Chapter Thirteen
Rotten Luck, Racing Clocks, and Risky Plans
Elliot
Oliver: We’re already here. You better be on your way.
Parked in front of the bakery where Oliver told me to meet, I glare at my phone. I don’t know why I agreed to this. I just remember gobbling up Oliver’s homemade empanadas, listening to Oliver complain about their wedding planning.
“It's so much work, and we never have the same day off. How are we supposed to decide anything? So, we just divided everything. We have cake and flowers. He has the rest of the decoration and the priest. Rest, we’ll find time together. We have cake testing on Tuesday. You want more?”
I’d nodded, and that was my biggest mistake. Letting my guard down around evil people. Didn’t he know people who, I don’t know, are remotely interested in any of this?
When I’d complained about it to Nicholas, he pouted for an hour because he was missing the cake tasting. Why would anyone want to eat that much cake? Who even cares what kind of cake they eat at weddings?
Another message pops up on the chain.
Oliver: I can see you from here. Don’t you dare drive away.
There goes my excuse of a patient emergency. I could have been busy with patients, but Oliver told me to text Ashley to clear my schedule for three hours today while I was still too drunk on the empanadas. Then he stood over me until I sent the text. He knew me too well.
I need to start looking for new friends who can cook good food without using their powers for evil.
I stare longingly at my steering wheel again before admitting defeat and pushing the car door open. I walk slowly, as if I can stop time with my pace alone.
I spot Oliver on a corner table with Camilla, their table littered with over twenty colorful pieces of cake. I feel nauseous just looking at them.
“Oh, good, you’re here,” Oliver says when I reach their table despite my best efforts. “Taste this. And this.” He pushes a bright yellow cake with blueberry and light icing and another one that’s dark brown with coffee icing. All this before I’d even sit down. Ugh, life is exhausting.
I scrunch my nose and sit opposite them. “I’m good,” I try.
Oliver glares at me, his eyes manic.
“I think you should try them, Elliot,” Cami says, her eyes wide in fear.
I slide the pieces closer to me, and Oliver relaxes. “Tell me which one you like more.” He has the audacity to smile and look at me expectantly until I grab a spoon and take a bite.
Sweet lemony taste mixed with the tanginess of blueberry fills my mouth.
I immediately crave something savory. I take a bite from the other cake too before Oliver decides I’m being too slow and dumps it right into my mouth.
This one is chocolaty with a hint of coffee and something else I’ve never tasted before.
“I like this one.” I point at the coffee one.
“Why? Because you like coffee? You’re useless.” Oliver pulls the cake pieces away from me. “You’re demoted to tiebreaker.”
I pretend to be appropriately disappointed. It must have worked too well because Oliver sighs. “Okay, you can try more of them. Sorry, I’m being grouchy. The whole wedding thing is killing me. I just want this part to be over.”
“Just two months and then you’ll have the most beautiful wedding. Think about that, and you won’t know when all the time passed,” Cami says, taking a bite from a blue colored cake. I hope never to find out what that tastes like.
“Exactly. This wouldn’t even matter. Choose any of them, and everyone will eat it anyway. It’s really not a big deal,” I add.
Cami’s eyes go wide. Oliver’s eyes narrow. He aggressively pulls all the cakes to his side like that’s a punishment. “You don’t get any cake,” he announces. Before I can relax, he adds, “Unless we need a tiebreaker.”
I lean back in the chair, counting it as a win. “I deserve that.” I nod.
I leave them to argue over cakes, which is an absurd statement because who cares about a cake that much, and check my phone.
Nicholas: Did you try them?
Nicholas: Describe them to me.
Nicholas: I want cake too. **pouty lips**
I click a picture of the table and send it to him. His response is immediate.
Nicholas: If I quit now, I can be there in twenty.
I look at Oliver stress-eating through the pieces of cake.
Me: If you can make it in five, you might get to lick some icing.
Nicholas: Can’t talk dirty right now, babe. Have to interrogate a criminal.
