Page 120 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

I can’t count on Rue to cover for me if she suspects I’m involved. She could raise all kinds of red flags over Augustine’s death that have police and forensics teams crawling all over it.

“Option five,” she says. “Knock him out however you want to, load him into your trunk, and take him to your basement to turn him into mulch. You haven’t asked for more fertilizer chemicals this year, so you must be running low.”

I am, actually, and that would probably be the smart thing to do. My mulch donors are chosen at random based on who I’m killing around the time that my supply’s running short. But Horne won’t work.

“She’s moving tomorrow,” I bite out. “Too many people around.”

The clinking stops completely, and Quinn heaves a sigh.

“I agreed to help you because killing predators always leaves you intolerably chipper, and—I will deny it if you tell anyone—I find intolerably chipper Hugo preferable to the shambling corpse you’ve been all month. And I know you want to pull your shit together. Just…” Her voice softens a touch, likely imperceptible to any other human than me. “Just be smart, okay?”

“I’m always smart,” I reply, but she’s already hung up.

Moving quickly because Augustine’s due home within the hour, I check the dishwasher and see that it’s full of clean dishes, including three highball glasses on the top rack. Back at the bar cabinet, I find five identical glasses, which means I can’t truly guess which one he’ll use even if I could manage the right dosage.

Quinn’s right. I should call it off and figure out a new plan. But if I do that, I’ll sit at home tonight listening to Rue tape up the last of her boxes, and I don’t know if I’ll survive that.

Option fucking six, then. I stalk through his main floor in search of inspiration, coming to a stop in front of the dishwasher again. From there, my eyes travel up to the knife block on the counter.

I smile grimly as I choose the chef’s knife, boning knife, and carving fork and settle them in the silverware basket, handle down and point up, so they form a wicked cluster. Then I close the door and race around the house placing my cameras in his kitchen, music, room, bedroom, and at his front door. Everything’s as ready as it can be, so I ease into the coat closet and pull out my newest burner to watch the live feeds. I don’t have long to wait before the slender, snowy-haired man lets himself in through the front door, hangs his overcoat and scarf on the coatrack, and heads straight for the bar cart to mix his drink.

How he’s kept his stomach lining intact drinking booze and acid every night for decades is beyond me. Then again, how he’s remained a violin instructor for decades while exposing himself to children is also beyond me.

I watch on the feed as he climbs the stairs to his bedroom, drink in hand, and changes into a striped pajama set. When his slippers take him back downstairs to the bar cart, it’s showtime.

Trading my phone for my tactical pen, I slip out of the closet and approach Augustine on silent feet. I’d been counting on a no-fuss death and instead have to kill a fully conscious man in a well-lit living room. But I’m not overly concerned. He’s seventy-six and fragile, and I’m thirty-four and have been taking out my misery on my doorway pull-up bar.

He doesn’t notice me until he’s set the vodka bottle back down after pouring a second shot into his mostly empty glass.

“Who’s there?” he squawks when I step behind him and press the blunt, heavy tip of the small baton against the hinge of his jaw, just below his ear. To keep him in place, I grab the collared back of his pajama shirt with my other hand.

“Caitlin Murphy,” I say.

“W-who?”

I reach around him and take the glass from his shaking hand. “Allow me. We don’t need you dropping this.”

Once the glass is safely on the bar cart, I press harder with the pen’s edge, angling it up and inward until he jolts at the pain.

“Bryan Suarez.”

“I’m calling the police,” he blusters.

I calmly wait for him to fumble his phone out of his pocket before I release his collar, pluck it from his fingers, and place it just out of reach on the bar cart. My grip returns to his collar before he can react.

“River Jones.”

“My phone, please,” he snaps, every inch the tyrannical music director his victims described to me.

“Do you know what’s nice about the human body?” I increase the pressure on his jaw’s compliance point. “It wants to get away from pain.”

He yelps when I press just a bit harder, and I start steering him toward the kitchen.

“All I have to do is apply a little pain here”—I push—“and you move there.”

Augustine cries out and stumbles forward, exactly as I told him he would, trying to escape the hard metal nub digging into his mandibular nerve. Under different circumstances, I’d be using my thumb or my knuckle to steer him, but I want to avoid any hand- or finger-sized bruises on his papery flesh, just in case. So I control him with my hand on his collar and my titanium at his throat.

Once we hit the kitchen linoleum, I use his pain to direct him to the sink.