3. Chloe
Chloe
When the three of us walk into a room together, it’s like in the movies when the popular girls are moving in slow motion down a high school hallway, their perfect hair blowing in the non-existent wind.
Everyone staring and moving out of the way, whispering to each other about how hot they look. Or is it about how bitchy they are?
It has the potential to be a real ego-boost.
In the life of The Terror Trio—as some community members have dubbed us—it’s more of a mindfuck, because we’re not popular for being pretty, or nice, or volunteering at the animal shelter on the weekends.
We do shit like that, but people don’t notice.
Everyone’s staring and whispering because the three of us all have some connection to death and murder—they’re worried we’re going to be the next ones to snap and they’re going to be on the receiving end of our rampage.
And they might be. If they’re bad people.
We mostly ignore people when they gawk. We’re real people, and we deserve to have fun and live normal lives, too. Just because our lives have been tainted by darkness doesn’t mean we don’t get to choose to leave that world behind.
Or at least make it look like that’s what we’re doing.
I actually think some of the especially cantankerous community members are pissed off that we go about trying to live normal lives.
All confidence, smiles, and no fear facing the throngs of people who hate us.
They’d probably feel more compassion and grace for us if we were all meek and timid.
But fuck that. And fuck them. We are doing them a favor, and we’re proud of that.
There are a few people in town who recognize and appreciate the work we do, and really, that’s what keeps us smiling.
Stella follows me to the bar while Maeve splits off to save us a booth in front of our usual bowling lane. We ignore the two younger women down the bar who glance away and start sharing whispers with each other. Stella manages to wave down Mickey to reserve our lane and take our order.
Mickey’s Sip an adults-only bowling alley serving drinks and appetizers in the gutted, abandoned drug store this building used to be.
I stare up at the fluorescent red letters spelling Drugs hanging on the black brick behind the bar.
After giving our order, Stella turns her attention to me, telling me some story from her and Stone’s recent travels north.
The clatter of balls against pins drones on in the background, but I barely hear it as we stand there waiting for our drinks.
My gaze traces the bright, blood-colored letters on the wall until the sign morphs into a gory sight, gushing and leaking blood down the brick and onto the bottles that surround it.
“You okay?” Stella asks, her words drilling through my daze.
I could tell her I’m thinking about Colin. Tell her that he’s back. But I already know the barrage of reprimands I’ll get from her, and I’m jittery with nerves about speaking the words out loud.
I don’t have to, anyway, because my phone vibrates from my purse, saving me from having to answer. I flash the screen at Stella before lifting it to my ear.
“Hi, Stoney Baloney.”
“Hey, Chlo,” he greets in response, the muffled sound of the highway filling up his background. “You good?”
It’s the same thing every time: a quick text after my job is done to let him know it’s his time to shine, and a phone call when his job is done to make sure I’m okay emotionally.
Cue gag reflex. As if snuffing out evil keeps me up at night.
But he and Stella both know what it’s like to take a life, and while I may not lose sleep over it, I can’t deny the emotional burden of knowing it’s far from the last of the evil that will walk this Earth.
“Super,” I chirp. “Just here with your bestie at Mickey’s. You coming?” I raise my eyebrows at Stella as she turns away, trying to hide the fact that she’s hanging on my every word.
When the girls and I met a couple years ago at that God-awful trauma survivor’s support group in the church basement, Stone came as a bit of a package deal with Stella; which we can all agree was the best deal in the history of deals.
There are pieces of this line of work that would be immensely harder without his muscle and attention to detail.
And while they don’t appear to be anything more than best friends, I get the feeling Stella would claw someone’s eyes out before she let someone turn her best friend into anything more.
“Nah. I’m getting us ready for our next trip north.” I shake my head at Stella. “Speaking of which,” Stone goes on, “I see you tried the Gary Martin knot.”
I snort a laugh. “I thought his name was Gary. It seemed fitting. And what does that have to do with you going up north?”
Mickey sets our espresso martinis on the counter in front of us. I give her a nod and a smile in thanks, taking a sip of mine and appreciating the distraction of Stone’s phone call and the liquor warming the nerves in my stomach.
