“We both will. Everyone’s going to know your story.”
And mine, Seleena thought as she walked the aches and tingles out of her legs. Just wait, just wait until she did a special report on her experience. Kidnapped, held by Patricia Hobart. And the intrepid reporter conducts a brilliant, hard-hitting on-camera interview, drawing all the details out. Motives, victims, method, movements. All of it.
“‘Pulitzer, Emmys,’” Patricia repeated. “The sky won’t be the limit for you.” She opened the box of crackers. “You got a big boost by being in the mall that night, recording what you did. That put you on the map.”
“I kept my head,” Seleena agreed. “That’s what you have to do to get ahead. Especially when you’re a woman. A smart woman, a tough woman. They say you’re pushy, bitchy, arrogant, when what you are? Is strong, ambitious.”
“You do a program about DownEast every year in July, because that’s your main claim to fame.”
“Up until now. Oh, that’s better. I can almost feel my ass again.” She rubbed her butt with both hands as she walked back and forth.
“This interview, that’s serious fame and fortune for you. You wrote that book about DownEast, but others did, too. And you’re not that good a writer.”
“I’m not bad, but you’re right, book form isn’t my strength. I’ll hire a ghost this time. The ratings for this, Pat? We’re going to have enough for a five-part series, and the ratings are just going to build and build. Fuck the Super Bowl, we’re going to blow it and everything else out of the water.”
“Because millions of people will watch.”
“They will, they will. They’ll be glued to their screens and devices. The fifteen-year-old girl planning a massacre because she hated her life, her parents, and could manipulate her brother. How she handled it when he pushed her aside to do it on his own. The years of holding her true nature inside, hiding it.”
Seleena shook her head, let out a breath. “It’s so powerful, so compelling. Your first kill? God, you were so young! Then your own mother. The calculation that went into you eroding her will, the years of gaslighting her, up to luring her into being complicit in her own murder. It’s brilliant. Just brilliant.”
“Sit down, have some food.”
“Thanks. I’m starving.” She took the paper plate, scooped up hummus with crackers. “The irony, Pat, do you see it? Of just missing with the cop—the one who saved the kid in the mall. Just missing that kill, getting shot yourself, but getting away, holding on to get back to your grandparents’. God, that’s a segment on its own. Has to be.”
“You think the cop deserves a segment,” Patricia said slowly.
“Absolutely. That moment when you realized you hadn’t finished him, and that he’d shot you—I want to talk about that a bit more. And about what you thought, felt, while rushing back to get money, weapons, IDs—and still taking the opportunity to kill your grandparents before you ran.”
“I didn’t run. I regrouped.”
“Mmm.” She scooped up more hummus. “We’ll touch on your time in Canada, but that’s not a highlight. It’s more of a bridge, so regrouping’s a good term. But the turning point came when you realized you’d failed to kill Quartermaine, and that he managed to wound you—and then you have the serendipity of the cop who killed your brother helping to save the man you tried to kill.”
“‘Serendipity.’”
“It’s great TV, just great TV. I want to focus more on that turning point next, how the mistake with Quartermaine changed your direction, forced you to regroup. Thanks,” she added when Patricia handed her another cup of Diet Coke.
“You see that as a mistake. With that fucking cop?”
Seriously hungry, and far too caught up, Seleena forgot a good interviewer let the subject do the talking. A good interviewer observed changes in tone and body language.
“A miscalculation anyway, and again a turning point we want to punch. Up to that point, you weren’t even on the radar, right?”
She drank some diet soda, went back to the crackers.
“It’s just what you said before—you let JJ take the blame.”
“Credit.”
“Credit. You were the sister of a teenage killer, the devoted granddaughter, living a quiet life. And the next minute you’re a fugitive who’d tried to kill a cop in cold blood because he’d survived the DownEast. Who did kill her elderly grandparents in cold blood before she ran to hide—and regroup—in Canada.
“You’d killed before, Pat, but that near miss with Quartermaine changed everything.”
