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569 pages, Paperback
First published August 5, 2021
Is it normal for one person to have this many enemies?
・“you're my person. my little one. my sarge. and i'm supposed to protect you.”
Last time, Pip had been the kind of someone who outdid the police in cracking murder and missing person cases. Now, she’s become the subject in her own investigation when a stalker starts pulling pranks on her and leaving dead headless pigeons on her front drive.
“You’re Pippa Fricking Fitz-Amobi. My little Sarge. Pippus Maximus, and there’s nothing you can’t do.”
But she was dead in all the ways that mattered. As good as.
Is it normal for one person to have this many enemies? I’m the problem, aren’t I?
I understand why they all hate me.
I might hate me too.
Pip’s gut twisted with guilt; this was all her fault. Her family forced into a performance, trying twice as hard with her because she could barely try at all.
She had a fight-or-flight heart, felt danger pressing in on her when there was none, could hear gunshots in any sound if she wanted to, scared of the night but not of the dark, even scared to look down at her own hands. Broken.
She tried to act normal, natural, like she didn’t know she was being watched. And she couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what normal was for her now: an act. A lie.
She cried and she let herself cry, a few minutes to grieve for the girl she could never be again.
“If it’s a choice between me and you, I choose you,” Pip whispered. “But I choose you too,” Ravi said.
Exploring, he’d said, the two of them, Team Ravi and Pip, off in the wild.
He hated confrontation, hated it, and even so, Pip knew he would go to war for her if she ever asked.
It’s scary, to know that someone might want to hurt you, or make you scared. You’re my person. My little one. My Sarge. And I’m supposed to protect you.
It’s me and you, trouble. Team Ravi and Pip.
She closed her eyes and made a new silent promise to him, because he had chosen her and she had chosen him: they were going to get away with it.
You know, I’ve always thought you were the bravest person I’ve ever met. Fearless. I don’t know how you do it sometimes. And whenever I’m feeling nervous about anything, I always think to myself, what would Pip do in this situation?
“I wasn’t going to leave you alone in there with him,” Nat said firmly. “Not until I knew you were safe.”
And maybe that other Pip in that other life would say she’d made the right choice. She’d trusted in those who’d never trusted in her and it had worked out. Saved herself to save herself; maybe she was already fixed, Team Ravi and Pip moving on, living a normal life. But this Pip could also say hers was the right choice. Dead was the only way she could be sure the DT Killer would never hurt anyone again. And on this path, Max Hastings was going to go down too. Two birds, one stone. Two monsters and a ring of dead and dead-eyed girls of their making. One dead, one locked away for thirty-to-life, if it worked. Gone. Disappeared, and no one left to look for them. Maybe this way was better, who could say?
Pip couldn’t shake this uncanny feeling, that it wasn’t Hawkins sitting across from her, questioning her. It was herself, from a year ago. The seventeen-year-old who thought the truth was the only thing that mattered, no matter the context, no mind to that suffocating grey area. The truth was the goal and the journey, just as it was for DI Hawkins. That’s who was sitting across from her: her old self set against whoever she’d become now. And this new person, she had to win.
No Andie Bell, no Sal Singh, no Elliot Ward or Becca Bell, no Jamie Reynolds or Charlie Green or Stanley Forbes, and no Jane Doe. The game had changed.
Her against them.
Save herself to save herself.
“How would we get away with this?” he said, the question almost ridiculous enough for a smile. How to get away with murder.
Pip felt it again; that creeping feeling up her spine, cold and inevitable. Like everything was playing out the way it was always supposed to, from the start. Coming full circle. And she was simply a passenger inside her own body, watching the show play out.
There was a strange feeling at the base of her spine, uncanny and otherworldly, like she wasn’t really here, but in the body of herself from one year ago. Displaced, out of her own time, as everything came back full circle. Here, at the Bell house once more, because there was only one person who had the answers she needed.
“This is why it all happened. Everything. Full circle,” she added quietly. The beginning was the end and the end the beginning, and DT was both.
“That’s not how it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to listen to me. That’s all. Listen and do what you’re told. How is that so hard?”
Jason Bell was dead, but he wasn’t dead yet; he would be in a few hours. And Max Hastings would be the one who killed him. Finally locked away where he belonged.
The fire was to bring the police here, the blood was to send them out to Jason. That’s how this night would finally end, in fire and blood, and a sweep of the trees to find what Pip had left for them.
He’d given it to his teenage daughter; probably got a dark thrill from watching her use it. Sick fuck.
This feels too big for me, but I think I can do it. Save us. Keep Becca safe. Survive.
I can’t tell Sal. He probably already thinks I’m fucked up enough. There’s so much I have to hide from him, because he’s one of the only good things I have left, and he has to be protected. He can never come over, just in case.
The weight of her ghost inside him too, not just in her. A dead girl shared, a dead girl halved; they were the only two people in the world who knew. These weren’t Andie Bell’s final words, but they sure felt like it.
Here she was again, six and a half years after she died, and she was Pip’s only remaining lead. No, not a lead, a lifeline: some strange unknowable force connecting them across time, though they’d never met. Pip wasn’t there to save Andie, but maybe Andie was there to save her.
“It sucks when someone puts something in your drink and then ruins your life, huh?”
And Pip knew, as her eyes trailed away from him, that this wasn’t just about her own survival; she knew herself well enough by now. Had reckoned with that dark place in her mind long enough.This was also revenge.This town wasn’t big enough for the both of them. This world wasn’t. One of them had to go, and Pip was going to give one hell of a fight.
“I’m a ticking time bomb, Ravi. I can’t have the people I love near me when it goes off. Especially not you.”
He couldn’t be her person and she couldn’t be his right now. Pip had to be the strong one, the one to walk away when neither of them wanted it. The one who chose.
“You’re my Pip and I’m your Ravi. We’re a team.” 🥹
❝You've lost your mind❞
❝Maybe. So you should be terrified❞
Women can be just as dangerous as men
❝It's me and you, trouble. Team Ravi and Pip❞
❝No thoughts beyond the first insane things that came into her head. No deeper, no darker. Ravi was the fence in her head that kept it all back❞
❝You're my person. My little one. My Sarge. And I'm supposed to protect you."
“You do protect me,” she said, holding his eyes.
“Even when you're not here❞
❝No, no way. Not you, you're too important❞