Eighteen
The Canceled Killer’s fifth victim was a suburban divorced mom who left her young children alone for an entire week without supervision while she vacationed with a married lover on an all-expenses-paid cruise to the Caribbean.
The mother was found dead after drinking a poisoned pina colada in her home.
—Crime Hive podcast
My head pounded with the hangover of a lifetime. My eyes flicked open, and I found myself staring at an Operation game box at the bottom of a stack of board games.
What the…?
I tried to sit up and realized my ankles and wrists were zip-tied in front of me, and I was lying on the pristine carpet. Why did this basement look so familiar?
Wait… Russo.
My brain felt like sludge as I blinked back confusion.
Dinner. Drugged wine.
That asshole.
How did I miss it? Cop as the Canceled Killer. The perfect cover.
Ugh.
I was disappointed in myself and furious all at once.
And my head killed. That was the last time I let a man buy a drink for me.
He must’ve dissolved a roofie in my glass before I even got there.
And when I saw Russo again, I was going to punch him in his chiseled face.
All that time pretending to be on my team, pretending to want to catch the killer, when he was probably just laughing behind my back, chuckling to himself about how gullible I might be.
As I struggled against the zip ties on my wrists, my face pressed into the recently vacuumed carpet, I realized why this basement looked so familiar. The foosball table. The board games. The jack-o’-lantern candle.
This was Jude’s basement.
Dammit.
Jude was in trouble. I needed to warn him.
If he came home, Russo would kill him. Jude needed my help. And I needed to kick Russo’s ass.
Luckily I’d already taken Irene’s old workshop about getting out of zip ties a few months ago when I’d come home for a quick weekend visit. I’d missed the refresher, but I didn’t think that mattered. I remembered what she taught me.
I bent the edge of a zip tie near my ankles. These might just be the same ones I’d seen in Jude’s drawer. So that meant Russo took them for convenience. And they weren’t steel-reinforced police restraints.
Careless, Russo. Real careless.
I got to my knees and managed to wobble to my feet, hands in front. This part? Easy. I pressed my palms together, raised both hands as far as I could, and slammed them down on my waist.
Ow. That smarts.
The first time didn’t work. Nor did the second. But… third time? All charm.
And—bonus, I didn’t snap my wrists in the process.
Bones and ligaments intact. Skin red and raw, but I could live with that.
This maneuver was harder to do with my feet, so I grabbed the Operation board game, fished the electric tweezers out of it, and stuck one end into the bracket of the zip ties around my ankles.
I fumbled with the mechanism until I could run the loop back through it. Feet freed. Easy peasy.
Adrenaline flowed through my body, washing out the dregs of Russo’s roofie, as I quickly looked for exits.
The door on the other end of the room led to the basement’s bathroom.
And aside from a window behind the love seat, which looked latched and hard to get to, the steps were the only way out.
I scoured the basement for a weapon, but didn’t find anything useful in the stack of board games or on the foosball table.
I glanced around, desperate for something, anything, and then I spied the Fortune Fated fake gun on the wall.
I picked it up again. It did have some heft.
I mean, I could maybe whack someone with it. It was this or the pumpkin candle.
My heart thumped.
Could I take on Russo?
This was no pretty-boy Eric who lived to take pictures at the gym instead of learning how to throw a real punch. Russo knew how to punch. Hard. He fought dirty, too. I was almost sure of it.
I needed help. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed the damn cavalry. If I ever saw Oscar again, I’d tell him I really, finally, was ready to ask for help.
Jude had no landline, and Russo had taken my phone, but I knew there was a panic button by the front door. That was my best hope. That, or just get free of the damn house and run to the sheriff’s station. It was half a block down the road.
I eyed the single window in the basement and dragged an ottoman over to it. But it was sealed shut with old paint. I needed to have words with Jude. What was the point of driving ten miles under the speed limit if he allowed a clear fire hazard in his basement?
I tiptoed up the carpeted basement stairs, fake laser gun in my hands, as I held my breath and listened for footfalls. Or any sign of life above. Had Russo been dumb enough to leave me zip-tied alone? God, I hoped so.
I kept my back against the wall of the basement stairs as I carefully inched upward, noticing Russo left the door open on the landing. As I moved upward, I saw the empty foyer and the sliver of the kitchen, but not the front door. I climbed up another step.
The floorboard beneath the basement’s carpeted step creaked.
I froze.
My heart hammered in my chest.
I waited, listening. For any sound of life on the first-floor landing, for the sound of Russo’s heavy footfalls.
