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Chapter Twenty-Four

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The Dark Corner

I gulped, forcibly repressing an overwhelming urge to run away screaming. I could hear Dot breathing hard, probably doing enough panicking for the pair of us.

So I dug deep into my wealth of experience at putting up a front and regarded him with what hopefully came across as mild curiosity. “Can I help you with something?”

“Yes, I believe you can.” His smile was creepy, the forced rictus of a game show host. “I realize this might sound terribly forward, but do we know each other?”

“What?” I asked, thinking, What the fuck? Was he toying with us? Could he possibly know that we were connected to Grace? “Um, no, I don’t think so.”

He nodded, pursing his lips. “Yes, I did not think so either. But I couldn’t help but notice you looking at me, and so of course, I wondered. Wouldn’t want to be rude.”

“Nope, never seen you before in my life. Sorry for the confusion.” I took a small step back. “Anyway, we’ve gotta get going. Right?”

A long beat. I shifted to see Dot’s face: She looked absolutely petrified and was wringing her hands like Lady Macbeth in Act V. I put a hand on her elbow and said loudly, “Let’s go see if we can find that snow globe you were looking for. Have a good night.”

“You as well, young lady,” he said.

I steered Dot away, risking a glance back after we’d gone ten feet. Grimes was still planted in place. Hands in his pockets, he rocked on his heels, watching us.

“Be cool,” I said in a low voice.

“Is—is he gone?” Dot asked, voice quaking. “Ohmigod, he knows who we are. He knows what we look like! Oh my God, Amber!”

“It’s okay,” I said, rubbing her arm. I never should have brought her; this was way too much. Too much for me, too, really. Where the fuck is Grace? “We’ll just stay out here where it’s nice and public and keep our distance.”

Dot was shaking. I felt awful. Less than forty-eight hours to her wedding, and I was dragging her through an outdoor pedestrian mall in pursuit of a serial killer? If they handed out awards for worst bridesmaid, I was a shoo-in. “Maybe you should just head back to the car.”

“No,” Dot said, shaking her head vigorously. “I’m not leaving you alone. It’s okay, I’ll be fine.”

I checked back over my shoulder again, only to discover that Grimes had vanished. “Shit!” I muttered, turning around fully to scan the crowd. “He’s gone.”

“What?” Dot whipped around as well, going up on her toes to try to see.

“So this is where the party’s at!” someone exclaimed from behind us. Turning, I recognized Skeeter and Portia. Portia must have come straight from work; she was wearing another immaculate suit. Skeeter, conversely, was dressed in full camouflage attire, which—thanks to the fact that they were six-foot-three—only served to make them more noticeable.

“Oh, thank God!” Dot said. “Reinforcements.”

“Where is he?” Portia asked, peering around us as if we were hiding Grimes somewhere. Gesturing to the leather handle jutting out of her purse, she said, “I brought my best whip. It’ll come in handy if he gets frisky.”

“I still have my pepper spray, too,” Skeeter said, holding up the canister. “This time I promise to wait until we’re sure.”

“Smart thinking,” I said, relieved. There was safety in numbers, and they could stay with Dot and keep her calm. “Listen, why don’t you all find a safe spot to keep watch in case he comes back this way.”

“What are you going to do?” Dot asked, grabbing my arm as if to physically restrain me.

“I’m gonna make sure he doesn’t get past us,” I said, nodding in the direction I thought he’d disappeared. “Tell Grace to head in from the other side, and we can surround him.”

“I’ll come with you,” Portia offered, looking a bit too zealous for my taste.

“Better if I go alone,” I said firmly. “Just stick together and stay in touch by text.”

“You sure about this, hon?” Dot asked nervously. “I think maybe we should stay paired up.”

She wasn’t wrong, but I also didn’t want to paint a target on Portia’s or Skeeter’s backs. Plus, they weren’t exactly subtle. And I was the one with a ridiculous amount of experience dealing with serial killers. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” Struck by inspiration, I opened my phone and said, “I’ll turn on location sharing, okay?”

“Okay,” Dot said, looking mollified.

“Herd him this way, and I’ll show him what happens to scumbags in my town,” Portia said, fondling the whip handle.

“Hopefully that won’t be necessary,” I said. “Just hang tight and watch out for each other.”

With a final nod, I turned and dove into the crowd.

———

I moved forward as quickly as seemed wise, considering the fact that I was chasing a ruthless killer who was probably on the lookout for me. I couldn’t spot the parka or the hat anywhere up ahead, though.

