Fifteen #2
“Nice to know you’re easily bribed.”
“I’m always easily bribed,” I said as I slid open a kitchen drawer, happy to find silverware and linen napkins.
I grabbed the knife to slather butter on my toast. I took my plate and slid into one of the red wooden chairs at his dinette table and took a bite of the toast and then the omelet. I let out a moan of appreciation.
Jude laughed. “Like it?”
“Like is an understatement,” I mumbled, mouth full. I could get used to this level of spoiling. I let myself imagine, for just a second, weeks or months of mornings just like this one. Would that be so terrible?
Not as long as Oscar never found out.
Jude was already well on his way to making his own omelet, which he flipped in the pan. I dug into my food, with each bite more amazing than the last. I felt… surprisingly fine. Jude’s place… it felt… right. Comfortable.
“Why don’t I want to freak out?” I asked Jude, because Jude usually had all the answers.
“I don’t know. Do you always have morning freak-outs?”
“Only when I sleep with my brother’s best friend.”
“He has other best friends?” Jude sounded fake put out as he carried his omelet over to the breakfast table and slid in across from me.
“We seriously can’t tell Oscar about this,” I said. “I’m in enough trouble as it is.”
Jude shrugged. “He’ll be okay with it.”
I knew for a fact he wouldn’t. “Oscar would kill me before the Canceled Killer gets a chance,” I argued.
“I doubt it,” Jude said. He took a thoughtful bite of toast. “Maybe I’ll talk to him.”
“No!” I said louder than I intended.
Jude looked taken aback.
“Just don’t. Okay? Just…” I didn’t need another lecture from Oscar. I’d gotten enough recently.
Jude put the toast back on his plate and held up his hands in surrender. “Okay. Whatever you want.”
I checked my phone countdown clock. “I’ve got twelve hours until he comes for me. Though, given he already tried at the trailer, this clock might mean nothing.”
Jude studied me. “I think he has a thing for you.”
“Yeah, he wants to kill me.”
Jude shook his head. “No, I think it’s more than that. Why kill the mayor?”
“The mayor was begging to be canceled.”
“Right, but he wasn’t technically canceled. I think the killer did it for you. To impress you.”
“You sound jealous. Please tell me you’re not jealous of Spider-Man Mateo. I do not have a thing for him.”
“I’m not jealous,” Jude said. “I’m concerned. You really think it’s Mateo?”
“I think he’s a person of interest.” Russo made a good argument. Plus, how well did I even know him, anyway?
“A person of interest who also happens to be interested in you.”
And then I remembered Mateo saying I was breaking his heart.
“That’s twisted.”
Jude shrugged. “This killer has twisted on lock.”
“True.”
“But I still think he has a thing for you. More than just…”
“Killer and victim?”
“Yeah. More than that.”
I gulped down a bite of omelet. “That doesn’t make me feel great.”
“Yeah, me either.” Jude frowned at his plate.
My phone pinged with an incoming “check your matches” message from Spark.
“Who’s pinging you? Russo?” Jude sounded a bit too interested.
“No,” I said.
My phone binged again. Didn’t I want to see all the bachelors near me? Now was not the time, Spark. Still. Part of me was curious. Maybe HotSpidey turned on his notifications.
I clicked on the map. No HotSpidey.
But there was something else. Right in the center was Allen Gordon. His profile picture was his grinning face from the bearskin rug picture. And he was floating somewhere along Main Street.
“I know where Allen Gordon is,” I exclaimed, showing Jude the map.
“Wait. You’re on Spark while you’re eating my breakfast?”
“It’s for the investigation.”
“Uh-huh.” Jude shook his head. “You are something, Ophelia Ella Takeda.”
“That’s what all my Spark hookups say,” I teased.
“Hookups like Allen Gordon? What do you have your age parameters set to on there?”
“To be clear, I’m never hooking up with Allen Gordon in this universe or any other. And also, Spark never respects my age parameters.”
“Is that why you ended up with baby Spider-Man? Wait. I don’t want to know.”
I shoveled the last of my omelet into my mouth and then stood.
“Where are you going?” Jude asked, alarmed.
“To talk to Allen Gordon. See if he’s okay.” I went for the Converse I’d kicked off in Jude’s foyer the night before.
“We should call Oscar.”
“So he can yell at us and tell us to stay at home?” I ducked down to tie a shoelace.
“Oscar has a point.” Jude raised both eyebrows.
“Fine. I’ll call him.” I stood and pulled out my phone from my Kenough sweatshirt and called Oscar.
I got sent straight to voicemail. Again.
This was becoming a bad habit. I didn’t leave a message.
Instead, I texted him a picture of the dating map and Allen Gordon’s location. “I tried,” I said, and shrugged.
“Oh, so your plan is just to run out there, unprotected, and be murdered?”