I heard none.
My heart was in my throat as I peeked into the foyer. The kitchen was dark, as was the staircase with the wrought-iron railing leading up to the second floor. I couldn’t see much up past the first few steps.
But the front door was in reach.
I glanced upward. Pitch-black shadows shrouded the second-floor landing and much of the staircase. Someone could be hiding there. Or in the kitchen.
But I needed to get to the front door.
I’d have to risk it.
I hugged the wall of the foyer, slinking to the panic button, to help.
A slow clap on the stairs made me whirl, and I readied to swing the fake laser gun, but I accidentally hit the trigger as the barrel lit up the foyer with red and blue lights and a weak stream of embarrassing woo-woo sounds.
That’s when I saw Russo’s expensive leather loafer as he descended the wooden staircase in front of me. He must’ve been waiting on the darkened steps, just watching the front door this whole time.
“You got me, kid,” Russo joked, and grinned at my choice of weaponry. I debated whether to throw the gun at him and lunge for the panic button, but then I realized he was pointing a non-police-issued Glock at me.
I glared at him. I was too furious to be afraid. I dropped the flashing fake gun on the ground with a metallic clatter. “Why don’t you put yours down too so it’s a fair fight?”
Russo threw back his head and laughed. “This is why I love you, kid. Feisty.” He shook his head. “Why don’t you look in the kitchen first?”
He flicked on the light to the vintage kitchen. And that’s when I noticed Jude sitting in one of his kitchen chairs, gagged and zip-tied, his eyes wide with fear.
“Dr. Cheese doesn’t have your Houdini skills,” Russo said. “He’s been tied up a lot longer than you. He never made it to his office after all.”
Next to him at the dinette set sat Mateo, also bound, but not gagged. Instead, he had a VR set over his eyes, and noise-canceling headphones on his ears.
“Spider-Man hasn’t even tried to get out. He’s watching cartoon Spider-Man. He can’t hear us.” He looked kind of content, actually, mouth slightly agape, moving his head ever so slightly to chase the action.
Jude looked sweaty and scared, his eyes wide with fear. This made me angrier. I was right back in the crab apple tree, watching bullies surround him on his bike.
“Let them go,” I growled.
“I don’t think I’ll do that,” Russo said.
“Neither one of them are canceled, so let them go.”
Russo’s lips parted into a slow smile.
“I don’t care about that.”
I cocked my head to one side. “Odd, since you’re the Canceled Killer.”
Russo burst out laughing. “Your picker is so broken,” Russo said. “I’m not the Canceled Killer!”
I hesitated. He sounded sincere. But then… why kidnap me?
“Why deny it?” He had to be the killer. Everything pointed to him.
“Because it’s the truth.” Russo studied me. More mind games, I told myself.
“We’re less than a block from the police station,” I said. “When I turn up missing, Oscar will come here.”
Russo shook his head. “No, he won’t, kid. I ditched your phone in the woods a long way from here. They’ll be chasing that around until they find it. A bunch of local losers.”
I glanced at Jude. His gaze flicked to the front door. The panic button.
“First, we’ll play a game.” Russo grinned at me. I never wanted to knock one of his extra-whitened incisors out so badly in all my life. “Kiss, Marry, Kill.” He pointed his gun at Spider-Man and then Jude.
“I thought it was fu—” I began moving toward the panic button, but Russo shushed me, and cocked his gun.
“Nobody is screwing anybody around here except me,” he growled. “And you aren’t going anywhere. Don’t think about heading to the door.”
I raised both hands gently. “We don’t need to play the game. Why don’t you let them go, so we can talk?”
“Pfft.” Russo cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t want to talk.” A sly smile played at the corner of his mouth. “You want to break my nose.”
Maybe the man did know me.
“You’re wrong,” I lied, even as I imagined the feel of his cartilage splitting beneath my knuckles.
“Really? You think you can fool me? We’re the same, you and me.” His steely blue gaze met mine.
“I’m nothing like you.”
“Is that why you laid the mayor out flat on his back? You tell me you don’t want to give the bad guys exactly what they deserve?
That’s what I do every day on the job.” He flashed me a smug grin.
“When people don’t treat us right, we let them know.
We both know the wheels of justice are too damn slow for the likes of us. ”
“I’m no killer,” I said.
“Well, you should be. The mayor got what he deserved, and I gave it to him.”
I felt a chill work itself down my spine.
Russo just admitted to killing Alec Stokes.
“He wasn’t canceled,” I pointed out.