The Sleuth Will Set You Free - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Thirty-Two

No. Not someone. Mom. My mother had picked it up.

She had left it on my desk in my room—she had been in my room and I hadn't even known it. How could I have been so stupid? Of course it had been her. I had seen her at the docks. I had seen her across the river, sniper in hand.

Sniper in hand.

Will. My mother had killed Will.

The metal suddenly burned, through my shirt and through my very skin, branding itself all the way through to my heart. I looked right at her when I clutched at the pendant and tore it off, the chain breaking with a satisfying snap.

And then I let Gillian Gallagher's, Matthew Morgan's, and Cameron Goode's necklace fall to the floor without so much as a second thought.

Mom wasn't smiling anymore.

Here gaze tightened into a glare—a look I'd seen plenty of times when I hadn't eaten my vegetables. Ha. How childish of a problem. How childish of a threat. Didn't she know that I had grown up? Didn't she know that empty glares and empty punishments didn't do anything to me anymore? I had grown accustomed to empty. Emptiness was my middle name. Surely she knew that she would have to do far worse.

And then it occurred to me that, no, she didn't know. She didn't know just how much I had aged in the past two years, because she hadn't been here. She had left.

I opened my mouth to say so—to let her know just what was going through my mind, but the only sound I heard was a bark. Then two more.

I followed the sound over my shoulder, spotting a black Labrador as he rounded the corner. The blue vest and the harness were both gone, but I recognized the puppy immediately and knew that someone had just been caught listening in on a conversation that he hadn't been invited to.

Finn followed his dog out, slow and sloppy and more than a little embarrassed. The expression on his face was familiar to me. Busted, it seemed to say. Caught lending an ear where he hadn't been supposed to. "Mr. O'Reilly," said Grandpa Joe, a warning in his voice. "The mess hall is on the other end of the building."

Finn perked up, excuses ready. "Is it?" he said, faking innocence. "See, I knew I took a wrong turn somewhere. It's this whole blindness thing—really throws a guy off, y'know—"

But then Finn's puppy barked again, right at the feet of Mom's red-haired friend. The man bent down, giving the fur a good shake, and I totally didn't expect him to say, "Hey there, Bruiser."

And I really, really didn't expect to hear Finn O'Reilly say, "Dad?"

I'd like to tell you more about that whole thing. I really would. But before I could even think of which questions I wanted answered, I heard a door slam open and I took an involuntary step back.

Rebecca Baxter is not someone that I would ever try and piss off. In fact, Aunt Bex is at the very tippy top of my Do Not Anger list, so when she stormed through those doors, I held my breath, hoping that she wasn't there for me.

It turned out that she was there for my mother, which she announced not with a call of her name or any sort of greeting, but rather, with a good, firm, Bex Baxter slap across the face.

Mom's whole body moved with the slap, but she didn't look like she was going to fight back. It was almost like she had been expecting it—in fact, it was like she had been expecting worse.

When she stood upright again, her hand was cupping her face, but I could still see Aunt Bex's handprint splotching up underneath it. The two of them stood their ground, Mom finally pulling her hand away and rolling her shoulders back as she greeted my aunt with the coolest, calmest, "Bex."