Ten
The Canceled Killer became so popular that people started suggesting other jerks that the killer could target. #YouShould
BeNext began trending on all platforms.
—Crime Hive podcast
The hands clutched me, and my hit-fast-hit-hard-run Krav Maga training kicked in instinctively.
I lashed out with a short chop to the man’s Adam’s apple, giving it a nice whack with the meaty part of my hand between the thumb and pointer finger.
The force of the blow sent him reeling back and coughing.
I was about to run when I realized I’d just throat-punched Oscar’s best friend.
“Jude!” I cried, appalled. “Why did you sneak up on me?”
Jude made a choking sound, and bent over, one hand on his knee and the other massaging his throat.
I’d gotten him good. Jude still couldn’t talk as he wheezed between coughs, looking like a wounded puppy.
He telegraphed hurt with his eyes. I felt horrible.
Like I’d kicked a kitten. Jude was defenseless, and I knew it.
I was pretty sure a toddler could wrestle him to the ground, mostly because he’d never fight back.
“You grabbed me,” I pointed out.
“You… called… me.” He coughed, his voice an alarmingly hoarse whisper. “You… falling…” Jude hacked. “I… help,” he finished.
Now I felt terrible. He was just trying to steady me, and I nearly knocked the guy’s Adam’s apple into his skull. He shook his head and rubbed his neck some more.
“Going… to… leave a mark,” he grumbled as his voice slowly returned to normal, except he did kind of sound like a ninety-year-old pack-a-day smoker. “See anything?” He offered his throat for my inspection.
“No,” I lied. There was a red mark slashed across the umber skin of his neck. Poor guy. It might even bruise.
“Ack.” He coughed again, rubbing his neck some more. “I think… you… bruised my trachea.”
“I’m sorry!” I cried again. “You can’t just sneak up on me like that.”
“I didn’t sneak!” he protested. “You called me! And… the leaves!” He stomped his feet on the large trail of brown and gold fallen leaves near the fire pit, which did, in fact, make a pretty loud crunching sound. Fear had muted my hearing, clearly.
“I’m sorry, Jude. I am. Really.”
Jude sent me a baleful look as he held his Adam’s apple.
“I really feel bad.” I flashed him an apologetic smile. “Want to do it to me?” I offered him the soft spot of my own throat.
“Tempting,” Jude said, but shook his head.
“What did you find back there?”
“Just a bunch of poison ivy,” he deadpanned. “And an actually pretty nice house back there.”
“Seriously?”
I moved through the overgrown brush, leaving Jude clearing his throat and rubbing his neck.
Around the side of the cabin, sure enough, I found a small clearing in the back of the haunted shack, where a very nice two-story wooden cabin sat with a porch swing and a small stone path leading to a front door lined with gold and maroon mums.
“What the hell?” Why was this house so nice? And why didn’t they just bulldoze the haunted cabin? A man in a plaid flannel shirt and khakis walked around from the woodshed, carrying a pack of freshly chopped firewood.
“Um, excuse me, can I help you?” he asked me.
“Uh—Dave Simpson?” I asked, uncertain.
“Yes—and who are you?”
“I’m approaching!” shouted Jude from somewhere behind me. “Alert! Alert! I am behind you! Do not attack, I’m—” Jude stopped shouting when he saw Dave.
“Jude?” Dave peered at him quizzically. “Is that you?”
“Hey, Dave,” Jude said, his cheeks pink with embarrassment. He scratched the back of his neck. “Got a minute to talk?”
“Allen Gordon is missing?” Dave asked as we sat down at the small round table in the small, tidy kitchen of his house.
“Kenzie hasn’t seen him for at least twenty-four hours,” Jude said. He glanced at me and back at Dave. “We understand you and Allen Gordon had a fight.”
Dave’s eyes flicked up, suddenly wary.
“You said you wanted to kill him,” I added.
Dave winced. “I say that to him all the time. The old codger never takes it personally.” He studied us. “You sure he hasn’t gone off to his yacht? It would be just like him to run away when things got tough and leave me holding the bag.”
We nodded. “No one has heard from him,” Jude said. “Kenzie thinks the Canceled Killer is involved.”
“Oh, him. I hate that guy,” Dave said, and groaned. “The Canceled Killer has CEOs all over the country shitting their pants.” Dave shook his head. I didn’t blame him. The Canceled Killer loved targeting the C-suite.
“You too?”
