Page 33 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

He is, but that’s beside the point.

“I hate you,” I say, “because you charge me an arm and a leg and insist on monitoring my comings and goings.”

I give him a steely glare, then drop my gaze to the remaining pie slices. The peach crumb looks amazing.

“Just keepin’ an eye on my clients.” He shrugs, which supports my hypothesis that he’s got a wall of monitors showing live feeds of the dozens of killers, assassins, mobsters, and other scary humans he does business with.

Fi and I moved to Chicago when I got the job with the ME’s office, and Pell contacted her a few months later with a menu of the services he offers. How he found us remains a mystery, but he’s been a valuable asset ever since, especially after he made Chicago his permanent home base a few years ago. I’m not even that bothered by his driveway surveillance; I kind of like knowing that if somebody snatches me or Fi off our front doorsteps, there’ll be a record of it.

Still, I’d like him to stay away from my neighbor.

“Leave Hugo alone, please. He’s a good guy.”

Pell drops his hands to the table in overly dramatic shock, clenching the fork in his teeth as he speaks around the tines. “C’mon now, neighbor girl. You know there’s not a single soul on this earth that’s purely good.”

“Quit calling me that.”

He doesn’t apologize or even acknowledge my demand, but he does nudge one of the pie slices over to me.

“I don’t like coconut.”

“You’ll like this coconut. Barb’s a magician.” He twists in the booth to holler at a server pouring coffee on the opposite side of the diner. “Ain’t that right, Barb?”

The hatchet-faced sixtysomething white woman dimples as she waves off Pell’s compliments. Not only can he be charming as hell when he wants to be, he’s also right about the dessert.

“Holy shit,” I say around my mouthful of coconut cream. “How’d you know?”

“I know pie.” To his credit, there’s no innuendo in it. That’s how serious he is about the topic. He’s also serious about his business, which he turns to after polishing off his slice of cherry.

“Here’s your stuff.” He sets a gift bag on the table, not bothering to check if anyone’s moved into earshot while we’ve been talking. They haven’t, but still.

The bag’s decorated with raccoons in party hats, and when I hold it up in a silent question, Pell grins at me. “In our line of work, shouldn’t we be treatin’ every day like it’s our birthday?”

“I… guess so. Yeah.” God, my day’s gone fully sideways if Pell’s logic sounds at all logical.

I set the bag in my lap and pull out the sparkly tissue paper so I can rummage through the contents. First up is a purse-sized breath spray bottle full of NCU compound—as in “Natural Causes, Undetermined.” That’s what’ll appear on the autopsy report after I hit someone in the eyes, nose, or throat with it. Since it can take up to five minutes to stop a heart, it’s my murder weapon of choice for a sleeping mark, and I was running low.

Next up is my new toy. I bounce in my seat as I pick up the pink spray bottle, like the kind you’d fill with hairspray to satisfy the TSA, and twist the nozzle to open.

“Careful.” Pell taps his fork against the back of my hand. “All it takes is one snootful.”

“Really?” I ask, delighted.

He snags his next plate and rotates it until the point of the pie slice is aimed at his center mass. “Immediate effects. You’ll be conscious but compliant. Movin’ with help but not puttin’ up a fight. Lasts about twenty minutes.” His eyes flutter shut at the first bite of peach crumb. “Plenty of time for an industrious little killer to get a person into whatever position she wants.”

“Fabulous.” I hold the bottle up to the light, but I can’t see the actual compound through the plastic. “How quickly does it leave the bloodstream?”

Pell cocks his head a quarter of an inch to the left.

“Back in two shakes.” He slips out of our booth, pulling the baseball from his pocket and turning toward one of the tables behind him, where two smug douchebags in business suits are mid-conversation with a glowering Barb.

The dinnertime crowd is noisy enough that I can’t hear what he says when he leans over to address the guy facing me, rolling the ball across his knuckles as he talks. The exchange is quick, and before Pell fully straightens, the guy fumbles some cash out of his wallet and flees the restaurant, his face the color of ranch dressing. His buddy leaves just as quickly, his chair hitting the ground with a clatter in his haste to get the fuck out.

Pell winks at Barb, grabs a plate off the now-abandoned table, and heads back to our booth, lazily tossing the ball as he walks.

“Got us some more pie.” He sets the plate in front of me with a grin. “I saw you eyein’ my peach.” Then he picks up his fork and our conversation like nothing interrupted it. “My chemist says the compliance juice’ll be undetectable after two hours.”

“Great,” I say, giving up on getting any kind of explanation for what I just witnessed.