Page 104 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

“Oh, fuck you, I’m perfectly sane too! I’m just saying, he was in every town where there was a disappearance on the day it happened: Louisville, Philadelphia, Hartford, Indianapolis, two in Boston, two in Minneapolis, and then the one here in Chicago that got me started on all of this.”

“And all those towns have a Rowdy’s.”

“Yes. And Mac famously loves Rowdy’s.”

I turn it over in my head. Hell, some part of me thinks she might be onto something. Cormac King’s visits to Rowdy’s around the country are well documented on gossipy social media accounts. And if Fi’s correct that he was in each of the cities when the disappearances happened, then⁠—

Oh my god, no. I’m not falling down this rabbit hole with her.

I take a slug of coffee before responding. “Didn’t you have a huge crush on Mac in high school?”

“No,” she says too quickly before muttering, “It was junior high.”

“And now you think the man with the mansion and the incredible cheekbones is a thrill killer?”

She angrily adjusts her bun, her pretend crown forgotten. “I don’t know why he’s doing it. I just know it’s him.”

“So he could be keeping them captive in, like, separate wings of his mansion,” I point out. “The man probably has at least three sex dungeons.”

She huffs. “And we could be stashing bad men in my barn, but we’re not. He’s not either.” Her fingers wrap around her capy necklace as she talks, her eyes going fuzzy in the way they do when she’s thinking about a new dataset or an expansion to her computer setup. “I just need to figure out how all those people are connected. Once I do, I’ll know the why, and then I can⁠—”

Her eyes snap back into focus, and she laughs at herself for once again getting caught up in the promise of a juicy dataset to dig into.

“Well, when you figure out why he’s kidnapping”—I lift my hands in apology—“sorry, killing these people, definitely let me know so we can start planning.”

Fi nods absently, her gaze still distant behind her glasses. My thoughts, meanwhile, drift toward my four p.m. appointment to meet Pell and personally observe him ripping every one of Hugo’s cameras out of the duplex.

I drop the remains of my toast back onto the plate, appetite gone.

“What’s wrong with me?” I say quietly. “Why do I keep ending up with guys who do this to me?”

Felicity sets her mug down with a definitive thunk. “It’s not you, love. It’s the men.”

I nod, letting her words soak in.

It’s the men. It’s always the men.

This time, I’ll remember.

“Well?” I say to Pell when he comes loping through my front door.

“Hello to you too, neighbor girl.”

“Don’t ‘neighbor girl’ me,” I snap. “Where’s my apology?”

He crinkles his nose as he adjusts the brim of his battered White Sox cap. “For what, exactly?”

“Guess.” I glance pointedly down at his big canvas bag of tools, then at the walls around me. “Why would you even do it in the first place?”

“Aww, darlin’.” Our friendly neighborhood fixer grins and slings an arm around my shoulder. “Because he paid me.”

Strike the “friendly” part. Friends don’t let friends surveil friends without their knowledge. But the man is Teflon and ignores my death glare as he drops his bag on my coffee table and puts his hands on his hips, spinning to take in my living room decor.

“Your boyfriend set up the basement in this half as an emergency holding cell back when he bought the place. Then you showed up, and all of a sudden, he was willing to rent it out.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Okay.” Mr. Teflon shrugs. “He wanted a camera down there, then on the front and back doors in case a not-quite-dead guy made it out of his restraints.” He shoots me a grin. “In case y’ever wondered why your basement door has three hardcore locks.”