and resettled himself. He still wasn’t looking up, but he reached out and touched my hand. “You found him. Thank you. And I … I’m sorry. I wish I could’ve been more help.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t plan to get taken to jail.”
He choked out a laugh, and his hand tightened on my wrist for a second. “You should come in. He was asking for you.”
“Seven’s a crowd. Later.” I meant it to sound light. I wasn’t sure I managed.
Checker looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead, he just gave my hand another squeeze and went back into Arthur’s room.
I leaned against the wall next to the door, alone in the hallway.
twenty-four
GETTING EVERYONE back to the Rosales house was a caravan of chaos, and I didn’t relax until we were safely behind both closed doors and Rio’s security system. Fortunately, everyone else was almost as sacked out as I was, and were being docile about it instead of following my short-fused example. They obeyed my orders without pushback, and then Diego took over to sort everyone into rooms and sleeping space.
Arthur got the downstairs guest room so he could have dark and quiet. Elisa was to bunk in with Tabitha, and Diego pulled out a sofa bed in the living room for anyone else who needed to sleep—I caught him looking at Checker as he offered it. I wasn’t the only one who’d been up for more than fifty hours.
I claimed the other couch with Rio’s security monitor next to me. It was the best strategic location if my alarm clock turned out to be someone trying to bust in.
Pilar said she’d been catnapping, but her usual chipperness was starting to look worn around the edges too. With minimal prodding from Diego, she agreed to borrow some pajamas and collapse, but before she did, she made up a schedule so Arthur would never be without someone sitting with him, just in case he woke up and needed something. I was of the opinion that it was serious overkill considering how determined the kids were to spend every second hovering, but I wasn’t about to get into an argument with her about it.
I did notice she put me on the spreadsheet but left Diego and Elisa off.
So some hours later found me slightly better rested and having finally washed my face, and on a laptop by Arthur’s bedside while most of the household continued sleeping. I’d left the light off and the blinds drawn, working only by the glow of the screen. Before claiming a spot on the sofa bed with Pilar, Checker had gotten me copies of all the police data regarding Arthur’s kidnapping to start on, and I was slowly slogging through it.
It felt horribly voyeuristic reading both the notes on Checker’s interrogations and the interview Arthur had given the police. Even through the filter of impersonal police observation, Checker’s desperation and fear were plain. Trapped in custody, with no way to keep looking for Arthur, no means of getting news—I was grateful Elisa had descended on him; I’d started to get a sense he might have been on the verge of saying something stupid in the hopes of getting officially arraigned and released on bail before it was too late for him to help Arthur.
I had to stop reading a few times and switch to something else.
But attacking Teplova’s research again was almost as depressing. Now that I didn’t only want to follow her methods, but figure out how to reverse them, her science proved far more daunting. The files didn’t seem to have any templates or records of the individual surgeries she’d done, making a simple inversion out of the question.
I remembered again how Coach had tried to disfigure his face himself, and shivered. If changes like that were statistically insignificant against the weight of Teplova’s alterations … what if it wasn’t reversible?
I pulled up footage of Willow Grace to try to find a frame of reference for her surgeries, but the oldest I found still had her current face. I kept the volume muted and watched her newscasting for a few minutes anyway. She was good—her bearing was so confident, I wanted to believe what she was saying without even hearing the words.
She was also slightly different. The bones below the flawless skin of the woman I’d met sloped just inside the lines of the one on the news report—she must’ve had some additional work done since. She was