Page 89 of The Devil You Know
Forty seconds. Fifty…
Maybe this isn’t really his house. After all, this cozy little cottage is a far cry from the bachelor pad he kept back in Manhattan. It’s hard to reconcile that swanky apartment with this place. I can’t actually imagine Ryan livinghere. But he must—that’s definitely his red Porsche in the driveway. This is his place and he’s home. He just isn’t answering the door.
How long before I call the police? Should I just call now?
I start to reach into my purse for my phone when the door suddenly opens up. Relief floods through me for a split second before I realize that the person standing before me is definitely not Ryan Reilly. First of all, it’s awoman. She’s about five feet tall, middle-aged and sturdy, dressed in ratty clothing, and holding a mop.
“Hello,” she says in heavily accented English. “You look for somebody?”
I cling to the relief I felt a minute ago. If there’s somebody else in Ryan’s house, surely they’d notice if he were lying dead somewhere. Even the worst cleaning lady would notice something like that.
“I’m looking for Dr. Reilly,” I say softly.
“Reilly,” she repeats. She smiles pleasantly. “Sí. Reilly is… he in here. I show you.”
My heart is pounding as I follow the woman into Ryan’s home. It’s spacious but sparsely decorated, as expected from somebody who didn’t expect to be here for very long because he assumed he’d be blowing his brains out before too long. He’s got a sofa, a dining table, and a television, but there are no photos anywhere and his one bookcase is almost completely empty. I wonder what happened to Ryan’s old apartment and all the stuff in it.
The woman leads me down a short hallway and gestures at a room. “Reilly,” she says triumphantly, pointing out the man in the room before she leaves us.
This man is not Ryan.
But I do know who he is. His name is Nick Reilly. He’s Ryan’s brother.
I met Nick Reilly several times back when Ryan and I were together. We went out for drinks and each time,Nick had too many, which Ryan said was basically what he always did. Nick reminded me a lot of Ryan—he was funny, charismatic, and too handsome for his own good.
I’d never recognize him now if we weren’t in Ryan’s house. For starters, Nick is a good twenty or thirty pounds thinner than he was back then—maybe more. And he wasn’t overweight to begin with. He’s got hollows in his cheeks and his eyes are sunken in their sockets. He’s sitting in a hospital-grade wheelchair, but he isn’t sitting still. Every part of his body seems to be moving at once. His arms are going everywhere, his legs keep shifting in the leg rests of his chair, and even his head is moving. Just watching him is exhausting.
“Jane McGill,” Nick Reilly says in a voice that’s so slurred I might not have been able to tell what he was saying if it wasn’t my own name. He tries to get up as if to greet me, but the seatbelt on his lap stops him.
I honestly want to cry when I look at Nick. He used to be so young and healthy. I can’t believe this is what his disease did to him. And soquickly. I can understand why Ryan wouldn’t want this. I get why he’d rather be dead.
“I can’t believe you remember me,” I murmur.
Nick manages a smile. He looks soold. I know he’s only six or seven years older than Ryan, but he looks like an old man. He could easily be seventy. His hair is completely gray, save for a few darker strands here andthere. “Of course I remember you. Ryan… he used to talk about you all the time.”
I squeeze my hands together. “He… he did?”
“Yeah.” Nick nods. “All the time. Jane this. Jane that. Always.”
I just stare at him, unsure how to respond.
He practically forces the words out of his disobedient tongue: “He loved you a lot.”
That dizzy sensation comes over me again.He loved you a lot. I don’t know what unsettles me more. The sentence or Nick’s use of the past tense. Where is Ryan? Is he here somewhere? Or is he lying dead, God knows where? For Christ’s sake, where has hegone?
“Jane?”
I whirl around and there he is. Ryan Reilly. Tall, adorable, and solid. Totally, one-hundred percent alive. And looking at me like he thinks I’ve entirely lost my mind.
All the anxiety I’ve felt in the last hour rushes to the surface. My stomach turns again, and this time I know with absolute certainty that I’m going to throw up. I clamp my hand over my mouth and run out of the bedroom, to Ryan’s kitchen, where I release the contents of my stomach into his sink.
After I’ve done it, I raise my head and discover that Ryan is standing over me, gawking.
“Jesus Christ, Jane,” he says. “Are you okay?”
“I thought you were dead!” I nearly shout at him.
He blinks at me. “You did?”
