Jet stared at him, studied her brother, glowing in the spotlight. Hazel eyes, just like Jet. But those came from Mom. Luke was taller than Dad, bigger, stronger, hair shaved short, but when it wasn’t, it grew wavy. And something else too.