Me: **rolling eyes emoji**
Cami is smiling when I put my phone back on the table. “Nick?”
I nod. “He really wanted the cakes.”
Oliver looks at me with wide eyes. “Wow, didn’t know you were capable of blushing.”
My face gets hotter. “I’m not blushing.”
“That Nick must be really something is all I’m saying,” he continues like I never said anything. I glare at Oliver, and he laughs. “Oh, you’re adorable. Didn’t know you were capable of being adorable either.”
I glare harder.
“So, Elliot, Nick must be running himself ragged?” Cami asks. “He tends to do that if you don’t force him to relax every once in a while.”
“Yeah, he’s been pretty busy, with the murders and all,” I say in a hushed voice. Maybe she can tell me where everyone’s minds are with the new cases. I only ever get to hear Nicholas’s version. And he’s always vague about his teammates.
Cami glances around the bakery to make sure no one is paying us any attention. “It’s been a headache. We were really hoping the Vigilante Hunter had had enough. But no, they’re here, and they’re more vicious than ever. Nick is trying his best, but this case is getting harder with every death.”
Oliver shifts a few cakes aside so he can plant an elbow on the table and lean against it. “Please tell me more about this case. Matt refuses to talk about Bureau work at home.”
Cami hesitates. “Then maybe we shouldn’t talk about it.”
Oliver glares at her before I can say anything. “Then I’ll make you eat all these cakes.”
Cami considers. “I mean… I like cake.”
“You get no cakes.” Oliver pulls away the one she was eating. “I know who the killer is.” Before I freak out, he continues, “Matt had to tell me what they were doing when Elliot was abducted. It’s not like you’ll be revealing anything new.”
I blow out a breath. “Nicholas and I don’t discuss his cases much either, but it’s so hard to see him work himself to the ground,” I blink at Cami.
“Maybe you won’t have to for long,” she says, then snaps her mouth shut.
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Please forget I said anything,” Cami shoves a large piece of cake into her mouth.
Oliver snatches the spoon from her hand. “C’mon, Cami. You can tell us. We’re Team Spouses, remember?”
Uh, yeah, not touching that one with a ten-foot pole. Besides, I have different priorities right now. I do my best Mickey impression at Cami.
“Ugh, fine. Meena is planning to call up a special investigative unit from New York for the case. She thinks we're in way over our heads. Please don’t tell Nick yet. It’ll break him. Meena has an entire plan to break it to him once everything is…”
My body goes cold. A special team? I know I was careful, but things aren’t in my control anymore, are they?
Who knows what the copycat killer knows and what they want?
They can bathe the next crime scene in my DNA, and now that Nicholas won’t be on the case to protect me, I can be in jail within the week.
“When are they taking over?” I ask.
“...we haven’t found—what?” Cami’s surprised voice makes me realize she was still talking.
“Uh… I was planning to take him on a trip,” I hedge, but I can’t be bothered to add any inflection in my voice.
Cami frowns. “That’s great. Uh, it might take two weeks to finalize the team.”
Two weeks. Right. Two weeks is enough time to find a killer whose entire identity is copying me. All I have to do is get a few steps ahead of him. We can do it.
“Promise you won’t tell Nick.” Cami looks so sincere in her request that I almost want to confess that it’s, in fact, one of the first things I’ll do as soon as I’m out of here.
If I were someone else, if we were just normal people meeting to help our friend find his perfect wedding cake, I’d have made that promise, and I’d have meant it. But in this life, I just nod.
“And Matt, either,” she says to Oliver.
“You got it.” He gives her the spoon back, and they go back to eating cakes while I sit there barely registering their conversation.
I knew my days with Nicholas were numbered, but the clock just sped up.
***
I could not sit there eating cakes while a killer might be planning to frame me for murder, especially when I had so much to do before I was forced to flee to Indonesia. So, I made a vague excuse and practically ran out of there. I’ll deal with Oliver’s disappointment later.
I text Sam to meet me at my place and call Ashley as I start the car.
