Page 22 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

He paused, held on. Baby gave him a moment.

“I can’t face that.” Arthur stared at his hands. “If they did something that killed her ... if they ... I don’t know if I could face something like that.”

They sat in silence together, the night outside absurdly quiet.

“I could,” Baby said. “I could do it for you.”

Again, the silence. Baby was used to that, to loaded male silence. It didn’t dissuade her.

“Arthur,” she said. “I want to help you. If these Enorme fuckers have been messing with you, then I want to catch them and wipe the floor with them. But you’re not safe here.”

“Well, I ain’t leaving.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

“So what do we do? You got any ideas, whiz kid?” Arthur asked.

Baby grabbed her bag and plopped it on the table, making the coffee in Arthur’s cup ripple. She unzipped it, and some of the equipment she’d brought from home tumbled out.

“Of course I do,” she said.

CHAPTER23

AFTER WE’D GOTTEN HOMEfrom Santa Monica, Baby had retreated to her room, and I went to mine. I strapped an ice pack to my knee and looked over the bizarre trophy collection again. I had Jarrod Maloof’s jersey and the newspaper cutting about the missing troubled youth on the bed.

As I was lifting the grimy backpack, I heard three muffled pops come from the front of the house. I turned. Three more. I hesitated, then went downstairs, noting the light in Baby’s room was off. It was well after midnight, and I was glad that she was getting some sleep. I had a feeling the next few days were going to wear us down in a way that hunting for missing pets and photographing adulterers in motel parking lots had not.

I opened the front door, stepped out — and narrowly missed being hit with an egg that smashed on the wall beside me. By the time I realized what had happened, I saw the egg-hurlers already legging it up the hill away from the beach, toward the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Jesus.” I sighed. I might have chalked this up to random kids pranking random homeowners if I hadn’t spotted a drone hovering above the adjacent house. That gave the game away. Our home was being targeted by web sleuths who were angry at me for being on Team Troy. I slumped with exhaustion and cynicism. These kids were incensed by true crime but reacted to it by filming themselves vandalizing someone’s house like they were trick-or-treaters.

I drew myself up. I refused to let the case and the weight of everything resting on my shoulders get me down.

I changed into my workout gear, went to the roof, and stepped out into the dim blue light coming off the enormous pool. Whatever else I could say about my dad, his house was a winner. The glittering city of Manhattan Beach sprawled around me, the moonlit sea in front.

Leg day could wait. I loaded the barbell for a gentle chest-press set, a hundred pounds. I sat on my weight bench, drew another huge breath, tried to clear my mind. I lay down and wrapped my gloved hands around the barbell resting in its hooks two feet above my face. I told myself I would finish my night with a win of some sort if it killed me.

Then I felt the hard nudge of a gun barrel against the top of my skull.

CHAPTER24

PANIC WALLOPED INTO ME,raw and wild and electric, an explosion of pain in my sternum.

There was a man standing over me in the dark, in my own home, aiming a gun at my head. I had no time to wonder whether he’d been waiting for me there on the roof or if he’d snuck in when I responded to the eggers at the front door.

I gripped the barbell and looked at the figure, upside down to me, his extended hand gripping the pistol butt. I could tell it was a man in a dark hoodie, but all I could see of his face were his eyes.

I must have jerked involuntarily.

“Freeze,” he barked.

Every muscle in my body clenched. My brain was screaming with worry about Baby, asleep in her bedroom below. Terrifying possibilities coursed through my mind — that this man had already murdered my younger sister or that she would come through the rooftop door any minute and he’d kill her before my eyes.

I gripped the barbell as the man held the gun against my head.

I waited for a sickening bang. The end.

It didn’t come. He reached into the pouch pocket of his hoodie and came out with a cable tie. I watched, bug-eyed, as he skillfully slipped the tie one-handed over both the barbell and my right wrist and yanked it tight. He found another tie and did the same on the other side, zipping the plastic tight against the back of my bare wrist, just below my weight glove.

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