“I also had a crush on the red Power Ranger,” I quipped, trying desperately to recover. “Don’t take it personally.”
“So, your crush on me, is that why you were always trying to bash my head in?” He was referring to the fact I’d often hide under the staircase, or in hallways, and launch myself at Oscar or Jude to try out a new roundhouse or uppercut.
“I was just trying to show off my moves,” I said. “When I was ten, that’s how I thought you impressed boys—by showing off my best spin kicks. I was an awkward kid.”
“Oh, I remember. I was there,” Jude teased, his brown eyes bright. “Case in point: the spider eulogy.”
I had to laugh at that. I couldn’t help it. The spider funeral might’ve occurred the same year I cut my own bangs the day before school pictures.
My phone dinged again. CanceledKill sent another message.
You’ve been a bad girl, Ella. Time to be punished.
Ready or not—here I come.
Two
The Canceled Killer’s sixth victim went viral after he yelled at a fast food employee for not letting him bring two Great Danes into the restaurant. It later came to light that he owned a dog training business and faced at least three claims of animal cruelty. The Canceled Killer strangled him with a dog leash.
—Crime Hivepodcast
Something about the threatening message didn’t sit right with me. It felt real, somehow. Menacing. Less a threat, and more a promise.
Maybe I was completely off base and it really was just another troll trolling, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I wasn’t easily rattled, but I also wasn’t stupid.
“This is why you should never mess around with serial killers,” said Oscar, my brother, the town sheriff, as he studied the message on my phone the next morning. He wore his tan sheriff’s uniform and shiny golden badge, glinting under the kitchen lights at Koi, as he carefully tucked his thumb into his gun belt, near the Glock in its holster. “Their fans are always bananas.”
Oscar was the tallest in the family at five-eleven, and carried an air of seriousness about him that hardly anybody questioned.
“So you think it’s just a fan?” I asked, hopeful.
“A misguided one. Probably. I warned you not to doCrime Hive,” Oscar said in his most annoying older brother I-told-you-sotone, which he used on the regular. Almost anything Oscar ever said made me want to scream, “You’re not the boss of me!” and run to my room and slam the door.
“I’m a grown-ass adult,” I said instead.
“So you keep telling me,” Oscar said, doubt in his tone. “Just like you told me you didn’t need babysitting, even though you were the one who fell through the ice.”
“I was seven,” I protested, not that Oscar—or even the whole town—ever would let me forget. Many around town still called me Thin Ice, all these years later. Not so much because I was the miracle child who survived, but more because I was a magnet for trouble.
“Right.” Oscar seemed unconvinced.
“Crime Hivewas the break of a lifetime,” I said, even more so because I’d just graduated Northwestern and lucked into an internship at a podcasting production studio, where I pitched my idea about following this little-known string of murders in Chicagoland that I believed were connected. The producers jumped on it, and we’d broken the news that the Midwest had a new serial killer on the loose.
“Not so much a break now, is it?” Oscar was the worst when he gloated. I really wish I had a bedroom door to slam.
“Can you actually be helpful for once? What are the chances it’s the killer?” I couldn’t shake a gut feeling that told me this was a real threat. I took a sip of the coffee Dad had made. Dad ran on strong black coffee every morning and wouldn’t let Mom near his coffee machine. Given how she murdered banana muffins, I didn’t blame him.
“I think it’s probably some jerk who’s targeting you just for fun.” He took a screenshot of the messages and then texted them to himself before he handed my phone back to me. “But I can ask one ofmy old Marine buddies at the FBI what they make of these messages. Don’t do anything foolish, and block that account, okay?” Oscar warned me.
“So, I shouldn’t text back and tell him I’m awomannot agirl? Itisdisrespectful.” I glanced at the message again. “Also, it sounds like he might be into BDSM. Should I tell him I’m a dom, not a sub? Maybehe’sthe bad boy who needs to be punished.”
“Please never say those words to me again,” Oscar said, deadpan, as he finished his coffee and set the empty mug in Mom’s sink. He grabbed his sheriff’s baseball cap off the counter and set it on his head as I followed him out of the kitchen to Koi’s wraparound porch.
His black SUV, withLAKE SANGUIS SHERIFFemblazoned in gold letters across the doors, was parked near the mailbox in the small semicircular driveway. I shoved my hands deep into the front pocket of my hoodie, shivering in the October morning chill. I could smell someone burning wood in the distance, and the gathering clouds above our heads threatened snow. Or rain. Hard to tell this time of year.
“Don’t go posting your location anywhere—just in case,” Oscar warned me over his shoulder as he hesitated, hand on the door handle.
“I’m not a fool,” I said. “I never post my location, and I scrub all the geotags from my photos.”
