Four Of A Kind

Chapter 117: [3.19] Change of Plans

The hot dog vendor handed Iris her change with zero enthusiasm, the kind of expression only a man who’d stood on the same Manhattan corner for fifteen years could cultivate. Iris bit into her food with the satisfied look of someone who’d just won a war.

My phone buzzed.

I glanced down. Harlow, probably asking if Iris survived the confrontation. I swiped the notification away without reading it and steered Iris toward the parking garage with a hand between her shoulder blades.

“Come on. I’m taking you to Penn Station.”

“What about your job?”

“I can figure that out after you’re on a train heading home like a normal person.”

“I am normal.”

“Normal fourteen year olds don’t forge medical documents and conduct interstate surveillance operations.”

“I prefer to call it a wellness check.”

“I prefer to call it grounds for grounding you until college.”

She took another bite of her hot dog, completely unbothered.

That was the thing about Iris. She’d inherited whatever gene made me immune to other people’s anger. Standing in front of my disappointment was like standing in front of a mild breeze for her. She registered it, acknowledged it, and then just kept existing at her own comfortable temperature.

I respected it. It also drove me insane.

We made it half a block before my phone buzzed again.

Then again.

Then three times in rapid succession, which meant either Harlow had discovered a new anime or something was actually wrong.

I checked the screen.

All three were from Sabrina.

The first one just said: Isaiah.

The second: I need you at the manor. Not for ramen.

The third, which arrived while I was still reading the second: It’s an emergency. Come now.

I stopped walking. Iris walked two more steps before realizing I wasn’t beside her and turned around.

“What?”

I showed her the screen.

She read it. Something shifted in her expression, the teasing dropping out of it completely. “That’s the quiet one, right? Sabrina?”

“Yeah.”

“She doesn’t seem like someone who uses the word emergency lightly.”

She wasn’t wrong. In the weeks I’d known Sabrina, she’d communicated in suggestions, implications, and the occasional cryptic single sentence. She didn’t panic. She didn’t ask. She observed and waited and said things that made you feel like she’d known the outcome before you did.

It’s an emergency. Come now was so far outside her normal register that my stomach dropped a little just reading it.

I looked at Iris.

Iris looked at me.

“Go,” she said.

“You need to get home.”

“I know how to get home. I got here, didn’t I?”

“That’s the problem.”

“Zay.” She put her hand on my arm, and her voice was unusually flat. No teasing in it. “Go. I’ll be fine. I know which train to take.”

I ran the numbers. Penn Station was twelve minutes by subway. The next Amtrak to Philadelphia ran at 5:40. If I put Iris on the subway now, she’d make it with time to spare. Mrs. Delgado was home on Wednesday evenings. Mr. Kowalski always had his door cracked.

The Valentine manor was forty minutes by car from where we were standing.

My brain did the math and arrived at an answer I didn’t love.

“I’m not putting you on the subway alone.”

“You literally just said—”

“I know what I said.” I pulled out my phone and typed a reply to Sabrina: Twenty minutes. What’s wrong?

Her reply came back in under ten seconds.

Not something I can explain over text. Just come.

I stared at that for a moment. Sabrina had explained complex emotional situations, family dynamics, and character analyses over text. She’d sent me references to obscure literature at two in the morning with no context. She was capable of explaining anything she wanted to explain.

If she wouldn’t explain this over text, that meant she didn’t want anyone else reading it.

“Okay,” I said. “Change of plans.”

Iris looked at me with the expression of someone who already knew what was coming and wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

“You’re coming with me to the manor.”

“To the billionaire mansion.”

“Temporarily. Until I figure out what’s happening with Sabrina, then I’m driving you straight to Penn Station myself.”

“You trust me in a billionaire mansion?”

That was a genuinely good question. I thought about it for three full seconds.

“No,” I said. “Which is why I’m going to put you with Harlow.”

Iris’s entire face changed. “The bouncy one?”

“She’s the most responsible option available.”

“What about the perfectionist one? Vivienne?”

“Vivienne would terrify you.”

“I’m not scared of—”

“She’d have you reorganizing her filing system within twenty minutes and you’d thank her for it. I’ve seen it happen to adults.”

Iris considered this. I could see her running her own calculations.

“And Cassidy’s out?” she asked.

“Cassidy is a variable I cannot account for.”

“She seemed fine.”

“She’s a chaos engine wearing a school uniform. I like her, but I wouldn’t leave a cactus unsupervised with her.”

“What about Sabrina? She likes manga.”

“Sabrina is the emergency.”

“Right.” Iris looked down at her mostly eaten hot dog. “Okay. Harlow it is. But I want it on record that I’m capable of waiting in a car.”

“Also no.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d pick the lock within ten minutes and go explore.”

She opened her mouth.

Closed it.

“Valid concern,” she admitted.

I was already texting Harlow by the time we reached the Lexus.

I need a favor. A big one.

Her reply came before I’d even unlocked the car: ANYTHING!! What is it?!

My sister needs somewhere to wait for about an hour. Can she stay with you?

IRIS IS STILL HERE?? YES ABSOLUTELY BRING HER RIGHT NOW I WILL PREPARE SNACKS

I showed Iris the message.

She read it and laughed despite herself. “She capitalized ’snacks.’”

“That’s Harlow.”

“She’s very loud in text form.”

“She’s very loud in all forms.” I started the car. “Don’t tell her anything about the kiss situation.”

Iris’s eyes went wide and innocent in a way that meant she was absolutely already planning what to say.

“Iris.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“You were going to drop it in the first five minutes and act like it was an accident.”

“That’s so specific.”

“That’s because I know you.”

She buckled her seatbelt and looked out the window with a small smile I pretended not to see.

The drive to the manor took thirty-eight minutes. Iris spent the first twenty asking questions about the building, the staff, the security procedure, and the swan pond, which I’d mentioned exactly once in passing two weeks ago. She’d retained it like a detail in a case file.

The last eighteen minutes she spent quiet, watching Manhattan fade into Long Island through the window.

“Zay?”

“Hmm.”

“Do you actually like working for them? Not the money. The actual work.”