I slipped in the car and slammed the door before he could respond.

***

After five hours of restless sleep, I woke up with another throbbing headache, swollen eyes, and a plan.

I made two phone calls, right off the bat. One of them was productive, earning me an appointment for the next day with someone who, hopefully, could shed some light on Hudson’s recent behavior.

The other call got me nowhere. Mirabelle didn’t go into work, of course, so it was Stacy that answered when I called the shop. That was fine. She was whom I wanted to talk to anyway. But even though I pleaded and put on my sweetest voice, she refused to talk any more about the video she’d sent.

“I told you, I’m done,” she said and hung up.

I bounced my knee as I thought about what to do next. Then I made one more call. “Can you come over for a bit? I need your help with something.”

“Um, sure.” Liesl sounded groggy, as if I’d woken her up. It was just after one p.m. I probably had woken her. “I need, like, twenty. And coffee.”

“Awesome. I’ll send my driver to get you. With Starbucks.”

I got off the phone, showered and dressed in record speed, and then dove into my project. Projects, I’d learned in therapy, even ridiculously unnecessary ones, were excellent forms of distraction. They helped keep me from doing the crazy things I tended to do when I was hurting. It was possible that this project in particular was as crazy as the things it kept me from doing, but I was ignoring that.

More than an hour later, Liesl and I sat on the floor of the library surrounded by books—the books that Hudson had ordered for me through Celia. While most of them hadn’t been marked at all, we were pulling those that were. They were easy to find. All of them were bookmarked by Celia Werner’s business card. I planned on burning the pile when we were finished.

“Here’s another one.” Liesl read the highlighted quote. “‘Don’t cry, I’m sorry to have deceived you so much, but that’s how life is.’ It’s from Lolita.”

I cringed. Nabokov. One of my favorites. “Put it in the to-go pile.” On the notepad next to me I scribbled down the quote.

She stacked it with the others that had been highlighted—the books I planned to get rid of. “What do you think it means?”

I shook my head and looked over the list in my lap. There were several from my favorite books and some from books I’d never read:

“People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep.” — James Joyce, Ulysses

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, 1984

“Blameless people are always the most exasperating.” — George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.” — William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.” — John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“It’s not my fate to give up—I know it can’t be.” — Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“There is no harm in deceiving society as long as she does not find you out.” — E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

There was another page, much of the same. If there was a hidden message, I couldn’t find it. “I’m beginning to think none of them mean anything. They’re simply ominous quotations intended to mess with my mind.”

Liesl snatched the list from me. She scanned it quickly. “I think she’s talking about herself. She doesn’t think she’s harming anyone, she’s not going to give up, she thinks she controls stuff, and she’s a bitch.” She tossed the notepad to the ground and reached for another book. “So spill it. Why did you so badly want me here for this only mildly entertaining task?”

I twisted my lips. “I didn’t. There’s something else.” With a deep breath, I spilled the plan that had occupied my mind since waking.

When I was finished, Liesl sat back against the couch, her forehead pinched. “So let me get this straight—you’re going to obsess and stalk people on purpose?”

“Research,” I corrected. “Research, dammit! Not stalk.” Though the idea sounded much better in my head than when I said it out loud.

“You’re obsessed with your boy toy’s past. And you want to track down people to research whatever he’s hiding from you. Right? Or did I miss something?”

“That’s exactly it.” I nodded more enthusiastically than necessary. “That’s not stalking. That’s talking to people. People who have insight into Hudson. If he won’t tell me what I want to know, then I can ask them. Get a clearer picture.”

Liesl shot me a disapproving glance.

“Why is this not an ideal plan?” I’d hoped she’d be more supportive. Especially since parts of the idea were already in action.

“Because you have a history of being, you know...” She clicked her tongue and circled a finger in the air next to her head, the universal sign for psycho. “I’ll just say it. Cuckoo. You’ve been cuckoo. And I haven’t been to that many of your group thingies, but I seem to remember that snooping and prying and digging into people’s stuff are all on the no-no list.”

I shut my eyes so I wouldn’t be tempted to roll them. Liesl had been to a few of my meetings. I hadn’t realized she’d actually paid attention. “This is different.”

She nodded. “Yes, it is.” Then she stopped nodding and raised a brow. “How exactly?”

Inwardly I groaned. To me, the difference was obvious. “The other times it was a compulsion. I couldn’t help myself. This time, I’m choosing it. It makes it totally different.”

“Uh-huh. Totally different.” She didn’t seem convinced. “And why am I here? ‘Cause if you want me to tell you you’re not crazy, that’s not happening.”

“Then, well, fine. Think I’m crazy.” Liesl’s version of sanity wasn’t necessarily one for the textbooks anyway. “But I also need your help.”

Her eyes lit up. “You want me to take down that Selina bitch?” She punched a fist into her palm a few times.

“Celia,” I corrected. “What is with you and getting names wrong?”

“It’s fun to watch you get all I-know-everything and correct me.” She smacked her gum with a wide smile. “I really will take Ms. Celia Werner down if you want me to. I’ll kick her ass so hard she’ll lose that cute bubble butt of hers.” Without any guilt she added, “Yeah, I checked out her behind. Sue me.”