Page 83 of Reckless Girls
The sun is reflecting off the water, and, I think I see theSusannah’s tall mast.
I break through the foliage to stumble onto the beach, and yes, there she is. Nico’s boat.
My boat.
And there, standing in between me and salvation, are Eliza and Brittany.
They don’t look surprised to see me, even as I lift the machete, the muscles in my arm screaming.
“Lux, stop!” Brittany yells, and then I see sunlight glinting on the gun Eliza points at me.
“Lux, Brittany is right,” she says calmly. “There’s no need for all of this.”
“No need?” I choke out, almost laughing. “One of you fuckers killed Nico.” My voice rises to a scream. “I know it was one of you!”
“And you killed Amma, but you don’t see us making a big deal about it,” Eliza answers, eyebrows raised.
I lower the machete, shaking my head. “I didn’t. It was… she was holding me down, she was trying to drown me… it was self-defense. An accident.”
The sun dances off the water, and it feels so close and so far away all at once.
Freedom. Escape.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Eliza says, her arms steady. “You’re the one we want to talk to. To explain.”
“Then don’t point a gun at me.”
“Fair enough.”
She lowers it, and for a split second, I think about charging them. But there are two of them, one of me. Besides, I want to hear what she has to say. I need to make sense of this somehow.
Still, I keep my fingers curled around the handle of the machete.
“None of it was supposed to go down like this,” Eliza says. “We were just looking to have a good time.” She flashes that winning smile. “Have an adventure.”
“Amma and I met her when we started traveling,” Brittany adds. “Chloe. Well, Eliza. But when I met her, her name was Chloe.”
“Brittany and I really hit it off,” Eliza goes on, “and we had a similar… let’s say,philosophyabout life.”
“Philosophy?” I echo, the word sounding thick in my mouth.
“The world takes a lot from us, doesn’t it? Women like us. Women who don’t get things handed to them. Women without a lot of options. So sometimes, you have to takeback.You have to create your own options.”
Her gaze sharpens on me. “I think you get that, don’t you, Lux?”
I don’t answer, the sound of my own heartbeat and the surf loud in my ears.
“So, one night in Rome, I lifted a wallet off these Americanassholes. They didn’t notice, the cash let us have a little extra fun, no harm, no foul. It felt… satisfying, I guess. And then it became a little more. More wallets, a few watches, once a passport just to fuck with some guy. Then we went to Australia.”
Her accent slips again, sounding like Jake. “That’s where I met Jake again, and…” She raises the gun again, but she takes her eyes off me for a second, looking at the sky. “My mum spent ten years in prison because of that asshole’s father,” she says. “Ten years… because the guy she was in love with—the guy she also happened towork for—asked her to carry a fucking bag of drugs, and she did it, because she trusted him. Do you know where Jake’s father spent those ten years?”
I shake my head, not that she expects an answer.
“Back in his mansion in Sydney,” she says.
“Sterling Northcutt didn’t even get ten years,” Brittany says, her chin trembling. “The guy who killed my family. Amma’s boyfriend. No prior record, good family, Florida’s fucked-up sense of justice. He got five, and he’ll be out in three. That’s fuckingnext year,Lux. And where ishegoing to go? Back to his mansion in Connecticut. Back to Amma. Or he would have, if she wasn’t…”
She trails off, and I see her throat move, but I can’t tell if she’s upset that Amma’s dead, or just angry. I remember now: the fight on the boat last night, Brittany yelling at Amma about her boyfriend. Her boyfriend, who wasn’t dead after all.