Because he tossed them , I realized, seeing them perched precariously atop an overflowing trash can. I swore aloud, turning in a slow circle. The problem was, there was no shortage of older white guys in the Fremont Street Experience. And the fact that I was too short to see over anyone’s head wasn’t helping. I crossed the corridor from right to left, dodging packs of drunk revelers toting giant drink glasses with straws. They all looked like crazed dolls to me, mouths agape as they tried to take it all in. Someone screamed overhead as they tore past on a zip line. I passed a small stage where scantily clad women were performing a cabaret show to the crowd. Then I dodged a couple of showgirls who fanned themselves with giant feathers, taking turns posing with passersby.

But there was no sign of Grimes. Had he ducked into one of the stores? Maybe gone through one and out a back exit? My stomach plummeted. I’d failed. I’d lost him.

As if on cue, Grace called. I groaned, then slipped in my earbuds, figuring I should keep my hands free. Pressing the button to connect the call, I said preemptively, “He’s gone.”

A long pause and then Grace said, “Explain.”

“Not much to explain. We lost him.” I ran a hand through my hair, irritated. “He must’ve recognized us somehow because he came right up to us. Freaked out Dot pretty badly. Then he was watching us, so we had to give him some space, and he slipped away.”

“Amber,” Grace said, her voice suddenly urgent. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m—” I looked up. “I’m in front of a White Castle, believe it or not.”

“I’ll be right there,” she said. “Do not move. And Amber—”

“Yeah?”

“Stay alert.”

“No shit,” I snorted. “But I’m telling you, he’s gone.”

A long pause. I heard street noise in the background, a car horn. “Perhaps. But there’s another possibility.”

“Yeah?” I asked guardedly. “What?”

“He’s hunting you.”

As I opened my mouth to answer, the glaring screen overhead abruptly went dark and then loudspeakers boomed, “Enjoy Viva Vision, the largest video screen in the world! Tonight, Sha-kir-a, every hour on the hour! Please look up and enjoy the show!”

I wouldn’t be enjoying it, though. Because something suddenly jabbed into my back from behind, and a low voice said, “Hello again, young lady.”

———

“Amber? What’s happening?” Grace said in my ear.

I swallowed hard. My throat had gone so dry it was hard to form words, but I managed to choke out, “Dude, what the fuck?”

“That’s a knife at the base of your spine,” he said conversationally. “If I increase the pressure, you will be paralyzed. So please, do not try anything foolish.”

Overhead, the giant screen had flared to life again. Some sort of music video was playing across it, loud and distracting enough to entirely captivate everyone around us. Even if I screamed or tried to run, it would take precious moments for someone to react. The one time I would’ve actually loved to see a cop, of course there were none in sight.

“What do you want?” I asked, hyperaware of both the sharp object digging into my lower back and the fact that I still had Grace on the line. “Money? My wallet’s in my back pocket, you can have it. Not much cash, but you can use my cards. I won’t even cancel them.”

“I’m not a common criminal.” He actually had the audacity to sound indignant. “I would simply prefer to have a conversation somewhere a bit more private.”

I was already shaking my head. “No thanks. I’m good right here.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.” The tip of the knife pierced the skin of my lower back and I yelped, but the music was blasting too loudly for anyone to hear. “Come along, now.”

“It’ll be okay,” Grace murmured in my ear. “I’m close. I can see you.”

I surreptitiously ran my eyes over the crowd. “Where are we going?” I asked, probably too loudly.

“To satisfy my curiosity. I would very much like to find out why you and your friend were following me. Where is that captivating redhead, by the way?”

“She took off,” I said, nauseated by his description of Dot. I never should’ve let her come; thank God she was safe with Portia and Skeeter. “You freaked her out.”

A low chuckle. “Ah, well. I suppose you’ll have to do.”

The way he said that made my stomach turn. Unlike Dot, I didn’t know much about Gregory Grimes. I’d seen a documentary about him a while back but had been pretty stoned at the time, and it hadn’t seemed like information that I’d need to access at any point. Just goes to show you, right? But I seemed to remember he had a bit of a Dahmer kink, eating parts of his victims. I swallowed hard.

Grace better be pretty fucking close because I had no intention of joining the menu.

“That way, please,” he said, nudging me toward the main exit on my left.

“It’s okay,” Grace said in a hushed voice. “Just do what he says.”

I hesitated but then started walking. He kept one hand on my shoulder, the other held the knife against my spine. Consequently, we edged forward in an odd stutter step. It only took a couple minutes for us to emerge on the main street in front of the Fremont Street Experience. He motioned left and said, “This way, if you please.”

