Ren stares at her like she’s crazy. ‘I don’t know because they were codes. Like if one of the girls was babysitting, the others would block out the time on their calendars—probably because they all shared the car, I guess.’ He fixes his gaze on the dirty carpet. ‘There were stars on some of the days. And they had numbers at the end of the months.’ He chews his fingernail. ‘One time I asked if it was some kind of astrology shit, but they all just laughed at me.’

Oli’s muscles are tense, her feet straining against the leather of her boots. ‘What else do you remember?’

‘Nothing, really. But that last night at the house, the calendar was gone, and a poster was stuck there instead. I asked them why they’d taken it down, but they all just acted like I hadn’t said anything.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

TWO MEN LOPE AROUND THE CORNER. ONE-DARK HAIR, ROUND features, bright-red baseball cap, and a foot taller than the other—kicks a discarded Coke can that rattles noisily into the gutter. The shorter one—skinny, shaved head—wears gravity-defying jeans, every move threatening to make them plummet to his ankles. Neither seems to notice the rain falling in thick sheets.

Across the road from Ren’s, Oli is hunched in the driver’s seat, trying to decide whether to wait until the rain stops before she heads back to the office.

Ren’s sketchy account plays out in her mind. Was he right about the girls having a coded schedule? Were they doing drug drops and using babysitting jobs as a cover? And where did Alex and Nicole go that night? Were they meeting with someone?

Oli stretches her leg to fend off a cramp, thoughts still swirling. She hasn’t heard from Cooper today, a sure-fire indication he’s still angry with her, and she wonders what he’s doing. He might be in the studio working on another episode, or out and about trying to bank an interview. Oli feels a frisson of guilt at her behaviour yesterday. She acted like Jo used to, using her position to pull rank. Plus, she doesn’t have the energy to sustain it.

The two men reach Ren’s house, and the tall one shoves a hand down the front of his tracksuit pants, giving Oli an unwelcome view of him adjusting his privates before he knocks on the door. Ren appears, greeting them with the same enthusiastic head movements that Oli was treated to earlier. They disappear inside the house, and she stares at the door for a few moments, wondering what’s going on inside.

Sighing, she starts the car. It promptly begins to hail. She flinches as a particularly large hailstone ricochets off the windshield. Turning off the engine, she leaves the heater running. There’s no way she’s going to drive in this.