“He got lucky.”
Seleena nodded. “He did, he got really lucky. Recognizing you just an instant before it would have been too late, then wounding you, not to mention the irony of having his police partner already heading to that house—the same woman cop who was, ironically again, just outside the theater. She killed JJ, helped save Quartermaine. Great TV.”
“You think so?”
“Believe me, I know so. Okay, I’ve got the next segment organized.”
“Your segments, your ratings, your claim to fucking fame.”
“Sorry? What?”
“It’s my story. Mine.”
“And it’s going to blow the roof off. I think we should freshen up the makeup a little before we roll again.” She shook out her shoulders, then crossed her legs.
“You don’t need it,” Patricia said, “because that’s a fucking wrap.”
Seleena glanced over, managed one choked sound before Patricia shot her, and shot her, and shot her again. Ironically, in Patricia’s mind, with Seleena’s own pink Glock.
She expelled air, and anger. Felt better. “And don’t call me ‘Pat.’”
She made herself a plate of crackers and hummus, ate while Seleena’s body bled out on the cabin floor. She’d take the camera, she decided, leave the tripod and the lights. Too much to take back on her flight south.
Since she’d already stopped to change the plates, and she’d taken some time to beat some dings into it, she considered Seleena’s car a safe ride for the distance she had to drive.
Time to grab some cash and another couple IDs out of the bank in New Hampshire, she calculated. Then she’d leave the car at the airport, catch a flight. She’d pick up a rental in Louisville.
They’d find the body in a few days, she imagined. She’d booked the cabin for a week, and had four days left. By then, she’d be … somewhere else.
She laughed a little as she washed down crackers with Diet Coke, and smiled over at Seleena’s body. “Now who made the mistake?”
*
After shift, Reed walked home with the dog. He picked up some supplies, and drove his personal car to CiCi’s. He’d have to tell them—Simone and CiCi—about the card, the threat, and lay out precautions he needed them to take.
When he arrived, he considered the house. All that glass, all that damn glass. So beautiful, and so vulnerable. Still, breaking in doors and windows wasn’t Hobart’s usual style.
She liked subterfuge. Breaking windows? That just wasn’t elegant.
He heard music—some of the windows were open to the spring air—recognized the steady, sexy beat of “After Midnight.” He walked the dog inside, and saw CiCi—tight cropped jeans, black T-shirt, long wild hair flowing while she danced.
She had some moves, he thought as she shoulder swayed and hip bumped her way around the room to Clapton’s genius guitar and seductive voice.
He didn’t notice Barney plopping down to watch beside him, and thumping his tail.
CiCi made a pivot, spotted him. Still moving, and now with a slow smile, she crooked a finger at Reed. “Let’s dance, Delicious.”
He stepped to her, put an arm around her waist and swept her into an impressive dip.
“Look at you!”
“Guys who dance get more girls,” he told her, sweeping her back up and into a slow spin.
“You’ve been holding out.”
“You never asked me to dance before.”
Simone came down the stairs to see her grandmother and the police chief dancing—smoothly—while the dog sat watching them with apparent fascination.
They ended the dance with his arms around CiCi’s waist, and hers linked around his neck. And grinning at each other.
“So that’s how it is.”
“Simone, you are my greatest treasure.” With a happy sigh, CiCi rested her head on Reed’s shoulder a moment. “But now that I know this man can move sexy to Clapton, I may have to steal him from you.”
“I’m yours,” Reed told her, and kissed the top of her head.
He caught the scent of her shampoo, a whiff of turpentine, and a faint, fading drift of weed.
It all said CiCi.
She gave him a squeeze, then turned to study the dog. “And here’s the four-legged cutie. You’re right, Simone, he has a sweet face, and eyes full of heart.”
She didn’t crouch, just held out a hand. “Come on and say hello, little darling.”
“It takes him awhile to…”
Reed trailed off as Barney stood, and walked straight to CiCi.