I slowly got to my feet and helped her to hers. “Michael O’Shea,” I told her. “I met him on my walk. Whatever he did to you, he did to me. He was able to get in my head and he was able to get in yours. And whatever he wants with Dex…it’s not good.”
“I figured as much.”
“Ada,” I said slowly, wishing she could feel my panic, know what Pippa had said to me. “Listen to me. As dramatic and bat shit crazy as this all is and all sounds, we have to get Dex back.”
She pursed her lips, perhaps weighing just how crazy it did all sound. “How?”
I paced across the kitchen, wringing my hands together, trying to go through the options. There weren’t many.
“I don’t know. He’s gone with Michael, in his car, I doubt it was voluntary and even if it was…I have to go to New York.”
She stared at me blankly. “Sorry, what?”
I bit my lip and nodded to myself. “Yeah. I have to go to New York. Manhattan. That’s where Michael is taking him.”
“And how do you happen to know this?”
Splices of a dream came back to me. One with Pippa just a week ago, a dream of warnings on the Brooklyn Bridge. The other dream more recent, punctuated by raining embers in snow. A dream of death and Dex.
Now that I knew what had to happen, I was filled with an even greater sense of urgency. All signs were pointing to this.
I tried to explain to her as quickly as I could and as best I could, starting with what little I knew about Michael, about the Pippa in my dreams warning me about imminent danger, about what Michael had said to me. The more I talked, the crazier it all sounded but Ada, bless her soul, she was able to put that aside and just listen. She was able to believe me.
“You can’t just fly to New York, Perry,” she said after I felt absolutely breathless from the truth. “Where will you go? Wander the streets shouting for Dex like a nutter butter? You have nothing to go on.”
“No,” I said. “I have something to go on.” I brought out my phone and in vain tried Dex’s cell again. I hung up at his familiar message, ignoring the pang of hurt that threatened to rip through me at the mere sound of his voice.
This couldn’t be happening. Not like this. Not now when everything in our lives were finally coming together.
“Perry?” Ada asked and I realized I was standing there, hand to my chest, my grip nearly breaking my phone.
I quickly nodded and dialed a number on the phone. My first thought was to call Rebecca but as much as I needed her help, she also wasn’t like me, like us – she didn’t know how to deal with this sort of thing, despite what we had just gone through at the asylum. Also, she was still on the I-5, riding putt-putt toward his final destination and time wasn’t on my side.
So I called the only other person who not only would understand but could possibly help me and help Dex. The only person who knew a thing about Dex’s life in New York.
I called Maximus.
But, naturally, life was a sick bitch and he didn’t answer his phone. I started to wonder if perhaps Michael’s reach was farther than I thought and he too had been compromised. So I left a frantic voice message for the ginger to call me back and then ran upstairs to pack an overnight bag, Ada in my tow.
“What are you doing?” she yelled at me, hot on my heels.
“I told you!” I raced into my room and starting throwing shit around. I crammed a few pairs of underwear and a bra into a small carry-on along with a pair of jeans and a few shirts.
“Perry, seriously!” she screeched, grabbing my arm and making me stop. I’d never seen such worry in her eyes before. “Don’t just go and do this. You don’t know anything for sure.”
“I know that if he just wanted to talk to Dex, he wouldn’t have sought me out. He wouldn’t have done what he did to us. You saw his eyes, that…that emptiness. You know he’s bad news.”
“But he wants you to come to New York,” she said. “He’s baiting you.”
I stood up straight and looked her dead in the eye. “Then I’m taking the bait. But I can’t stay here and hope that he’ll come back, hope that I’ll get a hold of him. We both know that’s not going to happen. It’s this or it’s nothing and I’m supposed to marry the fucking guy! If there is anything I know about me and Dex it’s that nothing is never an option. I’m going to New York. And you’re letting me go.”
“Fuck that,” she swore, a strange gleam coming over her eyes. “I’m not letting you go. I’m going with you.”
“Ada,” I said incredulously. “No way.”