Page 115 of Creeping Beautiful

This is the eighth time.

Eight times Indie has gone off script.

Eight times we had to backtrack her every move and figure out what she did.

Eight times we told ourselves it was a one-off.

Eight motherfucking times we played her favorite game. The one called Let’s-Pretend-That-Didn’t-Happen.

Eight. Goddamned. Times. I’ve written a session note just like this.

And that, right there? That’s the definition of insanity.

I try and remember why I took this job. Why, exactly, I talked Adam into buying this girl. And I swear to God. I know I did this. I remember those words that came out of my mouth back on that island. I have the motherfucking session tapes, and notes, and private thoughts from Indie’s first year and I have read them so many times I could recite them from memory.

But for the life of me, I cannot come to terms with what the fuck I was thinking.

Carter is dead.

Dead. Dead. Dead. Like everyone else. He is dead.

He’s not out there running little girls like Indie.

He’s not out playing Company.

He’s gone.

That was my father’s final job before Adam and I helped Nick, and Sasha, and James kill two hundred people in Santa Barbara.

But I was young, I guess. So fuckin’ sure of myself. My brain, and my money, and my Untouchable status.

I can’t do this anymore.

CHAPTER TWENTY - ADAM

FOUR YEARS AGO

Indie has to be lying about Angelica. I don’t know the girl, but I know who she’s with. Just before the Company totally fell apart, while I was still in the hospital, I got a letter from the Shadow of Secrets himself. He was thanking me for being one of the ‘good guys’. Which made me pause and ponder the meaning of ‘good’ for a while. But then, when I read on, he told me he thought about our little talk down in Daphne, Alabama and decided to let Angelica live. She was with his sister, Harper, and James Fenici.

I didn’t think much about it back then. I mean, I was on to the dude. It was only a suspicion, but in my world a good hunch is just about the same thing as the truth.

I knew things no one else did. Even Donovan didn’t know as much about what was really going on as I did.

But here’s the only thing that matters now.

There is no fucking way in hell that James Fenici let his girl, Angelica, go back to work. It’s also highly improbable that Angelica took off the way Indie did. James Fenici would hunt her down, take her home, and tie her up until she came back to her senses.

But I get the feeling that Angelica is a lot better-adjusted than Indie and thus has never lost her senses.

This doesn’t make me feel any better though. Because that Nick shadow was right when he warned me that Indie will never be normal. She will always have that secret side that makes her dangerous. And here we are. Not even twenty years old and she’s delusional.

Regardless, I have to find out about Angelica. This situation is serious and there is no more room for hunches.

It takes almost a week to hunt down James and leave enough messages with various mutual acquaintances for him to notice me. And then another week before I see that dude—just as scary as I remember him from back in the day—leaning against a brick building and watching me with piercing green eyes from the corner of Royal and St. Phillip in New Orleans as I make my way over towards Misha’s little bar.

I stop short and just look at him, trying to decide if I should back away or keep going and have the conversation I asked for.

A horn honks and I realize I’m standing in the middle of the street. So I continue crossing St Phillip just as he pushes off the wall and meets me at the curb.