“No, you don’t have an appointment for another hour. You can’t come back yet,” she says as soon as she picks up.
Why Ashley is so ready to conspire against me with everyone who tries, I’d never know. “Actually, I need you to cancel everything for today.”
“I knew you’d have fun if you just tried to be more social—”
“I miss your goth girl ‘I hate the world’ era. Please go back to that. It’s an order.”
She laughs at my face. “I’ll cancel your appointments.” She disconnects before I can be rude to her. Look at her taking my orders seriously. The best assistant ever.
I spend the entire rest of the drive coming up with plans to find this murderer before the new team shows up and we lose our access to Bureau data.
Nicholas won’t be back from work until late, and he’s probably going to stay at his place tonight.
I’ll fill him in later, but right now, I need to make a plan with Sam, like we used to.
I park my car, happy to find Sam’s rental already in the driveway, and rush inside.
Sam is sitting on the couch, eating a sandwich. “This better be important. I had to make my order to go, and these do not travel well.” He points at me with his sandwich, then takes a bite.
“We need to find the copycat killer.” I sit down on the chair close to him.
He tilts his head, continuing to chew. “Aren’t we already doing that?”
I shake my head. “No, we need to find them now. Nicholas doesn’t know, but his boss is bringing in an entirely new team on the case. We’ll lose access to everything then and become more vulnerable.”
Sam sets his plate down. “Shit. That’s not great.”
“No, it’s not.” I lean back against the couch. “But I have a plan.”
Sam leans forward. “Okay?”
“We need to get information on all the criminals the Bureau is investigating and tail them. So when the killer strikes again, we’re already there.”
Sam picks up his plate. “It’s not bad, but how long will we do that? The killer has no timeline. And between the two of us, it’d be impossible to watch all of them all the time.”
“Not if I ask Nicholas to get his team involved.”
Sam thinks it over and shrugs. “You can try, but from what I know, his team isn’t that big either. And will his boss be willing to spend that many resources now that they’re already planning to change strategies?”
I narrow my eyes. “Why are you being so unhelpful with this?”
He blows out a breath. “You’re right. Sorry. Uh… I can keep an eye on them digitally?”
“Yes, see, that's helpful. Both murders happened inside the victims’ homes, so just getting coverage of cameras around their houses and doors should be enough. I’m seeing Nicholas today. I’ll get you the list.” I smile.
Sam doesn’t. “You do that,” he says before taking another bite of his sandwich, which does look a bit soggy.
“Hey, are you alright?” I ask because Sam not being excited about a new project is not normal.
“Of course, I am. I looked into Adrian’s files, by the way.”
I allow the topic change because, honestly, he knows how to do it so well that I can't fight it. “What did you find?”
“A big heap of nothing. It was all confidential case information. So, unless you’re looking to blackmail certain Mrs. Miranda Jenine for the company money she used to fly her boytoy to Cabo, it’s a dead end.”
“Fuck.”
“I really think we should try his place again,” he suggests.
I get up, walking away without even entertaining the subject. “If there was nothing on his computer, there’s nothing to be found in his house. We’ll need to find a better way to get him to talk.”
“I can ask him for dinner?”
I turn to look at him. “At a public place?”
“A super public restaurant.”
“And you won’t go back to his place?” I fold my hands across my chest.
Sam suddenly gets too interested in his sandwich, peeling the bread to look at the stuffing. “I knew they added jalapeno. It was—”
“Sam? You’re not meeting him if you’re not coming straight home.” I feel like a mother from the seventies uttering those words.
Sam shoots me a mutinous look. “What if it’s just to sleep with him, though? ”
I narrow my eyes. “You’re either seeing him in public or not seeing him at all.”
“Ugh, fine.”
“And you’ll wear your tracker,” I warn.
Sam stands up and storms off inside. “Fine,” he whines over his shoulder.
“Don’t you walk away when I’m still talking.” Okay, yeah, that was too far. I shake my head.
Now that that's out of the way, we can get this investigation moving.