At least now I knew where Grace’s stiff formality came from. I shuffled forward, heart pounding, drawing short, shallow breaths. Every instinct was screaming at me to run. I’d been practicing, after all, and Grimes was much older, probably not in peak condition after decades of incarceration. Should I just bolt?

As if he sensed what I was thinking, the pressure of the knife increased and he whispered, “I would strongly advise against testing me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I choked out. A bachelorette party passed by, shrieking and squealing, the bride-to-be flaunting a giant tiara made out of vibrators. Which was the sort of thing Dot should be doing tonight. Well, not exactly that—it wouldn’t be her style. But she should be relaxing and enjoying herself, getting ready for her wedding. Instead, she was stricken with terror in a pedestrian mall, and one of her bridesmaids was on the verge of being skewered.

Well, fuck that. I raised my chin. Grimes was just another murderous bully, and I was definitely an expert on those. Conversationally, I said, “That prison bus crash looked pretty gnarly. How’d you get away?”

A long pause. He was guiding me along a nearly empty side street that flanked the White Castle. That was the weird thing about Vegas: It was amazing how fast you could go from fighting through a crowd of people to being utterly alone. “So you know who I am.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “You’re pretty famous.”

“Am I?”

Was I mistaken, or was that a note of pride in his voice? Keep him distracted. “Definitely,” I said. “I mean, I wasn’t even born when they locked you up, and I’ve heard of you. That’s pretty impressive.”

A low chuckle, close to my hair. I could feel his breath along the nape of my neck as he said, “Well, that is gratifying.”

We came up to a service alley that ran behind the Fremont Street businesses. It was filled with dumpsters and not much else.

“Turn in here, please,” he said.

“What, down this alley?” I asked, pausing at the mouth of what pretty much screamed “Murder Alley.” At a glance, I could see a half dozen spots where he could gut me like a fish and leave my corpse to be found later—probably much later. Where the fuck is Grace? Is she still listening, or did she hang up? “Uh, really?”

“Yes. Proceed.” He jabbed me again.

“Ow! Jesus, stop poking me with that thing.” If I survived this, my lower back was going to be a mess. Reluctantly, I shuffled into the alley. It felt like it was swallowing me every time we slipped into the shadows between floodlights. I swallowed hard against the dryness in my throat. Keep him talking. “So how did you escape?”

“I have always been uniquely able to recognize and seize opportunities,” he said.

That’s one way of putting it. “So you saw an opportunity to escape and took it. Then decided to come here? Why? If I were you, I would’ve headed to the border. Over to Mexico and gone.”

“Of course you would have,” he said disdainfully. “The act of a coward. But I had other business to attend to.”

“Business?” I said casually. “Like what?”

“You’re aware that my son, Gunnar, was killed here last spring? At the very motel where I saw you the other night, in fact.”

Shit . So he’d stuck around to witness the mayhem that ensued after Gina freaked out. “Oh, right,” I said casually. I watched the life leave his eyes , I wanted to say, but given the circumstances, that was probably a bad idea. “I guess I did hear something about that.”

“The information I was able to obtain regarding his demise was terribly limited,” Grimes said, as if we were discussing the weather. “So I thought I would come see for myself.”

“Makes sense,” I said, nodding. “So now that you’ve seen it, are you planning to head out?”

He issued a low chuckle that made the hair on the back of my neck spring up. “I’m afraid my business here has not yet concluded. I have reason to suspect that my daughter is currently in the area. Perhaps you know her?”

I shook my head vigorously. “Nope, definitely not.” I wondered how much of this Grace was picking up through the earbuds—hopefully all of it. Where is she?

“Ah, well. Shame. You see, I’ve been looking forward to our reunion for quite some time now.”

We were about halfway down the alley, and there was still no sign of Grace. Glass crunched as I stepped on the remains of a broken bottle. I was starting to feel desperate; I very much doubted he intended to let me walk out the other side. No, whatever he had planned would happen right here. I never should’ve let Grace talk me into playing along, never mind letting him bring me somewhere so isolated. At least back in the mall, I could have started screaming and people would have reacted. Here, I was on my own.

So. Fight or flight?

As if it was even a question. Grimes had at least fifty pounds on me, and I’d never been much of a scrapper; my usual MO was to talk myself out of sticky situations, not start throwing punches. And I doubted I’d be able to con a serial killer. It certainly hadn’t worked with the other two.

Run it was. I sucked in a giant breath and shifted my weight slightly forward on the balls of my feet, the same way I started every morning.

And then I heard it—the sound of someone walking on broken glass.

