“You fainted, Mr. I’m-Not-Queasy-Around-Blood,” Gary teased.
Bill glanced at me. He saw my leg and then averted his eyes. “You okay, Thin Ice?” Bill asked me.
“Does shelookokay?” Gary grumbled to Bill. “Looks like she went five rounds with a heavyweight.”
I could already feel my chin and eye puffing up, even as Gary cut away the fabric at my thigh to get at the wound.
“I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “You were going to fly Russo to Canada?” I watched as Russo got dragged away to an FBI vehicle and ducked into the back seat.
“Yeah, no. I thought it was strange when this fella asked me about a trip to Canada,” said Bill. “You know, normally I only take tourists on joyriding trips. He was paying all cash, and I thought that was kinda suspicious.”
I nodded.
“So I told Gary about it, and he told Tammy, and Tammy’s husband was talking about the Canceled Killer, ya know? And, well, we thought we’d talk to Oscar about it, and he sent Hector here and the FBI to lay a trap like, because we can’t have no killer on the loose, not in our little town!” Bill shuddered. “But they were all late like,” Bill continued. “So we called Tammy, and she goes, ‘Well, I’ll just go knock on their door!’ And Oscar goes, that’s not safe. But Tammy was closer, so Tammy stops on by with her hot dish, like.”
Unbelievable. Tammy probably saved my life. The knock on the door was the distraction I needed at just the right time.
“And then you show up, bleeding and the like, and Bill fainted like a baby because he’s squeamish about blood,” Gary pointed out.
“I’m not squeamish. I just don’t like it,” Bill said, defensive.
Just then, Oscar’s Lake Sanguis Sheriff SUV peeled into the parking lot. Oscar leapt out, looking pale and disheveled until his eyes clapped on me.
“Ella!” he said and strode over to me.
“Don’t lecture me. I know I—”
But Oscar just pulled me into a lung-crushing hug. “Don’t die,” he said. “Don’t ever die.”
“I won’t,” I told his chest.
He grabbed Jude and pulled him into a side hug.
“If either of you scare me like that again, I swear to God…”
He hugged us harder.
Twenty
The Chicago PD homicide detective was arrested in conjunction with the Canceled Killer murders, but people seem less shocked about his ties to law enforcement and more obsessed with the ripped shirtless photos taken at the gym on his social media account.
—Crime Hivepodcast
Russo, as it turned out, was already under investigation for stalking and kidnapping in Chicago, where he did, indeed, harass a woman after she refused a third date. He broke into her apartment and then kept her captive for five hours. He’d also threatened to kill the man she’d just started seeing and tried to hack into her Spark account. Russo kidnapped Mateo after he found him naked in my shower. He’d knocked the poor kid out and ransacked my trailer looking for the trace tag he’d slipped on me. He never found its hiding spot, though. He managed to carry Mateo out of the Airstream when Mom, Dad, and Olivia went to Pizza Pie.
Then, when he realized I’d spent the night at Jude’s, he plotted to take Jude as well.
Russo had followed me home, renting a house on the other side of the lake the same day I arrived.
I always knew there was an undercurrent of misogyny to the Canceled Killer’s murders, but I never would’ve guessed it wasa man who obsessed about every woman he ever went on a date
with.
“I still can’t believe it was the hot cop,” Olivia said, shaking her head. She took a sip of her hot tea. Mom had made burnt cranberry scones, which sat on the table between us, a tray of blackened lumps. The air in the kitchen hovered somewhere between burnt butter and house fire.
“I always knew there was something wrong with him,” Mom said.
“You did not,” I countered, shifting my elevated bandaged leg on the stool. Thankfully, Russo’s bullet missed all major arteries and bone, with a clean entry and exit wound, but the injury still stung. A big white bandage covered my leg, and I had crutches to help me get around. “You flirted with him.”
