Page 45 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

Goddammit. The guy is big, almost as tall as me and the kind of strong you see in well-fed older men who have a surprising amount of “I was a varsity football player” muscle underneath their dress shirts and fleece vests. And he’s fuming, his face an ugly shade of red.

“Sir.” I strengthen my voice. “What’s your name?”

“Fuck you.” He smirks, absolutely delighted to hold something over me.

A second later, an electronic voice comes from his pocket.

“Reminder: Zoom call in fifteen minutes between Ray Overton and the International Development Team in Stockholm.”

He snarls and fumbles to silence the notification while I put the pieces together.

Lindsay Overton arrived at the shelter two days ago with a split lip and three enormous suitcases. I sat with her for about an hour before tonight’s meeting, letting her talk through her decision to finally end her marriage. She was pale and terrified but resolved not to go back to her husband this time.

So, of course, her husband came to her.

“Lindsay!” Ray Overton bellows. “I know you’re in there! Quit being a little bitch and come home.”

I shift to put myself between him and the building. “Okay, let’s cool things down a little.”

He responds by getting in my face, his breathing choppy.

“Move,” he orders, jabbing me hard in the chest with his blunt finger.

I plant my feet and raise a single, bored eyebrow. Last year, one of my intakes whacked me so hard with a cricket bat mid-struggle that it cracked three of my ribs. This guy’s pencil-pushing finger is nothing.

“You motherfuckers are keeping her from me,” he seethes.

“I promise you that’s not what we’re doing here.” I lift my hands in a calming gesture that I already know isn’t going to work. “But there are certain policies to be observed, so if you would just⁠—”

“Lindsay!” he screams again, shoving me hard with both palms. He puts his weight behind it, and it knocks me back a step.

On instinct, I grab the only weapon I’m carrying today. One blow to his temple from the heavy weighted end of my tactical pen would cave in the thin bit of skull protecting his brain, driving bone fragments into his middle meningeal artery without breaking the skin. He’d be dead, and my pen would still be clean. Or I could hit him in the throat with it, crushing his larynx and collapsing his airway. He’d die gasping. The carotid sinus could also work, and if it didn’t cause a fatal cardiac event, well, even Dr. Mohr’s soft-sided loafers would have no problem caving in his fucking face.

Overton’s eyes drop to my hand, where my knuckles have whitened around the pen. Now that I’ve registered as a threat, he turns all his attention on me.

I probably have five more minutes before the meeting wraps up and the rest of the board makes its way to the parking lot. If I’m going to do this, I have to do it now. After all, Overton’s making a strong case to join that rapist with the cricket bat in beautifying my roses.

“Are you gonna help me talk to my wife, or are you gonna get the fuck out of my way?” he snarls.

I reposition my grip on the pen, my eyes flicking from the sweet spot on his temple to the security cameras at both ends of the parking lot. Self-defense or not, killing Overton would create a level of police scrutiny I can’t afford. It’d have to be one hard strike, leave the body here, be on a plane with a fresh passport inside an hour.

Except I can’t, can I? Starting over as Geoffrey Benton or Sasha West was a viable option when the only person who’d notice my disappearance was Quinn, and she’d shrug it off and move on with her life in an insultingly short amount of time. But running now means losing Rue, who’d forget me in even less time than Quinn. And it’s not like I could ask her to come with me or call her from a safe house to say, “I caved in a guy’s skull and had to flee the country. Sleep well knowing you’ve been living next door to a serial killer with a surveillance kink for five hundred and ninety days.” She’d be in therapy for life.

Then, of course, there’s Morticia. She’d understand. Hell, she might even be willing to run with me. The only hitch in that plan is literally knowing nothing about her other than the shape of her body and how she sounds when she comes.

Fucking attachments. The person I’m starting to become, the person who might actually be worth being, exists because of these two women, and I’m not willing to lose either of them.

My fingers loosen around the tactical pen as I prepare to deal with this asshole as the weakest version of myself.

“Okay, let’s both take a breath, Mr. Overton.” I speak in a low, even voice, slouching to look as nonthreatening as possible in my de-escalation attempt. “Then we can take this conversation somewhere else, huh?”

“Fuck off. I know what you’re trying to do.” He shoves me again, and although I’m prepared for it this time, I let myself stagger back a step. “You’re trying to distract me, you white-knight cuck.” His chest billows out. “I bet you’re hanging around hoping for a gratitude fuck from one of those man-hating cunts before she goes running back home where she belongs. Fucking pathetic.”

My grip on Dr. Mohr slips as I hear echoes of Navarro’s forum in his words, and I step forward, trembling with the need to hurt him.

“You kiss your wife with that mouth, Ray?” I growl. “That why she left you?”

Insight strikes the moment he raises his fist. I can’t kill him, but I can do damage in a different way.