I spun around.

Grace was standing right behind her father, arm raised, holding a hypodermic syringe. She looked frozen and wore an expression I’d never seen on her before.

Absolute, abject terror.

“Grace, do it!” I yelled.

Grimes drew himself up to full height and glared down at her, thundering, “Grace Anne, how dare you raise a hand to Father!”

Before I could react, he grabbed me and yanked me close to his chest, pressing the knife to my throat. My heart sank— shit, I should have run. He growled, “You choose this over me?”

“Grace, seriously, what the fuck?” I shouted. “Do something!” I could feel the blade against my neck, a trickle of blood sliding down as he increased the pressure. He was going to slit my throat, and Grace was just going to stand there and watch him do it. Her eyes were weirdly glassy, and she looked…smaller, somehow. Reduced.

Then she blinked, and her eyes cleared. Her jaw hardened as she stepped toward us. Grimes dragged me back, saying, “Stay right where you are, young lady. Any closer, and I will gut her.”

“She’s my kill,” Grace said in a hard voice I didn’t recognize at all; it was like another person had stepped in and taken over her body. Christ , I thought. This again .

I felt his grip loosen. Okay , I amended. Not bad. String him along, distract him, give me a chance to run…not ideal, certainly, but I can work with this .

“So this is not your friend?” Grimes asked.

Grace snorted. “As if I ever required friends. It’s good to see you, Father. Now give her to me.”

I couldn’t see his face, but the knife pressed more insistently against my throat. I blinked back tears. I really did not want to die in an alley behind a White Castle. “I think not,” he said, his voice so close to my ear I could practically taste his breath. “Why don’t we take her with us? My car is close by.”

“That’s not how I work.” Grace stepped forward and looked directly into my eyes. “I’ve been hunting this one for a while now. Months, in fact.”

“Have you?” He chuckled. “That sounds unnecessarily complicated.”

Grace shrugged. “You work your way; I work mine.”

I couldn’t get a read on what she wanted from me, so I tried to play along as best I could. “You’re both fucking crazy.”

Grace rolled her eyes—that, at least, was a gesture I was familiar with. “I’d hardly take advice from someone so naive.”

“Naive?” I scoffed, eyes narrowing. “You know what? You can go to—”

Before I could finish the sentence, Grace stepped right up to me, practically nose to nose. I felt a prick in my stomach and thought, What the fuck?

She stepped back and tossed aside the hypodermic needle.

“Sloppy,” her father said, a note of disappointment in his voice. “They’ll find that.”

“She’s a former junkie,” Grace said. “They’ll assume it’s an overdose. Besides, I always wear gloves.” She held up a hand and waggled her fingers.

“Impressive,” Grimes said.

“Yes, well. Gunnar was too flamboyant. That’s how he got caught.”

“Your brother did always tend toward the dramatic,” he agreed, wrinkling his nose. “Perhaps this is better.”

“Of course it is. I’ve doubled his body count, and no one’s the wiser. Put her over there, against the dumpster,” she ordered. “Then we should leave.”

My vision was already starting to blur. I tried to protest that I wasn’t a junkie, never had been, but my tongue was thick and my eyelids were starting to droop.

“No—” I gasped weakly, but my limbs had gone floppy and I couldn’t do anything anymore.

Grimes lowered me against the nearest dumpster with surprising gentleness. He positioned me like a doll, arms dangling and legs sprawled out in front of me. “Please,” I slurred again.

Grace hunkered down in front of me. I expected her to apologize, or to suddenly spin on him; this had to be part of some convoluted plan, right? She wasn’t really killing me. She wouldn’t.

Would she?

She lifted my chin so I was forced to meet her eyes. “I called you naive because your girlfriend is not who she appears to be.”

“I know,” I choked out. “Conning me?”

Grace cocked her head to the side. “Yes.”

Even through the molasses seeping throughout my brain, things clicked into place. I think I’d known for a while; I just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

But it turns out Grace wasn’t done kicking me while I was down. Leaning in again, she added, “Were you also aware that she’s working with your parents?”

I stared at her. That couldn’t possibly be true, could it? I pictured my mom and Kat, their heads together as I came into the room… Shit .

She patted my leg and said, “I’m truly sorry, Amber. But it had to end this way.”

I could only watch as Grace got to her feet and turned. She and her father walked together toward the mouth of the alley, then disappeared. My mouth opened and closed like a fish. I tried to say something, but my brain was floating away, taking my body with it.

Suddenly, the effort required to keep my eyes open became unmanageable. As they drifted shut, I thought, That bitch.