“One of my buddies up there taught me that knot. You did great.”
“Yeah, tying it,” I argue. “It wouldn’t fucking come loose.”
His deep laughter sounds from the other side of the line.
“Well, it’s a fishing knot, Chlo. It’s not really supposed to.
” He’s talking again before I have a chance to tell him then I don’t know why you teach me this shit in the first place.
“The scene is clean. Not a trace of you to be found. I dropped your car when Barry drove off for a coffee break.”
“Great,” I mutter, more in response to the reminder of Barry camping in front of my house.
“Tell Stell I’ll pick her up when she’s ready.”
“Will do,” I sing. “Thanks for everything.”
“I’ll send you the invoice,” he jokes. I scoff into the phone before ending the call, taking a deep breath in and out through my nose before tossing the rest of my drink back.
Stella watches my quick swallow, popping an eyebrow. “My question stands,” she quips, ever the observant little flower. I flash her a wide grin in response before ordering another drink.
“Maeve won’t want to miss it,” I say as an excuse, just delaying the inevitable of having to tell them both. He’s back.
As we head to our friend, I flinch when the sound of balls and pins clashing erupts again. Maeve waves wildly from our lane, the soft glow of the orb lights overhead glinting off her black hair. I take one more generous swallow of my drink before placing it on the table and handing Maeve’s to her.
She takes a sip, closing her eyes as the combo of coffee and liquor swims through her blood.
“What a fucking genius the person who created this drink concoction was.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she flattens her free hand against her chest. “They had to have been standing in front of their coffee machine at seven a.m. thinking, man, I wish this had vodka in it.”
God knows I’ve felt that way at seven a.m. before. Probably will tomorrow.
I continue past her toward the ball return, wasting no time choosing my ball and channeling all my nervous energy into it as it spins down the lane for a strike, followed by another.
Returning to the couches, I sink into the cushion, picking at one of the golden upholstery pins holding the black fabric in place.
Maeve bounces to the ball return next, spinning the balls around until she finds the one she’s looking for and slipping her fingers into the holes, lifting it off the tray.
I can feel Stella’s eyes on me as I try to keep my focus on Maeve, watching her line herself up with the lane and bring the ball in front of her face.
She steps forward determinedly and swings her arm back, sending the thirteen-pound ball barreling down the pine toward the pins.
She jumps into the air when she gets a strike.
“What’s up with you?” Stella finally asks beside me.
“Nothing.” Just, you know, thinking about what the man who wants me behind bars for life looks like naked. And that when he left I thought I’d never get the chance to, but now he’s back so maybe I can.
I glance at Stella who is trying very hard to appear patient. I give her a forced smile, another attempt at delaying the inevitable.
Colin and I went to high school together, so we weren’t exactly strangers when he interviewed me after my third stepfather’s death.
Or when we locked eyes in the courtroom where we’d eventually spend months together during my mother’s murder trial.
But it’d been a long time since we’d seen each other, and he had an intriguing twinkle of darkness glittering in his expression when he saw me sitting in the front pew of the courtroom.
The way he watched me; like he could see right through me, but he couldn’t look away. I could practically see his fixation with me spark to life in front of my eyes, and it’s become a dangerous beckoning between our souls that I can’t bring myself to ignore.
He mostly kept his distance in those first few months after my mother’s arrest, but after she was officially sentenced, he laser focused on me.
Sitting outside my house. Watching me from the parking lot as I circled the track over and over again.
I’d been a runner in high school, and in the months after my mother’s arrest, I needed the release of adrenaline again.
Relief from the media in the form of burning lungs and my feet hitting the ground.
In actuality, I found relief only because he’d been there.
I couldn’t figure out if it was an intentional or unintentional attempt at shielding me from the incessant camera flashes, but there he was, making sure not a single one of them stepped foot onto the red dirt with me.
To protect them, not me, he had said. I didn’t believe him.
He made no attempt to cover his fixation with me, promising he was going to find something that would put me away for life.
He was obsessed. A good guy with a delicious bad streak.