Page 9 of Always Murder (The Last Picks #9)

The next morning, I woke up stiff, cranky, and miserable. Then I stayed in bed too long, which only made me feel worse, and when I finally dragged myself into the shower, all the little things began: I dropped my bottle of body wash, and the cap broke. I slipped in the tub and banged my knee. We were down to the little bit of toothpaste at the end of the tube, and for some reason, the thought of trying to squeeze it out filled me with near-murderous levels of rage.

By the time I made it downstairs, my disposition could be generously described as sour .

Indira had already gone to the holiday market, but she’d left a crock pot full of steel-cut oats on the kitchen counter. I added maple syrup and brown sugar (the best oatmeal-flavoring combo except possibly brown sugar and cinnamon), ate, and thought.

It was hard not to think about last night. About Bobby. How much he was working. And how distant he seemed. The last time things had been like this, it had been after Bobby’s breakup with West. Bobby had been picking up a lot of extra shifts. Every extra shift, as a matter of fact. All the shifts he could. So that he wouldn’t have to deal with the real problem.

So, what was the real problem?

The obvious answer—based on last night’s interaction—seemed to be me.

The steel-cut oats slid down my craw in a thick glob.

Well, I definitely didn’t want to think about that.

Instead, I tried to drag my mind back to my investigation, if that’s what you could call it. I was half-tempted to tell Millie I was done. We’d already talked to the people at the freight company. Paul, it seemed, had lied to us and then, as the Brits say, done a runner. There wasn’t any reason for me to continue to poke my nose in where it didn’t belong.

Unless something had happened to Paul.

If I could just find him—or, barring that, convince myself nothing bad had happened to him—I could call the whole thing off. I would call the whole thing off.

As soon as I was sure Paul wasn’t, you know, dead.

I considered texting Millie, but then I decided against it. I wanted to talk to Ryan, and I had the sneaking suspicion that having Millie there might make Ryan clam up. Between bites of oatmeal, I dug out my phone and looked up the number for Pirate’s Cove Laser Tag and Mini-Golf. It was listed on Google as an entertainment multiplex , which sounded like the name for a movie theater in the ’90s. I placed the call and navigated my way through the automated system by screaming, “Agent,” every time it asked me for a choice. (You’d be surprised how often it works.)

Sometime around my third “Agent!”, Keme appeared in the kitchen doorway. The boy was still in board shorts, but today’s outfit consisted of sneakers that I was pretty sure Indira had gotten him for his birthday, and a flannel I knew Bobby had given him. His long hair was tied back. He gave me a considering look and then started typing on his phone.

“Pirate’s Cove,” a voice brimming with excitement said. “Avast, me matey, how can I help you?”

“Is Ryan Naught there?” I asked. “He asked me to look at a go-kart.”

“Yep! He’s here. Hold on, let me—”

I disconnected.

Keme looked up from his phone. There was judgment in his eyes as he said, “You’re going to fix a go-kart?”

“I’m going to get some answers out of Ryan Naught if I have to beat them out of him.”

I’m not even joking: Keme’s eyes literally brightened. He raised his phone hurriedly, tapped out a few more words, and shoved it in a pocket. When I passed him on my way out of the kitchen, he followed me.

“No,” I said. “You’re not going.”

He kept following me.

“Absolutely not,” I said when we got to the front door.

Halfway across the lawn, I said, “I’m putting my foot down.”

When we were both settled in the Pilot, I said, “Listen to me, young man—”

“Please.”

I sensed a trap.

Shifting in his seat, Keme fiddled with his seatbelt as he muttered, “David and Elliott are taking Millie’s parents to a winery.”

I waited, but that was it. “And if I don’t give you an excuse not to go, Millie’s going to drag you along.”

He shrugged and stared down at his lap.

I thought about my chances of surviving the next sentence, and then I decided to go for it. “Is everything…okay?”

Keme’s head came up slowly.

“I just mean,” I said in a rush, “I know relationships are complicated, and I’m definitely not great at them, but if you ever need to talk…”

I trailed off because, well, his face.

His eyes were huge.

His nose was scrunched up.

His mouth hung open.

“Right,” I mumbled. “Never mind.”

We drove north into Hastings Rock. The day was still gray and foggy, and the first stretch of our drive, through a forest of Sitka spruce and lodgepole pines and thick walls of ferns, was a dark, drippy tunnel. Pretty, yes. Beautiful, actually, especially if you—like me—were into vampires and werewolves and, oh yeah, the wonders of nature. But it didn’t do all that much for my mood.

