Page 99 of Locke 2

I didn’t respond. I kept my gaze glued to the doctor’s smiling face. A long handsome face. With a beard—

Oh, no.

Aurora smiled again. “We’re going to be dancing together! A teacup party to start with—”

“Miss Price?”

“Then I want to go to the ballroom and dance with the handsome prince, and it’ll be the best fairytale story—”

Shaking, I slowly pulled out my phone and pulled up my camera. I raised it high and snapped a photo of the doctor.

“Excuse me,” she snarled now from beside me. “What are you doing?”

Skin prickling with annoyance, I looked at her coolly. “I’m taking a fucking picture.”

Her eyes bulged. She looked momentarily speechless. Good.

Turning away, I walked to the desk. Aurora skipped beside me, humming a tune and twirling in circles. I set the cash down on the desk and then raised my head to look at one more photo.

The rain-soaked log cabin stood with smoke curling from its chimney. In front of it, a bearded Doctor Nick Abbott smiled, a rifle casually slung over one shoulder.

This time that toothy smile had reached his eyes.

Forty-Two

Kali

Jem was crunching on an ice cream drumstick when I slid into the car, slamming the door hard beside me.

“How’d it go? Should we come around and threaten her kittens?”

I didn’t respond. My mind was racing. I pulled out my phone, and with a trembling voice, I said, “Do you have a picture of the face on Lenny’s wall?”

“Why?”

“I need to see it.”

His crunches were loud as he dug into his pocket for his dumb phone. “He would have sent it to you—”

“He did, but I need to see it alongside another photo.”

“What photo?”

I impatiently yanked the phone out of his hands and went through his phone. I didn’t say anything because I was pretty sure I’d lost the plot. This was too crazy, and I was certain I was wrong, but everything in my being told me I was more right than I’d ever been about anything.

I pulled up the photo of Nick on my phone and then I raised it up to the crappy photo on Jem’s phone. I looked between the two, feeling a little lightheaded. I searched my memories, thinking of meeting Nick the first time. The shaving cut on his face. The spirited way he’d spoken about the cabin secluded on a mountainside.

“My cabin on Hollybrook is my escape.”

Maybe the real reason I’d been enamoured by the doctor was so I could remember every damn thing he’d said to me.

“Can I see?” asked Jem.

“Just give me a minute,” I snapped. “I need a minute.”

He stopped chewing and waited.

I put down the phones and dug a hand into my hair. “I’m probably wrong. Locke is probably right. Tell me he’s probably right.”

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