I groaned. “No,” I said. “My plan is not to be murdered. Besides, I just want to go check this out.”
“Wait,” Jude said. “I’m coming with you.”
“I thought you had a work meeting.”
“I’ve got time.”
We grabbed our coats from the hooks near Jude’s front door. Jude grabbed his keys and wallet from the front foyer table.
“One second,” he said as he checked his security cameras—all four of them—around the house. “Okay, all clear.”
“Let’s go.” I grabbed my sling bag and headed outside, peering at my phone.
It looked like Allen Gordon was at Gordon’s Frozen Custard, which was weird, since the health department had closed that location.
I remembered the chains I’d seen on the door.
While I watched Gordon’s dot, a new dot popped up.
Right next to me. It had a microscope as an avatar, and his moniker was Dr. Jude.
“Oh. My. God.” I showed Jude the map. “How long have you been on Spark?”
Jude’s cheeks flushed pink. “Only since I found out you were on there.” He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and glared ahead, not making eye contact with me.
“Oh my God. I’ve got to see this.” I clicked on the Spark app and pulled up Dr. Jude.
“Aw, you put a picture of you in your lab coat? Really?” I showed Jude the picture of him wearing his white lab coat and black-framed glasses, a selfie that I was pretty sure was taken in his lab.
“Women like smart men,” Jude said, his tone defensive.
“Do they? I thought they liked six-pack abs,” I joked as I stopped on a picture of him shirtless kayaking, shirtless, showing off all his ripped muscles on the sparkling waters of Lake Sanguis. My underwear? Instantly drenched.
His cheeks turned pinker. “I just wanted to show that I’m active. I’m not all scientist.”
“Clearly not. Your torso looks like a Halloween costume,” I said, pointing to his ab ridges.
I realized he’d had someone with him to take this picture.
Someone in a tandem kayak had taken it, as well.
Kenzie, maybe? I couldn’t imagine her kayaking in the wild, not with a dozen assistants helping her row.
“Uh, thanks? I think?” He glanced down at me, his cheeks still pink.
“You’re kind of adorable when you’re embarrassed.”
“I’m not embarrassed.”
“You totally are. So how many people fell into your thirst trap?”
The light shifted to red and we stopped on the curb.
“Aside from you?” he growled as he pulled me into his arms. I squealed. He dropped a kiss on my lips that almost made me forget about Allen Gordon. Then I remembered we were less than a block from the sheriff’s station.
I pulled away. “Oscar can’t see us.”
Jude glanced around. “Oscar isn’t here,” he pointed out.
I danced away from his arms and studied the Spark app on my phone.
“Maybe I should swipe right on you, then.”
“No. Wait—”
I’d no sooner swiped right than the Spark app’s fireball exploded on the screen, telling me we’d instantly matched. That meant Dr. Cheese had swiped right on me first.
“Wait a minute. You already swiped right on me?”
“Uh. Yeah. Duh.”
“Oscar will be very upset,” I teased.
Jude shrugged.
“Oscar is not the boss of me.”
I stopped and stared at Jude, his brown puppy-dog eyes set to grim determination. Jude looked extremely, absolutely kissable in his dark wool coat.
The light changed and I stalked across the intersection. Jude ran to keep up with me.
That’s when I noticed someone had cut the chain on Gordon’s Frozen Custard’s doors. The metal links lay in a silver mound on the ground, the listeria notice taped across the door ripped in half. Someone had disobeyed the health department.
“Gordon’s is supposed to be closed,” I told Jude. “I think Allen Gordon is in there. The lights are on in the back.” I glanced at my Spark app map again. “Yep, he’s there.”
“In there?” Jude squeaked, nodding his head toward the empty, mostly darkened restaurant, which did look like it was tailor-made for the set of a horror movie. “We should call Oscar again.”
“He sent me to voicemail. You try if you want.”
I tugged at the glass door, and it swung open. The front part of the store was semi-dark, the only light coming from the back.
“What are you doing?” hissed Jude as he reluctantly followed me inside.
“Finding out what Allen Gordon is doing in here.” I took a step onto the tile. “Hello?” I called to the store. “Hello?” I flicked on the flashlight on my phone, and shone it around the space. Nothing at the vintage-style counter or yellow-leather-topped stools bolted to the ground.
“We shouldn’t be in here,” Jude cautioned me, glancing around nervously. The light from his phone bounced about, until it converged with mine, illuminating something near one of the booths—a person.
Jude shouted and clutched my arm, dropping his phone with a clatter and nearly making us both fall over.
Until we realized at the same time it was a life-sized cutout of Kenzie wearing her Miss Lake Sanguis sash.
“Geez. Kenzie gave me a heart attack,” I said, wheezing.
“I’ve died and left my body,” Jude said, swiping his brow. “We should not be in here.”