“You got it. It turns out that Sunday he stopped by for just long enough to order his coffee… and chat for a couple of minutes with a woman who also handed him a package big enough it could have been holding the magicked clothes he was wearing and the military knife.”
He flicks to a recording on his phone and holds it so I can see.
The security footage is from an awkward angle, but there’s no mistaking Kenneth’s skinny, red-haired form when he ducks through the doorway. He walks over to the order line.
A woman steps into line beside him. She’s about the sameheight, with an air of assurance and sleek black hair that falls artfully to her shoulders, speckled with thin streaks of silver.
There’s no audio in the recording, but their mouths move with several exchanges back and forth. Kenneth’s expression tightens as if he’s not entirely happy about the conversation.
But when she surreptitiously shifts a plastic shopping bag out from under her arm, he takes it under his.
Then the next customer gets their order, and Kenneth steps ahead of the woman as if they were never together.
I keep watching, but all that happens afterward is Kenneth getting his drink and walking out still carrying the bag. I slide my finger over the screen to rewind the video to his interaction with the woman.
Something about her tugs at my memory. She looks almost like…
It can’t be, can it? How would that make any sense?
“That’s got to be her, doesn’t it?” Salvatore says, pulling the phone closer to his view again. “This woman who was telling him crazy things about you and getting him riled up.”
“It doesn’t seem likely that he hadtwomysterious women he was having clandestine interactions with.”
Does that mean my friends, even Stella, are in the clear? This woman could still be connected to a larger conspiracy… but some part of me relaxes with the thought that my supposed besties haven’t been the direct instigators in the plot to murder me.
I motion to the phone. “Text me that recording? I want to have a copy of it in case I think of something else later. It still doesn’t totally add up. Have you seen that woman before?”
Salvatore shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Definitely not on the academy staff. I have no idea how she’d beef up the guy’s grades.”
“Maybe she didn’t. Maybe that was just him getting his act together.”
It could be two outcomes caused by the same source rather than one causing the other. We can’t know how the connection worked until we know who she is.
“We’ll track down all the answers one way or another.” Salvatore tucks the phone into his pocket, his tone all unshakeable confidence. “I can get access to other security cameras in the area—maybe catch her getting into a car, run the license plate?—”
“No.” I touch his chest, willing down another jolt of panic. “No more breaking and entering. I told you I didn’t want you sticking your neck out like that.”
Salvatore gazes down at me, his bright blue eyes unwavering. “You told me not to do anything I didn’t need to. I need to know who’s behind all this fuckery so I can make sure they don’t come after you again. That matters more than anything else.”
“More than you getting arrested?” I protest. “Maybe going to jail?”
“You really think I can’t avoid the cops? Even if I couldn’t, yeah.” He puts his hand over mine. The beat of his heart radiates through his shirt into my palm. “You’re my match. You come first. That’s how it’s always going to be from now on.”
I swallow hard and firm my voice. “Even if I don’twantyou to go that far?”
A muscle in Salvatore’s temple ticks. He works his jaw before he speaks. “I know you’re not used to handling problems this way. It isn’t how the ‘good’ people in those pretty houses do things. But what’s happening to you isn’t pretty, and this is how I fix what’s wrong. Thisworks.”
“There are other ways that work too.”
“Those other ways weren’t getting us anywhere!”
I wave my free hand in a gesture of frustration. “You didn’t give it much time. If you go straight to crashing into people’s houses and hacking store security footage, then…”
I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
For the first time, the determined light in Salvatore’s eyes dwindles. “Then what? Then I’m nothing but a criminal who’s the son of criminals and grew up surrounded by them? Because thatiswhat I am, mia amata. I can’t change that.”
He doesn’t sound angry, only… resigned. Almost defeated, in a way that wrenches my mind away from all my fears about the danger he’s facing on my behalf.