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I tried again. It was right before I pressed the last number that a solid chunk of something connected with the back of my head and knocked me to the floor.
Lights out, curtains down. Darkness swallowed me whole.
14
GABRIEL FERNANDEZ
LeavingTristan alone didn’t sit right with me. Instincts were shouting at me to stay, but a text from Amoura saying she was leaving town later today made me worried I’d lose whatever lead she might have provided me with. If I could unmask the Midnight Chemist, then I’d never have to worry about leaving Tristan alone again. Besides, it would only be for an hour or so until his friends arrived. It was daylight, and my alarm was set. I could open up my phone at any point and look through the exterior cameras just to put my mind at ease.
He’ll be fine, I reassured myself as I pulled up to Amoura’s apartment building, parking at a meter on the tree-lined street. Dusty green pollen covered some of the cars, explaining why my sniffles and sneezes were on overdrive lately. Her apartment building was an older one but well maintained, sporting a fresh paint job and a pressure-washed sidewalk. I went up to the callbox and looked for Amoura’s name, tapping it and waiting for her to pick up. She buzzed me in.
The lobby wasn’t as well maintained as the exterior, with a wall-to-wall mirror that had a couple of cracks in it. The beige-and-red carpet could also use some love, with a few questionable stains by the mailboxes. I walked past the elevators and went into the stairwell, going up a flight of stairs and exiting out into a dimly lit hallway.
A dog yapped from a closed door as I looked for Amoura’s apartment, finding it toward the end of the hall. She didn’t take long to answer. The door opened, revealing a stern-faced woman with long brown hair falling down over her tightly buttoned top. She had two colorful sleeve tattoos and an ear covered in earrings.
“Detective Fernandez?”
I put a hand out and shook hers. “Nice to meet you, Amoura. And thank you for speaking with me about Grayson.”
“Yeah, of course, of course. Come in, come.”
The first thing I noticed walking in was the strong scent of meat being slow-cooked somewhere nearby mixing with the smell of a little box that desperately needed cleaning. Two cats sauntered over from the couch and sat, poised like guards watching me enter.
“Sorry it’s a bit of a mess in here.” She picked up the gray cat and gave it a kiss on the forehead before walking us all over to the black couch. The tabby cat kept a glare on me at all times as I sat on the wooden plank cosplaying as a couch cushion.
“No need to worry about me.” I pulled out my phone and looked at her, taking in Amoura’s curly dark hair and slightly frantic brown-eyed gaze. She looked like she had about a thousand things on her mind all at once, constantly worried about one thing or another. Her nails were chewed up, and her posture—perched on the edge of the couch with her hands on her knees—told me she was ready to shoot up to her feet at any moment.
“Mind if I record the conversation?” I asked.
“What for?” She bristled, her small hands collecting into fists.
“Sometimes I find things listening back to an interview that I may have missed in the moment. Nothing more than that.”
She narrowed her gaze. The gray cat she had brought with us to the couch was now sitting on the armrest, looking out the window to the apartment building directly next store. “It’s not a requirement,” I offered her, not wanting to make her upset and cagey before this even started. That would be a quick way for me to slam directly into a dead end.
I couldn’t do that. Not when the stakes were so high. Amoura could be the one lead that got us to the Midnight Chemist and ended this nightmarish saga. I had to be delicate with this. This was for Tristan, and for Amoura’s brother, and for every other victim this sick fuck had taken.
Tristan…
A pang of worry entered my gut. I looked at my watch. It had been twenty minutes since I had left, so Eric and Noah were probably getting there now. No alerts from my alarm system, either.
Still, the worry gnawed a little harder.
“That’s fine, whatever.” She leaned back, following her cat’s gaze out the window. “It’s not like I’ve got anything to hide.”
I hit the red Record button and set it down on the scratched-up coffee table, next to a stack of magazines that looked like they’d be more at home in a dentist’s office. “First, I’d like to start off with the basics: What kind of person was Grayson? What did he enjoy doing in his free time?”
Amoura kept her gaze out the window. A faint smile twitched onto her lips before disappearing. “He was amazing. The best older brother a little sister can ask for, really. He was smart—a genius, actually. And he was kind andveryprotective. He also had a big heart and a near addiction to meeting new people. It’s probably what caused this all. His drive to socialize and connect.”
“Did he have a big social net?”
“Huge,” Amoura said, eyes turning back to me. There was a haunted look to her. A hollowness around her eyes that I hadn’t noticed earlier. “He worked at a bar in a ritzy hotel in downtown. Knew all the people that would go there. Made friends with everyone, always did. Even when we were kids.”
“The Mandarin, correct?”
“Yes, that’s the hotel.” She scratched at her neck. I noticed her eyes seemed to be darting to a semi-open drawer in the kitchen, an archway in the wall giving me a clear view. “Him and his boyfriend worked there together. That’s where they met.”
My head cracked to the side. “Boyfriend? Grayson was seeing someone?”
