Page 169 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

Timms doesn’t notice me stepping around Hugo.

Timms doesn’t notice me reaching into my pocket.

Timms doesn’t notice me pulling out the tube of lipstick.

Timms doesn’t notice when I slide behind him.

Timms doesn’t notice when I click the wheel once, twice, three times.

Timms notices when I inject Quinn’s hemlock compound into the soft hollow under his jaw.

Timms stops noticing anything at all when he falls back onto the couch a few seconds later, unmoving.

“Rue! Baby!”

Hugo’s shout snaps me back into the present, and time starts flowing normally again. That’s Felicity’s voice in my ear, screaming for me. So much for code names.

I lurch forward and press my fingers to the pulse in Timms’s neck.

Strong. Steady. Furious.

“He’s got a pulse, but his chest isn’t moving. Q, how much time until his heart quits?”

“Based on how quickly the coniine froze his diaphragm, I’d say maybe a minute,” Quinn says. “Once he’s hypoxic, it’ll fade fast.”

“That’s when his heart stops pumping blood,” I tell Hugo. “And we need it moving if we want to sell a self-inflicted wound.”

“What can I do?” he asks.

“Give me room to work while he’s still in there.”

Hugo steps aside so I can snatch the gun in my gloved hands and confirm that Timms landed in a position that reasonably reads as natural.

“Twenty seconds,” Quinn whispers as I wrap his deadweight fingers around the grip.

The window’s closing on his body’s ability to bleed like a living man. Still, I can’t stop myself from bending over his inert body.

“A Socratic scholar like you knows hemlock keeps the mind intact while the rest of you goes, so I hope you can still hear me,” I say into his ear. “Your new friend Joe? Your ‘brother’ standing right behind me? He’s the one who killed Danny.”

I lean even closer, my breath heating his skin.

“Also? We kept the dog.”

Message delivered, I move his index finger onto the trigger, seat the muzzle under his chin on top of my injection site, and position myself as far below and to the side as possible to avoid the backspatter. Then with one hand controlling the angle from the butt of the gun, I press my fingertip against the back of his nail inside the guard.

Together, Lester Timms and I pull the trigger.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Hugo

Rue’s laughing into my neck as I carry her from the garage and through the kitchen, intending to take her straight upstairs and into bed for the next couple of days, or possibly for the rest of our lives.

Instead, I get four steps into the living room and grind to a halt.

“Uh, hi, guys,” I say. “Did you… break in and decorate for Christmas?”

Rue twists in my arms, and I reluctantly lower her to the ground. The instant her feet hit the hardwood, Felicity, who’s been sitting cross-legged on my couch, bounces up to wrap her in a hug.