“The listeria doesn’t make me look good. But I tried to warn Gordon. Many times. I have the emails.” Dave almost seemed… afraid. He didn’t seem like a killer. He seemed like he was desperate for us to know he shouldn’t be canceled.
“Mind telling us where you were yesterday and today?” I asked.
“At work until midnight. Ask my secretary. And the senior team. I’ve been up sending emails most of the night, working on a PR plan, and I was on the phone with board members abroad to talk about what to do next.
And I’ve been trying to find Allen Gordon as much as anyone. He’s been AWOL when we need him most.”
Back in Jude’s Volvo, we sat, staring at the murder cabin.
“So… do you think he had anything to do with Gordon going missing?” Jude asked me.
“I doubt it. The emails and calls would be easy enough to confirm, so I don’t think he’d lie about that.”
“Agreed.” Jude hesitated, glancing at me. “Anywhere else you want to go? I’ve got a full tank of gas.”
I sent him a sidelong glance. “The way you drive, it’ll take us two days to get anywhere.”
Jude laughed a little. “If you punch me in the throat again, it’ll take even longer.”
“I am sorry for that.” I did feel bad.
“You should be. You lied to me. You told me I don’t have a punchable face.” He snuck a sidelong glance at me.
“Technically, I punched you in the throat.” I studied one of my cuticles. “I never said anything about your throat not being punchable.”
Jude laughed again. I liked his laugh. A deep rumbling chuckle, which felt like a hug for my ears.
“Nobody thinks I’m as funny as you do,” I said.
“That’s because they have no sense of humor.”
“Says the man obsessed with cheese puns.”
Jude shook his head, and then he looked at me and fell silent. He had his puppy-dog-eyes filter set to 120 percent. How did he do that with his eyes? Make them so warm and fuzzy?
“What?” I asked him.
“What do you mean, ‘what’?”
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like…” I tried to make puppy-dog eyes at him. Jude just started looking confused.
“You look like you’re having a stroke. Is that what’s happening? Are you having a stroke?” He had the audacity to look concerned.
“Oh my God. You are the worst!” I crossed my hands across my chest. “Just take me to Koi.”
“Fine,” he said, starting up his car. He slowly made it around the gravel driveway and back out to the main road. The sun sank beneath the horizon, and the sky turned a brilliant blaze of pink and purple.
I was enjoying Jude’s company, really enjoying it. Had I always liked it this much?
“Why did you stay in Lake Sanguis?” I asked him as his headlights flicked on automatically, illuminating the road ahead of us. As far as I was concerned, next to cheese puns, this was his worst flaw.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you moved to Chicago, you probably could make more money. You’d definitely get more respect. And, bonus, you’d live far, far from Tammy Anderson.”
Jude chuckled a little. “Maybe. I don’t know. My family lives here. I have friends here. I don’t make friends easily.”
I didn’t realize this was something we had in common. I didn’t make friends easily, either. The difference was I didn’t really care.
“People are a nuisance,” I said.
“Even me?”
“You most of all,” I teased.
Jude laughed. “See? If I’d left Lake Sanguis, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
“I’m not ever here, though. Not when I have a choice.”
“You come home every Thanksgiving and Christmas. And sometimes for Olivia’s birthday. Or your mom’s. Or your dad’s. Or Oscar’s.” He ticked off the times I might come back on his fingers.
“Sounds like you’ve been stalking me.”
A little bit of pink appeared on Jude’s cheek.
“No,” he said, defensive. “You’re just fun to hang with.” He thought about this a second. “When you’re not punching me in the throat,” he added as he rubbed the delicate skin of his neck.
“That’s only because there are zero fun people in this town.”
He glanced at me, the puppy-dog-eyes filter on.
He inhaled. “You know,” he said, breaking eye contact and staring at his lap. “I applied for a job in Chicago.”
“Where?” This was news to me.
“The Cheese Council.”
I blinked fast. The literal head cheese of… well, cheese.
“I went for three rounds of interviews.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” So that was why he’d made those trips to Chicago. “Did you get it?”
He checked his side mirror, even though there was zero traffic on this road. “Yeah.”
“That’s amazing! You gonna take it?” I pushed aside the jealousy that rose up in my throat. I wished I had a job in Chicago. But I wasn’t going to be petty. This was huge for Jude, who only ever left Lake Sanguis for college and graduate school, and then hurried back home like a good boy.
He stared at the windshield. The tree line began to thin as we returned to civilization. “I don’t know,” he said.
