“You got Mia’s shampoo when you went on a trip to Chicago. Why did you buy Mia’s shampoo?”
“Who’s Mia?”
I narrow my eyes at her.
“I told you, my sister and I got our hair done. I bought a new bottle of shampoo.” She shakes her head, like she’s at a loss for a better explanation.
Would Mateo have sent a girl? He wouldn’t have sent a 22-year-old girl, right? She’s too young, too friendly—she couldn’t possibly be qualified.
Unless he figured I would think that.
Unless that was all an act.
But if he sent her, why am I still alive? That doesn’t make sense. He’s not going to want to keep an eye on me this time; he’s going to want a bullet in the back of my head.
“Did he send you?”
Her chest rises and falls rapidly but she manages to keep her cool as she shakes her head no. “I’m not here to hurt you, Vince. No one sent me. We both happen to be from Chicago and we both live here now. It’s not that weird. I don’t have a better explanation for you, I’m sorry.”
“Do you have weapons in the house?”
Her eyes go wide and she shakes her head. “No.”
I let her go, but I head for her bedroom. “I’m going to check.”
Her eyes are still bugged out, but she follows me down the hall. I’m more interested in her response than anything else—if she looks in a certain direction, like the place she might actually be keeping a gun. Right now she just follows me to her bedroom, but she’s still not trying very hard to kick me out of her house so I don’t trust her.
Then again, neither did Mia. Maybe I’m being unreasonable, expecting this 22-year-old girl who has likely never encountered a situation like this before to know how she’s supposed to handle it.
“Vince, I don’t have any weapons. I have knives in the kitchen for chopping up vegetables—that’s about as dangerous as it gets over here.”
Mateo would have cameras on her. If Mateo sent her, he wouldn’t leave anything to chance. His cameras are so damn well hidden though. My gaze darts around her bedroom but I don’t even know what I’m looking for. He’s had them installed in the stupidest shit—clocks and knick knacks. Once there was this stupid statue of a hippo in the library and I got to looking at it. Right there in its mouth was a camera.
I need to sweep her apartment. I don’t have the right equipment to do it quickly or thoroughly, but there’s gotta be something I can detect on my own.
I watch Carly to see what she’s most concerned about, expecting her gaze to drift to something incriminating, but she keeps her eyes on me like she’s more concerned about me than whatever she might be hiding. She stands there, arms crossed, not speaking as I toss her belongings. Her lips are downturned like she’s sad, and somehow it pierces my paranoia. I don’t want to make her sad. She’s never been anything but nice to me, and here I am tearing her bedroom apart looking for a gun. Worse, she’s letting me.
But she’s had a multitude of chances to kill me if that’s what she came to do.
She’s had even more chances to turn me over to Mateo, if that’s what she came for. Is there any reason he would just keep an eye on me? I know Mia didn’t want him to kill me before, but my assumption is she’s a lot less firm on that after Vegas.
No, she wouldn’t stand up to him for me. Not now, even if she might have once. And that’s assuming he’d even tell her, which he won’t. He’ll just quietly have me put down, that way he doesn’t have to interrupt his fucking happily ever after with the girl I brought to his attention.
I slowly close the drawer of Carly’s nightstand. I straighten, hyper aware of the horrible silence hanging in the air around us. Frankly, I’m braced for her to cuss me out and tell me I’m a fucking psycho, now that I’m emerging from the red haze. She probably kept quiet before because I was behaving like an unhinged lunatic and she was afraid I would turn the violence on her. She probably just wants to get me out of her apartment so she never has to see me again.
I turn back to look at her bed—I yanked up the mattress to check underneath, and now the once-neat sheets are bunched up at the bottom. Her pillows are on the floor. Items of clothing litter the ground because I searched her dresser drawers like a madman.
I shake my head very slightly, suddenly aware that I just lost my shit on this girl for no real reason.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, quietly. Without waiting for her to respond, I slip out of her bedroom and head for the door.