Chapter 18 #2
“Exactly!” She’s almost smiling now. That feral investigative smile. “You’ll have the exact kind of evidence we need.”
“I’ll also be alone with a serial killer on a regular basis.”
“Well, yeah. But you’ll be documenting him. Very aggressively. With spreadsheets.”
“That’s your solution? Spreadsheets?”
“Spreadsheets are my love language. You know this.”
Despite everything, I almost laugh. “You’re insane.”
“And you performed today. You walked in there and shook his hand and smiled and he bought it completely. You’re good at this. Better than you think.”
“I dissociated so hard I left my body.”
“And that’s a survival skill.” Alex squeezes my hands tighter. “That’s how you’ll do it. You’ll be his paralegal. Professional. Competent. Invisible. And while you’re playing invisible, you’ll document everything.”
I want to argue. Want to tell her it’s not that simple. That I can’t just perform my way through working with a murderer.
But I did today. I already did.
“Alex, he looked at me like I was wife material.” I pull my hands away, wrapping my arms around myself.
“Not like he wanted to fuck me in a closet—though there was that too—but like he was calculating my usefulness. Smart, beautiful, about to pass the bar, good for his career trajectory. Like I could be the next thing he owns after the fur coat and the City Controller title and the body in the alley.”
“That’s—” She stops. Searches for words. “That’s worse somehow.”
“It’s so much worse. Because nothing I said would deter him. Every redirect I tried, every professional boundary I attempted to set—he just smiled like I was playing hard to get.”
“Okay but counterpoint,” Alex says. “You’re so far out of his league it’s not even funny. You’re like... a different species. He’s a serial killer and you’re—”
“Also investigating a serial killer, so arguably we’re both making terrible life choices.”
“Fair. But yours are motivated by justice. His are motivated by being a sociopath in a fur coat.”
“That’s not actually comforting.”
“I’m workshopping it.” She pauses. “The point is—you’re better than him. Smarter. And he has no idea you’re about to destroy his entire life.”
“If we survive long enough to do it.”
“When. When we survive long enough to do it.”
“I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that is screaming at me to run as fast and as far away from this situation as possible.” My voice drops to barely a whisper. “Every instinct I have is saying get out, get out now, before it’s too late.”
I could do it. Could call in sick tomorrow. Could quit. Could pack up the loft and disappear to Austin or Seattle or anywhere that isn’t here.
Could let Dahlia stay buried. Let someone else fight this fight. Let someone else risk their life for a dead woman with no name.
But I won’t.
Because running means she disappears completely. And I can’t live with that.
“So what are you going to do?” Alex asks. She rests her head on my shoulder. Her breathing syncs with mine. Steady. Present. Here.
I’m quiet for a long time. Listening to the traffic. The car alarm finally stops. Someone laughs inside the building—the sound floating out through an open window.
Normal life. Continuing. Like always.
I turn to look at her. My best friend. My soulmate. The person who’s been showing up for me since we were twelve. The only one who sees me.
“I can’t give up,” I say.
“Then we don’t.”
We sit there for another moment. Two women on a freezing concrete bench making a decision that could get us killed.
To keep investigating. To keep pushing. To be the friends Dahlia didn’t have. To document everything. To survive in the cracks until we can bloom our way through Dom’s concrete empire.
“Okay,” I finally say, standing up. My legs are shaky but they hold. My jaw aches from crying. My hands still tremble.
But I’m standing. That’s something.
“I’ll work with Marcus. I’ll smile and play the role and be the perfect paralegal. And while I’m doing that—”
“I’ll trace the money.” Alex stands too. “The club ownership. The shell companies. All of it. We’ll build this case from both sides.”
“Together.”
“Always together.” She pauses. “Although for the record, when we eventually take this to the police and they ask how we got the evidence, we’re going to need a very creative explanation.”
“We fell ass-backward into a murder investigation while day-drinking probably won’t fly.”
“No. But it’s accurate.” She holds out her pinky. “Ready to commit felonies for a dead woman we never met?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds insane.”
“That’s because it is insane.” Her pinky doesn’t waver. “But we’re doing it anyway.”
I stare at it. That twelve-year-old promise gesture that’s gotten us through everything. Playground wishes. High school drama. College heartbreak. And now this.
“Paréa,” she says quietly. “Through everything.”
I link my pinky with hers. “Through everything.”
We stand there in the freezing courtyard, pinky promise locked between us like a blood oath. This is what female friendship looks like when the system fails—two women making promises in the cold because no one else will fight for the women who disappear.
“Dandelions,” I say.
“Dandelions,” she agrees. Then squeezes my pinky so hard it almost hurts. “And dandelions are a lot harder to kill than people think.”