“You have to take it. That’s a great opportunity. Chicago is fantastic…”
“Yeah, but you’re not there.” He snuck a glance at me.
It hit me then that I was his anchor there, a friendly face in a sea of strangers. That beneath his new cool sexy nerd exterior was still the uncertain kid with the anime lunch box looking for a place to sit in the cafeteria. I think Jude needed people more than I did.
“So? You’ll make friends. You know what?
I bet there’s a Fortune Fated Meetup. There’s every kind of weird subgroup in Chicago.
Trust me. I once happened upon a group of Stormtroopers mingling near the Bean in Grant Park.
And if you get the Spark app, you’ll have tons of hot women knocking down your door.
Kenzie is just the start. Ooh! Your handle could be Pooh Bear!
” I clapped my hands in delight. Jude, however, didn’t look happy about that prospect.
We approached downtown Lake Sanguis, and he steered the car toward Main Street just as the vintage streetlamps flickered on. I could see Koi down the street, its porchlight on.
“I don’t want to meet someone new,” he said, looking miserable.
“Oh?” Then I got it. “Oh, right. You’re crushing on someone already. I forgot.”
“Yeah.” Jude didn’t meet my gaze as he pulled up in front of Koi, headlights illuminating part of the bamboo gate.
That put another wrinkle in moving away, I guessed, if his living, breathing love thing was in Lake Sanguis.
I swung open my door as he shut off the engine. He glanced at me. “Uh… Ella, wait.”
I was halfway out of the door.
“Are your parents home? I want to make sure…” Jude glanced anxiously back and forth, eyeing the mostly dark windows of Koi. “I can’t let you go on your own with a killer on the loose.”
“Aw, that’s sweet,” I said. Jude wanted to walk me to the door and check inside like a proper gentleman, even though I was pretty sure I’d be the one defending his honor if we ran into trouble.
“They’re not home. Olivia texted me that she and my parents went out for pizza.
” I climbed out of the car. Jude scrambled to follow me.
The motion-sensitive Zen garden lights flickered on, lighting the path.
The stone lanterns near the koi pond glowed, too.
As we hesitated together on the sidewalk outside Jude’s car near Koi’s bamboo fence, I wondered why Jude was being so weird.
Then I glanced up and saw what I thought was the white Jeep Wagoneer—back to us, red brake lights on, half a block down Main Street, as if it had been waiting there, all this time, just for me.
Exhaust trailed upward in small puffs from its muffler.
“Shit,” I said, glancing at the car. I couldn’t read the license plate, so I moved out to the street to try to get a better look. That’s when the driver revved the engine and then threw the car in reverse. Jude clocked it at the same time I did.
“El!” Jude yelled, just as I scurried out of the way.
Jude reached out for me as I hopped up on the curb.
The Wagoneer hit the brakes, hard, the red glow of the back lights warm and menacing, less than a foot from me.
I glanced into the back windows, but the black tint gave me only my own startled reflection.
Up close, I saw that since the last time, someone had taken off the license plate.
There wasn’t one there at all now. The Wagoneer took off again with a squeal of tires.
It took the corner ahead so quickly that it knocked over a planter, spraying dirt and golden mums in all directions.
“Not cool, man. Not cool!” Jude shouted at the empty street. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I said, shaken as I watched the end of the street, half expecting the Wagoneer to appear again. “Did you see the driver?” My attention was fixed on the road.
“No,” Jude said, sucking in a breath. “You?”
A blaze of headlights flicked on, suddenly blinding us from the narrow alley to our left. We both jumped, and I raised my forearm to shield my eyes from the brightness. Then my eyes adjusted, and I realized it wasn’t the Jeep Wagoneer after all. It was a silver sedan.
Eric from Irene’s studio slipped out of the driver’s side door.
He looked the worse for wear, the black eye I’d given him swollen so much his one eye was almost completely shut.
Cotton balls plugged the nostrils of his swollen nose.
His good eye glared at me, as his much larger, much more serious-looking friends cleared their throats behind us.
Where had they come from? One looked like a linebacker with no neck, and the other, wearing a backward baseball cap, was giving rush week vibes for the worst fraternity on earth.
“This her?” his no-neck friend said as he cracked one of his massive knuckles.
“That’s her,” Eric confirmed with a nod.
“You beat up our friend?” Frat Boy taunted. “Looks like we’re going to have to teach you—and your boyfriend—a lesson.”