Page 71 of Locke 2

I sucked in breath after breath, stabilising myself. I’d learned the way to bury it. To close my eyes and imagine her bedroom, us sitting around her little round table. She served me imaginary tea from her teapot, and I sipped as she sat down on the little chair, staring at me from across the table, smiling widely at me, her baby teeth sparkling and bright.

My heart slowed, and I stopped shaking.

I finally stood up. Locke came up with me, his hand still gripping mine. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, wincing. “I can keep doing this. I can. I just…I had a moment.”

He listened intently as I stumbled over my words. He had feared this might be too dark for me. I was worried I had proved him right.

He finally let go of my hand and moved around the room in slow paces. He circled it, aiming the flashlight every which way. I stood still, my eyes following him. His face was far from gentle now. That mask of lethal calm was gone. Replacing it was a haunted look that I imagined mirrored mine.

“There’s no going back,” he finally said. “I tried very hard to. I thought I could erase the past and replace it with my own narrative, but that’s a deception that cracks and falls apart over time.” He looked at me, and his voice was firm. “You can’t go back, Kali. It’s done. It happened. You have to make peace with that, or this cycle will never end.”

I could have sworn he was talking to himself as he said this to me. His nostrils flared, and he seemed angry by that fact. He walked out of the room, leaving me standing there alone, my tears drying on my face.

I spun around again, flashing the light back to the eerie face on the wall. A thin bearded face with dark hair, large eyes, thin lips and shoulders that were green. Why was that green so relevant?

“A man in a green trench coat took him,” whispered Aurora.

The light shook in my hand as I committed the face to memory.

Thirty-Two

Kali

The landlord and his car were gone by the time we stepped out. The streets were dark and empty. I searched for Jem, but he was nowhere in sight. Locke’s black car sat empty and undisturbed.

“Where’s Jem?” I whispered.

“Here,” came a voice.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I spotted the crouched figure by the townhome’s unkempt garden, feet from me. Holy shit, how had I overlooked him?

“What are you doing?” Locke asked.

“Saw something sticking out of the bush as that fucking idiot kept yammering away.” Jem stood up, and there was something big in his hand. Neither Locke nor I turned on a light to see what it was. We preferred the darkness. This wasn’t the type of street we wanted to be making our presence known at night.

“What did you find?” Jem asked me, referring to the colouring book I’d snatched under Lenny’s pillow. “A clue?”

“No,” I returned. “You?”

Jem stared down at what he was carrying. “Doubt it.”

He handed it to Locke, who immediately sighed irritably and passed it to me. Neither seemed to be impressed with what Jem found. I knew straight away why. It was a teddy bear, and it was wet and stinky.

“Let’s get out of here,” Locke said next. “Explain everything to me in the car.”

Within moments, we slipped into the car. Instead of sitting next to Locke, I chose the backseat. I needed some space and Jem needed to talk about his conversation with the landlord.

Plopping the teddy bear down on the seat next to me, I turned on my phone light and flipped through the colouring book, curious if there were other pictures he’d drawn. So far, it didn’t appear like there was. He had coloured almost every page of the book in, and it was surprisingly good.

“What do we have?” Locke asked Jem.

“She was behind on rent, and he evicted her,” Jem answered. “She squatted the place the last couple months, and he got a bit pushy. He admitted he came around a few times, and it was confrontational. Kept reiterating he had put her in that house because her reference was mint. I think we should investigate that reference just to get an understanding. Tammy had a boyfriend by the end that would go toe to toe with the guy, and he stopped coming around. He’d started the eviction notice when he found out she’d taken off.”

“Who is the boyfriend?”

Jem pulled out a tiny notebook. I moved around the seat to have a look at it. I bit back a laugh. Only these Blackwater boys would have a pocketbook packed in their chest pockets instead of a phone. And if it was a phone, it was always those crappy dumb phones, like the one Locke had when he used it as a light.

“His name is Keenan Young,” Jem read. “Sid said he was a known drug dealer. Lenny’s ma got hooked.”

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