“The one that you missed,” she hisses at me, her voice thick with hatred. Uh-oh. Goose bumps prickle across my skin, but I know better than to react. Based on everything she’s seen, it makes sense that her hatred of me would double, triple, quadruple. If I were actually behaving the way I am of my own volition, I’d deserve every ounce of it. “Nice subscriber count by the way. I’m sure you’ll make a lovely influencer.”
“I’m not trying to be an influencer, Kimber,” I explain, checking my notifications. There are so many that it’s overwhelming, but I’m convinced that if given enough time, the collective resources of the internet can solve nearly any mystery.
Has anyone else noticed that all of the Slayer’s victims are from privileged families? Like, is this some sort of class warfare thing?
I pause and think about that for a minute. I know more than I ever cared to about the other victims thanks to that annoying Emerald City Murder Podcast that the boys like to listen to. Could I use the other victims to gather clues? Is there something there that I’m missing?
“Then why did you bail to make a shitty video? Was there a point to that? Did you actually think a bunch of TikTokers and Twitch fanboys were going to solve a kidnapping?”
“Kimber, lay off, okay?” Maxx says after climbing in. He turns around to look at her with a decidedly ‘big brother’ sort of expression on his face. Does he have younger siblings? I know about his older sister, but that’s about it. We’re almost strangers, if I’m being honest with myself. “Dakota is suffering, too.”
“How so?” she snaps, her voice a derisive slice to my heart. Her words shouldn’t bother me, but they do. They really fucking do. I’ve been telling myself all along that I don’t care if anyone in this family likes me, but that day at Blockbuster, I realized what a goddamn liar I really am.
I care.
Too much.
“You never liked Parrish. You convinced me for a minute there that you actually did care, but everything you’ve done since then has proven that you don’t. You probably want him dead so that you can profit off of his—”
“I love Parrish, too!” I snap at her, whirling around angrily in my seat, my phone clenched so tightly in my fingers that they hurt. “I care about him just as much as you do, if not more.”
Crap.
I shouldn’t have said that. I really shouldn’t have said that.
“Kimber, I’m—”
“Oh my god,” she whispers, her eyes getting wide as something occurs to her. “You’re … you have a crush on him. On your own stepbrother.” She pauses for a minute as we stare at each other. I should deny her words vehemently, laugh and snort and shake my head. Instead, I just find myself paralyzed beneath her stare. “Does Tess know?”
“That’s enough of that, Kimber,” X says, keeping his voice soft. “You’re both hurting, and taking that pain out on each other feels like it helps now, but you’ll regret it later. When Parrish gets back, he’ll be pissed at you both.”
“He isn’t coming back,” Kimber says, her voice this strained, sad, broken thing. The rage is still there, but it simmers underneath, barely contained by melancholy. One small thing and it’ll tip over, flood the world with righteous ire. “Nobody believes that. He’s gone, Maxx. He’s dead.”
She drops her face in her hands, and my heart breaks. I want to comfort her, but she won’t want that, not from me.
Instead, we all sit in silence as X backs us out of the driveway and takes a deep breath before braving the gate and the ever-increasing crowd of reporters. There are ten times as many as there were when I first got here.
This is so much worse though. They’re here because they smell blood. Parrish’s blood.
I do my best to ignore them, thankful for the police presence near the gate. They’re here because a couple of reporters already tried to scale the fence. Fun stuff. Did I mention that Tess has also hired a private security team to patrol the property? They’re all muscular, dressed in black, and sporting FHS logos—I take it that stands for Fort Humboldt Security.
Interesting.
I focus on my phone, looking up the previous victims of the Slayer to see if there are any clues that I might’ve missed. I start by grabbing a map of the city and putting little dots on the places where the bodies were found. In movies, there’s always a pattern of some sort. In this case, it looks like a jumbled mess of nonsense.
I frown and study the locations.
A park, an old train station, the dumpster of a Seattle restaurant, a foreclosed home, an empty field. No rhyme or reason there.
Once we’ve pulled up to the school, Maxx and I wait for Kimber to disembark and then turn to each other.
