Page 35 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

‘I’m just going to say sorry to Niamh for contacting her. I—’ Antoinette reaches over and grabs my phone from me. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Stopping you from messaging her again,’ she says. ‘She’s clearly told you not to contact her. I think you should respect that.’

I sigh and close the app, throwing my phone down.

Of course she’s right.

‘I just don’t know what else to do to find him,’ I say, my jaw tensing up with frustration.

‘Well, there’s one thing we could try,’ Antoinette says, almost shyly.

I turn and stare at her. ‘What?’

‘It’s just something I saw on Reddit and it got me thinking.’

‘What?’ I ask again.

‘Have you thought about hiring a private detective?’

She’s a genius.

Seriously.

Why haven’t I thought of this?

Antoinette is confused by my silence. ‘I mean, obviously we don’t have to,’ she says. ‘If it feels like we’re cheating or something?’

‘No, no,’ I say. ‘It’s brilliant. A private detective.’

Of course.

I grab my phone. ‘I’ll get looking for someone.’

Antoinette flushes. ‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I think I’ve already found someone.’

God.

I love having her here.

It’s like having a murder-admin assistant.

20

Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, Los Angeles

‘Travis Truman. He even sounds like a Hollywood PI,’ Antoinette had said on the way over to the office address. ‘It’s like super retro and hard-boiled, isn’t it?’ It’s the next day and we’re on our way to meet a PI Antoinette found.

After promising the Uber driver that we will indeed have a good day, Antoinette and I make our way into the juice bar. This isn’t going to go well. What sort of whack PI doesn’t even have his own office? Inside, it’s suspiciously quiet. The only customers are two women in yoga pants, chatting over mason jars filled with green liquid. And a man who looks to be in his early thirties. He’s poring over a laptop when I walk in but his eyes shoot up to meet mine. He’s dressed in a pair of battered-looking Levi’s and a blue T-shirt with Ramones written on it in white. I can make out a pair of distressed Converse peeking out from underneath the table he’s sitting at. But the thing that strikes me most about Travis Truman is how disturbingly handsome he is. He has very dark hair that looks prone to curling at the slightest threat of moisture and very dark eyes that could be black but I’m not sure that’s possible. Are black eyes a thing? I must google this later. He gives me a half smile and looks at me quizzically, his eyes seeming to be asking me, is it you I’m waiting for?

‘Travis Truman?’ I ask, my voice barely more than a whisper.

‘Yes, that’s me,’ he whispers back with a grin on his face. ‘Why are we whispering?’

This makes me laugh. ‘I literally have no idea. It just felt appropriate.’

‘Well, it’s okay to speak at a normal volume,’ he says. ‘It gets hard to hear over the blenders otherwise. You must be …’ He pauses and takes a look at his laptop. ‘Mary-Kate?’

‘And Ashley,’ I hear Antoinette’s voice from behind me. She slips into a chair opposite Travis and holds her hand out. ‘I emailed you yesterday.’