Hastings Rock, on the other hand, looked like one of those hand-painted postcards: the pleasing asymmetry of the skyline, the picturesque downtown jumble of old Victorian houses and timber-frame businesses, everything decked out for the holidays with an abundance of red and green. You could still see the artificial (but environmentally friendly) snow they’d laid down over the weekend, when Hastings Rock was temporarily turned into a winter wonderland. Even from a distance, it wasn’t hard to tell why tourists flocked here to indulge in the spirit of the season (and in artisanal cheeses, chocolates, and glassware).

Our route took us farther north, past the scenic downtown and toward the industrial side of Hastings Rock. Although most of the town’s income now came from tourists, a few major businesses still operated—some commercial fishing, the timber yard, and the shipping terminal. They were built up along Hastings Bay, which was decidedly less scenic.

We didn’t have to go quite that far. Pirate’s Cove was comfortably settled in a strip mall in one of Hastings Rock’s residential neighborhoods. The entertainment multiplex (or action park, or whatever we were calling it) occupied a large, concrete building that anchored one end of the strip mall. The building itself was painted a dingy gray, but the awning and sign that said PIRATE’S COVE were a little jazzier—there were even some flashing lights in there.

I parked, and Keme said, “When are you going to get your own car?”

“Rude. When are you?”

“Bobby said when he gets a new one, I can buy the Pilot off him.”

“When’s that going to happen?”

Keme smirked. “Bobby didn’t tell you?”

“Bobby tells me everything,” I said—a little haughtily, but I couldn’t help myself. Before Keme could call me on it, I dropped out of the Pilot and headed for the building.

Inside, Pirate’s Cove was more or less what I remembered from similar venues at middle-school birthday parties. It was a large open space full of people, noise, and machines—a perfect cocktail to send my oh-so-mild social anxiety into turbo drive. (Was turbo drive a thing? I refused to ask Keme.) The area where we stood, near the doors, had been given over to a ticket counter, where a girl with braces, glitter strands in her hair, and what appeared to be a genuine gusto for Pirate’s Cove was helping a mom and her daughter—it took me a second glance to recognize Tessa, Millie’s boss from Chipper, and her daughter.

The rest of the entertainment multiplex had been divided up into sections. Closest to us were the arcade games, where lights flashed and bells dinged. A group of high school boys were chasing each other around the machines, laughing manically, apparently trying to swat each other’s hats off their respective heads. Then there was the indoor go-kart track (remember, the whole point of this place was for tourists to visit on those rainy Oregon Coast days), where a surprisingly long line of people waited for their turn. There was a concession stand, and there was a ropes course, and there was—obviously—mini golf. On the course, a tween in tween-sized camo fatigues was jumping, hands in the air, cheering, as another girl—younger, and based on the resemblance, probably her sister—putted her ball into the hole. A buck-toothed boy, hands full of tickets, streaked past us to the prize counter. Two teen girls sat on a table, sharing a slushy and watching the boys who were trying to knock each other’s hats off. The whole place smelled like rubber and the kind of cheese that comes in a bag.

Even with my internal I’m-going-to-scream meter inching up toward the red, I had to admit: I remembered how magical a place like this had felt when I was a kid.

Keme poked me.

“Ow. Why are your fingers so sharp—”

And then I saw Ryan.

He was dressed in khakis, a polo with the Pirate’s Cove logo on its breast, and a Pirate’s Cove baseball cap. With a clipboard in his hands and a radio clipped to his belt, he looked about as managerial as anyone could under the circumstances.

Unfortunately, he saw me at the exact same time. And he turned and ran.

Okay, he didn’t run . But he did…bustle. Like, imagine it’s a hot summer day, and the only thing you’ve wanted all day is ice cream, and your friends made you go to the beach so Bobby could surf, and you see Two Girls and a Scoop (which is the best ice cream truck in the world), but then it starts to pull away, and you know if you run, Keme will make fun of you for the rest of your life.

That kind of bustle.

(Also, that example was completely hypothetical.)

I charged after him.

For the first few seconds, I thought I was gaining on him—Ryan had to slow down when a family of four moved into his path carrying pizza and drinks from the concession stand. But then I had to lurch to a stop to avoid a collision with a pair of Mean Girls who strolled in front of me (they looked like they were twelve years old, and they were terrifying). By that point, Ryan was pivoting to get past an older woman who had stopped to tie a child’s shoes. I made up some of the distance and then had to slam on the brakes when a blinky-eyed dad type suddenly stopped walking in front of me. (He was playing a Switch.) The whole thing might have been slightly embarrassing except for the fact that somehow Keme got stopped by a man in his seventies who—to judge by my brief glance back—wanted directions to the restroom.

