“We are not in immediate mortal danger. We’re shopping. With a multimillionaire’s credit card, I might add. And some of us are trying to make a nice day of it.”
He drops his voice to a tense hush and leans in close. “Are you forgetting what we have to do tomorrow?”
A small shiver ripples down my spine. “No,” I say. “But that’s tomorrow, and today is today. And today”—I hold up a dramatic feather-trimmed dressing gown from my bundle of clothes—“I want to be Bianca, who did not kill her husband and does not appreciate the insinuation. Now you go.” He stares blankly at me, and I let out all my breath in a huff. “Come on, Grant. Live a little.”
Something in his jaw tightens. It takes a solid few moments of hesitation, and there’s no smile, but he finally walks to the rack and pulls out a solid-gray extremely ordinary sweatshirt.
“Bob,” he sighs. “Very gullible. Told by the salesperson that seven hundred dollars is standard for a sweatshirt.”
“HA!” I clap him on the shoulder. “Oh, Bob. You poor idiot.”
I don’t earn my ten pounds in the end, but by the time the jolly doorman helps us to a car with bags in tow, Grant isn’t wringing his hands quite so much and I swear he’s standing a little taller. Like maybe his shoulders have downgraded from carrying the weight of the world to a mere continent or two. It’s not nothing. And given what tomorrow holds for us, I’ll take it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Iam present. I am prepared. I am in control.
I recite my little mantras in my head, even as I stand on the street corner doing my damnedest to project the opposite:I am lost, I am alone, I am extremely murderable.I tug at my platinum bob wig and frown at my oversized map of London. If it’s a clueless blond tourist this killer wants, it’s a clueless blond tourist they shall get.
It’s not yet seven back home. If I were there, I’d still be wrapped in blankets, mentally preparing to tour the stages of grief en route to my cubicle. Funny how I feel more eager to face the day when it entails baiting a serial killer.
Which reminds me: I haven’t called out of work. I make a mental note to do that later, lest HillCare’s hundred and seven Twitter followers feel abandoned. No one else really needs notifying; my friends and family are fairly accustomed to me skipping town at the last minute. And it’s not like it makes a difference with Steph. A little murder vacation should hardly interfere with us sending each other bookish memes.
Grant, on the other hand, started emailing excuses the moment he found a phone charger at the airport. He’d arranged a cat sitter for Arthur before we’d even boarded the plane.
With no pedicabs in sight, I sneak a glance at him. He’s leaning against the building behind me with his rented bike, the helmet he insisted the rental guy dig up from some dusty corner of the shop, and a blatant disregard for his instruction to act nonchalant. The plan is for him to subtly follow the pedicab after it picks me up, providing backup and alerting Lissa and Lesley to our final destination. For now, he’s looking at his phone, but holding it in a death grip that is anything but casual. Probably running Google ragged with searches likehow to catch a murdererandAnna Matthews home address.
I check the time and scan the street, which is humming with routine weekday hustle and bustle. The Facebook post specifically said the Pulverizer would strike at noon. Where is he?
I’m pretty sure I’m being stood up when I hear the screech of tires down the street. My nerves fire to attention. Stopped at the next light over is a beanie-wearing man clutching the handlebars of a pedicab, hunched in a posture typically reserved for Tour de France competitors. His mouth is a grim line. He checks his watch. He’s running late.
It must be him. I can’t imagine another scenario where someone would be racing the clock via pedicab, unless he commandeered it on his way to stop the love of his life from marrying someone else. But this is not that kind of Anna Matthews book.
The light changes, and he pedals furiously. I steel myself with a lungful of crisp air as he draws nearer. After the intersection, he pulls up to the curb and looks around. When he sees me, his shoulders relax. He smiles. And he gestures in invitation to the carriage behind him.
I resist the urge to look back at Grant as I approach him—the Pedicab Pulverizer, in the flesh—feeling like a boa constrictor is wrapped around my neck. He looks fairly nondescript for someone so dramatically nicknamed, with few noteworthy features aside from a trace of salt-and-pepper stubble and one smallsilver earring. But he eyes me with a flash of contempt that tells me I’ve got the right guy.
He quickly papers over it with a thin smile. “Need a lift?”
This might be the hardest part—going against all my instincts to accept a ride from a murderer. It’s the kind of thing you’re generally advised not to do.
I have one second to take a steadying breath and get in character.Think like the tourist. Be the tourist.I open my mouth.
“Ya” is what comes out, in an inexplicable attempt at a Scandinavian accent.
My heart thunders as I climb into the carriage, scanning it for escape routes and defense angles.
“Where to?” His voice is gruff, with just a hint of artificial friendliness.
“Buckingham Palace,” I say, naming the first tourist destination that comes to mind. It doesn’t matter. He won’t be bringing me there. Still, as he looks over his shoulder at me, I swear he rolls his eyes ever so slightly. Him, the homicidal cyclist. Judgingme. The nerve. “How much?” I ask.
“Fifty quid.”
Rip-off.Especially since he’s planning to kill me.
I fight the urge to argue and start digging in my bag for Lesley’s cash when a figure appears in the corner of my vision.
“Thereyou are, honey.” Grant grips the side of the carriage, with what is technically the first smile I’ve seen from him—though with the alarm in his eyes, I don’t know if it counts. His helmet is off, presumably left with his bike. “Why don’t we walk together instead? I have something I need to tell you.”
