Unexpected Rendezvous

Chapter 24

Jade's POV

"Ow!" Zoe shrieks, shaking her wrist. "Fuck, that hurts."

"Stop punching the wall then," I say as Perrie and Leigh stare at my cousin with twin expressions of alarm. We're all sitting in the back of the murder van, surrounded by boxes of knives and sharpening tools, because the windowless interior feels safer than Leigh's car.

And also so Zoe can lose her shit in private. 

"I can't," Zoe grits out. "I'm too. Fucking. Upset!" The last word is a scream, and she lets her fist fly again with another yelp of pain. "Nelson, oh my God, Nelson." True to form, Zoe hadn't checked her phone all day, so we had to be the ones to break the news about Nelson to her. She's not, to put it mildly, taking it well.

"That poor, stupid kid. Oh my God, I hate this. I hate myself. I hate you." Her voice rises on the last word as she turns and punches me in the arm, hard enough that I'll have a bruise tomorrow. "I hate you, you dickhead! Why did you let me do this?"

I don't answer her, because she doesn't need an answer, but Perrie pipes up, "You can't blame Jade for-"

"I know that, Perrie!" Zoe yells, hammering her fists on the floor.

"Seriously, you're gonna break something," I say. "Either your hands or the van."

Perrie and Leigh are both gazing around as though they're trying to figure out how to escape while simultaneously hiding all the knives, But the thing is, this is how Zoe deals with stuff. Ma was constantly patching up the drywall in her room when she first moved in. It used to freak me out, too, until I realised that you have to let her get it out of her system.

"I tried so hard to be careful," Zoe says. Her voice chokes off on the last word, and she takes a few deep breaths before continuing. "I only have one customer. One of the lads I work with at Ziggy's Diner gets migraines that his doctor won't treat, so he takes the X for that. I thought I could keep an eye on him, make sure nothing bad happened, and everything would be okay." She lets out a frustrated moan and pummels the floor again. "And I told Nelson not to go to London. That deal was all kinds of sketchy. She promised she wouldn't!"

"Yeah, well, apparently the buyer convinced her otherwise," I say. "According to Aaron, Nelson said you were holding them back."

"Arghhhhh." Zoe finally stops punching things long enough to bury her face in her hands, muffling her voice. Not enough that I can't hear the next words though. "I'm turning myself in."

Alarm hits me, fast and hard. "No you're not," I say. 

"Yes I am!" She lifts her head to glare at me. "The police need to know what Nelson was involved in if they're going to catch the creep who killed her."

I glare right back. "If you turn yourself in, you'll go to jail."

"I should go to jail!"

"And then what happens to Ma?" I ask, and that finally shuts her up for a second. "Listen. We've been doing things your way for a while now, and I think we can both agree that your way is shit. Right?"

Zoe scowls. "Shut up."

"I'll take that as a yes. So it's time to do things my way. Here's what you're going to do." I've been thinking this through the whole time she's been ranting. "You're going to drop off the murder van, Uber to Euston Station, and take a train up to Newcastle. You know how to get to South Shields from there. Text Ma and tell her you want to surprise Aunt Amelia for her birthday."

"That I want to..." Zoe stares at me in astonishment. "But the party will be over before I get there. Aunt Norma and Holly will be driving home by-"

"Tell her you want to stay overnight. You both need to be out of town, because whoever killed Nelson probably knows where we live."