trying to blame me? Charles, I’m hurt. And here she tried to blow me up with my own powder magazine for saying no! I get no love.”
“So, she’s not working for you,” I put in.
“Nobody works for me,” D.J. said with distaste. “I’m independent. ’Sides which, I just told you. We had that nice little blowup a while back.”
“Literally,” I couldn’t help muttering.
“It was only a few hundred kilos of TNT,” D.J. said. “I tried to shortwick her in return, but it only blew her up a little.” He made a face so serious, it was comical. “She’s a royal fucking nutcase, Charles. You oughta be careful.”
“I take it she got that from you too,” I snapped before I could think about it. I was willing to bet I was more fucked in the head than either of them, and it wasn’t making me go around kidnapping sixteen-year-old girls.
But D.J. only giggled. “We did get along, for a while. Every so often, I still poke at her, but I’m really fucking lazy—didn’t know she was going around pretending to be yours truly, though.” He considered us for a moment and seemed to make a decision. “I was just here in your town pestering her, as it happens. A little pick-me-up between jobs, test some new toys, make her mad as a hornet. How funny that you ended up after her too.”
Not really—Arthur had been after D.J. when he’d stumbled across Fifer’s trail. Everything was finally beginning to fit together.
Then I connected. “The binary explosive,” I said. “At the wellness center. That was you.”
“You were there? Delightful!” D.J. threw his hands wide. “First time I’d given that a go. I give it five stars, two thumbs up, and a blowjob.”
“You were mocking her for the assassination of Teplova.” I remembered thinking how messy that murder had struck me. Not with the terrifying completeness D.J. had rendered on the buildings. Two different bombers, that was why. SLOPPY, the sky writing had said—D.J.’s jeering message for Fifer before he showed her how it was done.
“We need to know everything you know,” I overrode D.J.’s snickering. “Whoever this Fifer person could be working with, any other information you have.”
He snorted another laugh. “Fifer? Work with people? Her ass is far too cray for that. And I told you, she thinks she knows best anyway. I pity the dude or dudette who tries to work with her—they’re probably dead.”
Like Teplova was dead. And Oscar. But then what about Willow Grace…?
And it hit me.
Willow Grace.
Willow Grace.
Willow Grace, the famous news anchor, whose background was pristine. But Willow Grace, with her perfect features, who had gone under Dr. Teplova’s knife to get them, those perfect features that had differed very slightly from the online footage I’d seen of her. Willow Grace who’d changed her whole life six months ago to seclude herself away, supposedly on a sabbatical from her far more public life.
Willow Grace … who, as of six months ago, was not Willow Grace at all.
She was Fifer. An imposter. Taking a famous news anchor’s place, a news anchor who’d had a history of secret surgeries herself, surgeries that could then be copied. The real Willow Grace likely dead and at the bottom of a lake by Fifer’s hand.
And now Fifer had Tabitha. She had Tabitha.
“She changed her face,” I said. “She changed her face to be a famous news anchor, so…” She wanted access, access for her bombings … “Checker, find out where Willow Grace has been issued a press pass in the last six months.”
Checker started typing, fast, his face pale and dazed.
“She kidnapped Arthur to see what he knew,” I continued, feeling it all out aloud. “To see if he was investigating her plan. Tried to kill me in case I was looking into her too. But then … it turned out Arthur didn’t know anything, not about her, and once she saw that we wouldn’t stop digging until we found him—that’s when she gave him back to us.” We’d known it was too easy. Once we’d flat-out told Willow Grace we’d stop investigating once we found Arthur, she’d directed us practically straight there. She’d grabbed her old mentor D.J. as a convenient scapegoat only after I’d given away that we suspected him, and then she’d planted a file she knew we’d find.
Though she hadn’t known how easily we’d crack it, or that it would therefore arouse our suspicions. And she hadn’t counted on Tabitha.
“Tabitha kept on thinking something was up with her,”