Page 20 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

“I should hope so. You talk about him enough.” She moves back to her chair and jiggles a mouse, pulling up the security feed around the farmhouse. “I don’t understand why you even bother making nice with the man-sized quaalude.”

“You don’t⁠—”

Fi looks at me expectantly, but no way am I finishing the thought that tried to escape: You don’t know him like I do.

Instead, I say, “He’s just lonely and, like, incapable of being normal about it. Not an unforgivable offense.”

“‘Incapable of being normal’ is selling the virgin next door a little short,” Fi says as she turns back to her computers. “I’m dying to meet him in person someday. Maybe listen in through your tissue-paper walls.”

“Not happening.” My tone is flat and final. I don’t need my too-curious neighbor knowing that I have a sister. If the police ever come looking for me, I want her far, far away from my crimes. When she pulls up an image I’ve seen far too many times before, I leap on the topic change.

“Any updates on your passion project?” More red dots have appeared on her map of the US, one in Boston and a second one in Minneapolis.

“OMG. Yes.” She pulls up a different map, this one with hundreds of teal dots. “Guess what’s in every city with one of the missing people?”

“Hmm.” I pretend to think. “Deep, dark, unexplored forests. Unattended factories with big vats of body-dissolving chemicals. Local chapters of the Killers ’R Us club.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s too excited to stop smiling. “Even better. Every city has a Rowdy’s.”

“A Rowdy’s.”

“Yes.”

“The circus-themed donut and coffee chain.”

“Yes.” She taps the monitor. “I mean, every city in America worth visiting has a Rowdy’s, but the key data point here is that there’s a Rowdy’s within a mile of the last known sighting of everyone in my dataset.”

I blink. “The circus-themed donut and coffee chain is going to provide the connection between eight people who went missing with no rhyme or reason across the country, thereby cracking the mystery that’s consumed you for the past year and a half.”

“Yes,” she says. “It’s also going to let me identify the man who’s doing it.”

Her voice is so certain, I almost believe her.

“Okay then. Let me know when you’ve figured it out, and I’ll kill him for you.”

Her eyes land on the Rowdy’s map again. “Sure. Maybe.”

“Maybe?” I raise a brow. “I offer you my services, and you say, ‘Maybe’?”

She closes the map. “Maybe!” Then she spins her chair in a circle twice and launches herself at me for another hug, giggling all the way.

The only purely good thing I’ve done in my life is make sure Fi got a family after Mom died—lying my ass off and telling her of course it’s fine that the nice older couple that took her in as an emergency foster fell utterly in love with her. And of course, of course it’s fine that Mr. and Mrs. Mercer only have room for one troubled eleven-year-old in their home and their hearts. Of course I understand that her fucked-up eleven-year-old twin with the dead eyes and the still-seeping skin grafts was too much to handle. And of course, of course, of course we’ll see each other every weekend.

Her arms tighten around my shoulders. Around my scars.

I made that sacrifice then, and Felicity got the education and the job and the ergonomic office chair and the capybara posters. Of course I’ll do anything I can to protect her from anything more dangerous than surveillance missions in public places.

“How about staying here tonight?” she says. “Your room’s ready.”

I stiffen. I try not to, but she feels it. “Thanks, but⁠—”

“But you won’t.” She pulls back, her expression dimming.

Felicity’s adoptive parents gave her a place to belong when she needed one, and she used their final act of love—the inheritance they left her—to build a new home for herself here. But I stopped belonging anywhere after I set her free, and if I spend even one night in the yellow bedroom she keeps ready for me, I might find out what I never had. So I make sure I never do.

She’s probably already guessed this. And she’s probably saving it all up for the epic fight we’ll have when she’s finally sick of my bullshit. Either way, she shakes off her disappointment and says, “Before you exile yourself to the cot in the barn, do you want to hear what I found out about your stiletto bar-fight guy? It’s bad.”

“How bad?” I perk up.