Page 96 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

The small digital recorder has a note taped to it, the words in bold, block letters: “For Felicity. If I disappear, use this to restock the Chamber of Consequences.”

“Come on, that’s nothing.” She gives a strained laugh. “Just a running joke with my sister.”

“I bet you wish I was stupid enough to believe that.”

I’m holding her postmortem revenge list. The question is, how much of me is on it?

CHAPTER THIRTY

Hugo

“Open it,” I tell the cursing, struggling woman as I set her down in front of her car’s back passenger side door.

Her answer is to twist in my grasp and bring her knee up, aiming for my balls. I shift so the blow lands on the outside of my thigh.

“I told you,” I say as I reach behind her and fumble the door open. “I know how to take a hit.”

I push her into the back seat, being careful not to hit her head on the doorframe and follow her down so she’s on her back with my body covering hers. I’ve fantasized about having Rue underneath me in the back seat of a car, but I never pictured anything this… this sad.

“You’re going to wear yourself out before we listen to your greatest hits,” I say as she strains to push me off.

“That’s mine. It’s private.”

The car’s dome light illuminates her bared teeth and wild eyes.

“Yet you were desperate to keep me from finding it,” I say tiredly. “So Gomez must make an appearance or two.”

Hatred spills across her face. “Here’s an idea: How about not acting like a psychopath, giving me the recorder, and letting me fucking go?”

Her voice lifts into a shout on the final words, but I harden my heart and hit play, needing to know what other evidence she’s been collecting on me.

When the device asks me for a PIN, I turn it to face her.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” she snarls.

That’s fine. I can make a few educated guesses.

“The date your mom died?” I click my tongue. “Disappointingly predictable, Ruby Lynn.”

When she tosses her head back and screams in rage, I really do think about letting it all go. Destroying the recorder and whatever’s on it. Doing the same to those tubes of DNA.

But I can’t. I have to know.

When I press play, a digital voice announces a date from just over two years ago.

“Felicity, my love,” Rue’s sunny recorded voice says. “If you’re listening to this, I’m probably dead. Guess I wasn’t immortal after all. Sorry about that.”

The real Rue meets my gaze defiantly, daring me to look away as I hold her down and unspool her innermost thoughts right next to her ear.

“I don’t want you risking your precious self getting revenge for me, but I also know you. So these are my notes on anybody worth a second look.”

That tone. I heard it in my kitchen over Quinn’s stew. I thought she was talking about car crashes. She was updating her will, and I was in it.

“Remember to work with Pell,” the recording continues. “I’ve threatened him with bodily harm from beyond the grave if he lets you go after anyone yourself. Okay, love youuuuuu.”

The recorder clicks off at the end of the track, and Rue says, “That’s all that’s on there. Just logistics. There’s no need to⁠—”

I skip ahead a few tracks and hit play. When she hears the date, she gives a little moan that travels through her chest and into mine.