The Project - Courtney Summers Page 0,10

fingers, stopping just shy of making a fist. I think of the boy from The Unity Project crushed under the weight of a train.

The dead boy from The Unity Project who knew Bea—

“Denham.”

And me.

“I was there.”

“What?”

I make myself look at him.

“I was at the train station when it happened.”

He frowns. “When Jeremy—”

“I saw him die, Paul.”

He processes it slowly. The longer he takes, the more I feel it.

“Christ, Denham…”

“Yeah,” I say stupidly. “It was horrible.”

Tears prickle at the corners of my eyes. I swipe at my face, but I can’t seem to get ahead of them. Paul gets to his feet and crosses the room. The gentle trickle of water sounds from the cooler he keeps in the corner of his office and a second later, he nudges me. I take the paper cup he’s offering without looking him in the eyes.

He sits back down. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“Because it wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“So what changes it now?”

I set the water on his desk, my throat too tight to drink it.

“There was something he said before he died.”

“To you?”

“Sort of … at anyone. I was close.”

Paul hesitates. “What did he say?”

“Whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.” It’s eerie, hearing the words in my voice. Even with the absence of any conviction behind them, they’re intensely unsettling. Paul closes his eyes briefly, overwhelmed by them too. “It’s a Bible verse. Where do you think Jeremy would’ve heard that?”

“Denham—”

I lean forward. “You should’ve told me you were digging into this because I could’ve told you what I knew sooner.”

“First of all, I was doing a favor for a friend. One that required me to tread very, very carefully,” he says sharply. “And second of all, Denham, I’m working a lot of beats I’m not telling you about. Some stories require more discretion than others. You know what you need to know when you need to know it.”

“Well, you need to take another look at this.”

“There’s nothing here.”

“But I just told you—”

“Let me walk you through it,” Paul interrupts. “Jeremy was sick. I watched that kid grow up and if he wasn’t fighting himself, he was fighting his father. Arthur stopped at nothing to keep him alive—and I get it—but it ruined their relationship. Soon as Jeremy turned eighteen, he was gone unless he needed money. I went through the whole thing in real time. After Jeremy’s grandma died, he got a 25K inheritance. It was the last Art heard from him until he joined The Unity Project.”

“And then what?”

“By all accounts, he was thriving. Worked in youth mentorship. Loved Lev Warren, like they all do. Arthur resented it. Jeremy wanted to reconnect with him through The Project, and his father’s pride got in the way. That was the nail in the coffin between them.”

“But what Jeremy said before he jumped—”

“He’d say a lot of things when he was going through an episode.”

“Arthur said he had nothing in his savings when he died—”

“He gave willingly to The Project. His inheritance is probably doing more good than it would have otherwise.” Paul scrubs a tired hand over his eyes and for the briefest second, I see pain on his face and suddenly realize how much Jeremy might have mattered to him too. “Look, you saw something pretty traumatic, Denham. When an event this senseless happens it’s natural, it’s very human, to want to assign meaning and reason—and in Arthur’s case—blame, even at the expense of the truth, just so we can sit with it a little easier at the end of the day. But that’s not what I’m here to do and that’s not why you want to work for me.” He sighs. “And I hope, eventually, Art can forgive me for it. But The Project’s clean and that’s that.”

But what about the girl in the photographs?

What about the girl in the photographs with my last name, whispering in Jeremy’s ear?

If Paul’s not asking me about her, he didn’t dig deep enough.

“Anything else?” he asks. I shake my head. He clears his throat and turns back to his screen in earnest this time. “Good, because I have a lot of work to get through on account of sending my assistant home for the day. Got it?”

“Yeah,” I say, standing. “I got it.”

* * *

By the time I make the walk to my apartment above Fraites’ Funeral Home, every thought I’ve had since leaving SVO has taken root inside my head. More thoughts than space to contain them.

I