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Prologue
I Changed My Face
I didn’t see the note at first.
Maybe it was because I was too busy slinging bags of groceries into the back of Timothy, my lime green BMW Roadster, before the threatening skies overhead decided to open up. Or maybe it was because my butt was seriously dragging after a ten-hour day of telling people how to clean up the messes they optimistically called their lives. Or maybe I was just getting dull-witted in my old age.
For all I knew, twenty-eight was the new ninety.
Some days it felt like it was.
I still had one leg hanging out of the car when I finally saw it. Caught between thoughts of Chicago’s crappy summer weather and what to make for dinner, the piece of paper stuck under the windshield wiper didn’t register at first. When it did, my brain initially dismissed it as a flyer. God knew I’d placed a metric ton of those stupid things on cars when my father was first trying to build up his House of Enlightened Greatness. No doubt this was karma’s way of hitting me with all the flyers it could muster.
But…
This was no flyer.
EDEN STEADFAST, YOU DUMB BITCH, YOU’RE FIRST. THEN YOUR BULLSHIT-ARTIST FATHER WILL MEET YOU IN HELL.
Shit.
In an instant I had my phone in hand, the camera app open as I sprang out of the car, my heart pounding against my sternum. Thunder rumbled overhead, low and ominous, as I slowly swiveled in place, making sure I got every car in the parking lot and zooming in on ones that might have an occupant in them. If there was someone out there who cared enough about my existence to threaten it, they’d probably want to see me get all hysterical over their cheap, Grade-B movie threat.
Too bad I didn’t do hysterical.
Focused as I was on the phone’s screen, I jolted when a pickup I’d just filmed suddenly screeched out of its parking space. A heartbeat later I ripped the note off the windshield, hopped into my car and barreled after the truck just as the sky spat out its first fat drops. Suddenly rain gushed down with a vengeance, like someone had full-blasted a firehose right on the car’s windshield.
It didn’t matter.
Nothingmattered except catching up with that damn truck.
Rage rumbled inside me like a sleeping monster stirring to life, and I ground my teeth in a snarl as I pushed my foot down on the gas pedal. Whoever dropped me that love letter undoubtedly imagined I’d be frightened. Too soft and terrified to move. Helpless prey.
As if.
I wasn’ttheirprey. They weremine.
I just had to catch them.
All things being equal, Timothy was an awesome car—hugged the curves even when pushing ninety, with a silhouette that turned the heads of everyone from toddlers to octogenarians. But in a sudden, Lake Michigan-fed summer thunderstorm that turned streets into rivers, he was less than his best. Heroically I pushed him on, doing my damnedest to ignore the rooster tail of water arcing off Timothy’s front end as I kept my eyes glued on the truck in front of me. For a second I thought I’d lost them through the sheets of torrential rain. Then I heard an angry blaring of a horn, and I realized they had cut someone off, taking a right-hand turn from the center lane to head down a nondescript residential road.
Ha.
Like a trick like that would shake me. I’d follow them right to the gates of hell and not even blink. And then I’d…
What?
What was I going to do?
I needed a plan. Nothing was worse than being the proverbial dog that caught the car. If whoever was in that truck legitimately wanted me dead, chasing after them and being lured to a remote location was probably the last mistake I’d ever make.
But this jerk was a note-writer. The odds were strong that they got off on the fear and chaos their notes inspired, rather than actually following through on the threat. They enjoyed bullying those they considered weaker than them.
That was fine. I enjoyed bullies, too.
I ate bullies up with a spoon.
But I needed a plan, because at the moment there was no spoon in sight.
