Page 74 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

Her finger was on the trigger, her aim was true, and her teeth were gritted as she braced for the kickback. But the mental absence that you need to take someone’s life wasn’t in Baby’s eyes. She was so full to the brim with feeling all the time that firing the gun at Brogan in that moment would be akin to firing it at me.

And that was her strength. But it was going to get her killed.

Brogan raised the gun — but a shot took him from the side, spinning him, and he fired off two wild shots as he fell.

I ran to my sister just before a second explosion from the vehicle knocked me and Baby together. We fell against a tree, gripping each other, and watched Brogan take his final breaths on the forest floor. The dying man half buried in the scrub, the burning car behind him, and the smoke haze made me feel like I had suddenly found myself trapped in some hellish war movie.

Then the surrealness of it all was swept away coldly, quickly, as if a director had called, “Cut!” Without a word, Baby let go of me and rushed off into the forest. I followed. So many questions I’d been deliberately ignoring were all answered at once.

And none of the answers were ones I was ready for or wanted.

I knew Baby wouldn’t have come after me alone. I knew who she’d choose to bring. I knew who the second shooter in the forest had to be. And I knew, in my heart of hearts, that the two wild shots Brogan had fired as he went down had hit that person.

I just felt it.

I arrived in the small clearing.

Dave Summerly was lying on the ground behind a big log.

There were two bullet holes in his chest.

As I reached Baby, she was shaking him and crying and stroking back his stiff, sandy hair to look into his cold gray eyes.

But I could tell that Dave, my Dave, was gone.

CHAPTER86

TWO DAYS LATER, BABYstepped out of the Uber and onto the freshly swept concrete of the Enorme building’s ring driveway. She thought the security guards at the front were actively ignoring her this time, as if they knew she was a problem and they were working on their plausible deniability. The receptionist must have had the same plan because just as Baby entered the echoing foyer, she disappeared through a black glass door, leaving the room empty. Baby took the elevator to the third floor with no one’s approval but her own.

She pushed open the door to Su Lim Marshall’s office and wondered at the deep sense of calm that filled her. She didn’t feel any more trepidation than she would have felt if she were visiting a friend’s house to deliver some uncomfortable news.This is what it feels like to bring a gun to a knife fight,she thought. To whack a mosquito with a sledgehammer.

She sat before Marshall, who was waiting for her with her hands clasped on the ridiculously large desk, the black glass top of which perfectly reflected her image.

“Tell me you’re here to accept the money for the house,” Marshall said. “Mr. Laurier’s rat-riddled, insect-infested, structurally unsound house. Show me how smart you are, Ms. Bird. Because we all know Mr. Laurier’s property is a death trap. I’m offering half of what I did earlier, but that’s still far more than it’s worth.”

Baby smiled at the slow and deliberate way Marshall saiddeath trap;she was obviously trying to ensure that her implications were perfectly clear. Like Baby wasn’t quick enough to grasp that Marshall would just keep making Arthur’s home a literal trap to cause his death, one way or another, unless Baby ended the war now. Baby had grown to enjoy being underestimated. Not only did she have a metaphorical big gun in her pocket, but Marshall clearly thought it was a water pistol. Baby couldn’t wait to pull it out and show the older woman what a big bang it made.

“HowsmartI am?” Baby said. She crossed one of her long, lean legs over the other. “You know what I think is smart? Finding a system and sticking with it. I think that’s the kind of intelligent life philosophy you’d admire, right, Marshall? When you’re representing a company like Enorme?”

She gestured around the huge room. Marshall didn’t move.

“ ‘Business-expansion solutions that harness nature-taught growth,’ ” Baby quoted. “ ‘I thrive with Enorme!’ ”

“What are you trying to say?” Marshall asked.

“Nature,” Baby said. “Plants. Seeds. Growth. Find a system and stick with it. A plant figures out how to spread its seeds and it just does it, the same exact way, for the next billion years. Doesn’t try to upgrade or shake things up or get risky. It just does the same thing over and over and over.”

Marshall twitched in her seat.

“I thought I knew what I was going to find when I looked into your background, Marshall,” Baby continued. “I figured there’d be a string of people like Arthur and Carol Laurier, people who had been bullied and harassed and even killed for not doing what you wanted them to do. A system. A pattern you’d found and stuck to. Because you were sogoodat what you were doing to Arthur. You were practiced. But it turns out it wasn’t because you’d been doing it for Enorme.”

Marshall glared at her.

“You’ve been doing it at home,” Baby said.

Marshall stood. Her hands were splayed on the glass top, her head bowed. She and her reflection stared at each other, their fingertips touching. Narcissus reaching for himself in the pool.

“I had your entire work history combed over. Nothing. Clean.” Baby leaned back in her seat. “Then someone suggested I look at your personal life. I didn’t think it was relevant, where you’d grown up. Where you went to school. Who you were married to. Until suddenly ... it was.”

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