“What did you see?” Jerry whispered, terrified of the answer.
The boy looked at his feet, then back up.
“I saw her, Madam Victoria. When the sun goes down, she sends everyone out of the kitchen. Then she opens a small silver locket around her neck and drops a white powder into the girl’s soup. I saw her do it yesterday and the week before that.”
A cold, sick feeling washed over Jerry. It was not the heat. It was the feeling of being stabbed in the back by the person you are supposed to trust most.
The silver locket.
Victoria never took it off. She told him it held her grandmother’s ashes.
Just then, the sound of gravel crunching behind them broke the silence.
“Jerry, darling—”
Jerry went stiff.
He turned to see Victoria standing there. She looked stunning in her silk dress, her designer shades perched on her head. But when she saw her husband’s face and the ragged boy standing right next to him, she stopped dead in her tracks.
She tried to pull off a smile, but her eyes were darting back and forth. You could see the panic starting to crack through her makeup.
“Jerry, what’s going on?” she asked, her voice just a little too high. “Who is this dirty child? Why is he so close to Maya? You know she’s fragile right now.”
Jerry stood up slowly. The dizziness was gone, replaced by a surge of pure adrenaline.
He looked at his wife—really looked at her—and he did not see his partner anymore.
He saw a stranger wearing a mask.
“This boy,” Jerry said, his voice flat and dangerous, “was telling me a very interesting story, Victoria.”
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