Fortunately, I turned my attention forward again in time to see Ryan slip into the laser tag arena.

The path ahead of me cleared.

I sprinted after him.

And a brick, uh, craphouse of a teenager stepped in front of me.

“Excuse me, sir. You have to check in at the desk.”

Ryan had already disappeared down the corridor to the laser tag arena.

“Okay, fine,” I said, patting myself down for my wallet. “How much is it?”

“Oh, you have to have one of our guest cards from the front desk,” he said. “You pay them, and they give you a card, and then you bring the card here—”

“Can’t I pay you?” I asked, leaning to look past him. “Cut out the middleman?”

“No, sir. See, you have to have a card, and then that card is yours, and you pay—”

“Yes, yeah, I get it. Look, I don’t even want to play , I just need to talk—”

I tried to sneak around him.

It didn’t work well.

“Sir,” the gargantuan teenager said, “you need to go to the front desk and—”

“Hey Randall,” Keme said. He held out a plastic card with the Pirate’s Cove logo on it. “For both of us.” And then, to me, in the unmistakable tone of someone who suspects he’s going to be cheated: “You’re paying me back.”

“Oh, hey, Keme,” the giant—apparently Randall—said. “Cool.”

He scanned the card. And then he waved us through.

We ran down the corridor. It forked, so Keme went right, and I went left. When the corridor turned again, it opened into the waiting area, where the blasters (AKA the guns) and the vests and the headbands were racked and charging. I didn’t bother to put on a vest or a headband—those are the dumb parts of the game, because that’s where you get shot.

I did, however, help myself to a blaster.

Did I need it?

No.

Was it the best use of my time?

No.

But listen: it was freaking laser tag.

Armed, I ran through another opening and into the arena itself. I glimpsed a pimply girl in a Pirate’s Cove polo who was waving her arms and calling, “Mister! Mister!”

I kept running.

The arena was a maze; it was designed to be that way. It was also pure chaos. Teens and preteens sprinted around me, screaming and blasting. Sound effects blared overhead. Each room was different from the next—one designed to look like an urban wasteland, another that might have been a factory or a warehouse, and then a futuristic one that could have come from some really bad 1970s sci-fi. The lights were dim, and everywhere, black lights lit up white and neon and fluorescent strips. It smelled powerfully like an overworked fog machine—and like overheated children. One little girl, who couldn’t have been more than seven, had me in her sights and was shrieking as she unloaded shot after shot into me.

I shot her back, and she screamed with excitement as her vest flashed.

Like I said, it’s laser tag. No mercy.

I was struggling against a current of flushed and sweaty tweens, working my way through what was someone’s idea of a medieval castle, when I glimpsed Ryan. He was trying to open a door hidden in one of the walls, glancing frantically from side to side. I cleared a cloud of boys who clearly hadn’t been giving it their all in eighth-grade PE, and a path opened up for me.

Ryan must have caught my movement out of the corner of his eye, though, because he spun around, a gun in one hand.

It was not a laser tag blaster.

It was a pistol, and it was matte black, and it was compact. In the dark, I couldn’t make out any more details, but what I saw was enough. I slowed to a stop.

“Go away,” Ryan said. “If I talk to you, they’re going to kill me too!”

Behind Ryan, movement drew my attention. A shape was wriggling through one of the arrow slits in the castle wall. It was weirdly gratifying to see that Keme, too, had stopped long enough to pick up one of the blasters. It was also terrifying to know that Keme was walking straight into danger. I tried to signal him, but I didn’t want Ryan to notice him. If Keme saw my tiny gesture, he didn’t acknowledge it.

“Who’s going to kill you?” I asked to fill the growing silence. “What’s going on?”

“Just leave me alone!”

“Ryan, who are you scared of? I can help you. I mean, not me personally, but Bobby—”

As Ryan opened his mouth—he was apparently unimpressed by my offer to get my boyfriend to help—Keme snuck up behind him. In one smooth movement, Keme brought the blaster back like a baseball bat. And then he swung.

The blaster struck Ryan in the back of the knee. Ryan lurched. His hand holding the gun moved forward, and the pistol kicked in his hand.

Something hit me in the chest.

Ryan crashed to the floor, and Keme stood over him, blaster raised like he might do some more clubbing.

Pain was starting to spread through me.

My only clear thought was: He shot me.

I looked down.

There, caught in the fold of my tee, was a little plastic airsoft round.

“How did you know it was airsoft?” I asked Keme. “How did you know that wasn’t a real gun, and he wouldn’t kill me?”

To judge by the expression on Keme’s face, that question hadn’t occurred to him.

Then he shrugged.