To All the Guys I Killed Before (The Right Kind of Wrong #1)
Prologue
DECEMBER
Rue
“Which one of us is this going worse for, do you think? You or me?”
I use the toe of my boot to roll the dying man so he’s facing me as he bleeds onto his carpet.
“B-bitch.” The word gurgles out on a wet cough.
I crouch next to him, so close I can smell his sleep-sour breath. “Actually, bitch was my mother’s name. You can call me Rue.”
He coughs again, spraying me with a mix of blood and spit as he refuses to go toward the fucking light already.
That’s okay. I don’t panic. I pivot.
Brushing aside his weakly flailing limbs, I jerk his fingers away from the gashes across his throat, hoping to hurry along the exodus of blood from his body.
“Exsanguinate faster, please,” I tell him. “You’ve fucked up enough of my plans.”
I bat away the anxious voice reminding me that my current plan—keep fucking loitering at this too-personal crime scene, hating this man who’s wetly insisting on living despite the many poorly placed holes in his body—is maybe not the strongest. When I reach for my knife once more, it slips against the blood-slick palm of my glove.
I swipe my hand down my pants to try again, a bead of sweat trickling down my spine.
My head snaps up when the street outside starts to pulse with the red, blue, red, blue of a police cruiser, the lights glinting off the glossy edges of the blood staining me, him, and the bed he once shared with his wife.
It… may be time to panic.
“Had to be an asshole to the end, didn’t you?” I mutter, ignoring the pain in my shoulder as I lift my knife to deliver one final slice. But it’s not necessary. Ray Overton is finally dead, his dull eyes fixed on the ceiling.
I’m too late. Uniformed officers spill out of the vehicle to bang on the front door, and I creep to the windows on the opposite side of the room.
Floodlights illuminate the fifteen-foot drop to the back patio that just became my only escape route.
There’s snow, voices, a doorknob rattling below me, and my unraveling brain starts pivoting too fast, screaming at me to hide, fight, surrender, run, demanding to know why I took this risk why why why as the front door crashes under a police battering ram and the voices escalate and the argument goes on a little too long and then a single truth detonates in my chest and it all goes… silent.
My neighbor.
My irritating, intrusive, inescapable neighbor.
He’s the reason Ray Overton is dead.
He’s the reason I couldn’t run.
He’s the reason.
As heavy footfalls thunder through the house, I stand and greet them with a grim little smile.
Because god help me, I’d do it again.