Page 33 of My Killer Blind Date

Liam laughs. ‘Sounds insufferable.’

‘Yeah. Anyway, shoveling snow is kind of fun.’

‘Agreed.’

‘The weirdest part is how little they seemed to value staying close to me.’

‘Their loss,’ he says with unexpected fervor, squeezing my hand.

I blow out a breath and fling my head back. ‘Ugh. I mean, I can’t be mad at them. It’s their life. Their choice. And I love them, you know?’

‘You can be mad at them even if you still love them.’

‘Yeah, Walt Whitman, we contain multitudes—’ I give him a little dig with my elbow and he chuckles.

‘Didn’t know that was Whitman.’

‘But hey!’ I exclaim, because it’s time to get him talking for a change. ‘Are you on the socials? We should find each other!’

‘I’m not. I mean – I have an account on Insta under a silly name, so I can stalk people, as one does. But I don’t post.’

Stalk people? Shit! Is that how he finds his victims?

‘So who do you stalk? Famous people? Crafty people? Or those accounts with all the cat videos?’ I put ‘crafty people’ in the middle so he doesn’t suspect I mean Kayleigh Aimes, who Instagrammed pics of her whole plushie-making process. Or would it have been better to put it at the end?

‘Mostly my old high school friends,’ he says. We inch forward in the line. I eye the ticket prices – and it’s a testament to my heightened anxiety that I don’t even blink at the $22 per ticket price tag.

‘What about Kayleigh Aimes?’ I blurt out. The second I say her name, my heart starts pounding. I did not plan on saying the name of one of his actual, potential victims. But it’s out there now. ‘Do you follow her? You should! She makes these reaaaaallly cute plushies!’ I bunch my fingers together. ‘Little octopi. Tiny walruses. So cute. All from organic materials!’

‘Name rings a bell …’ His forehead wrinkles. ‘Wait. Isn’t she the one whose body turned up on a beach last year?’

My heartbeat revs up even more.

‘Wait, what?’ I say in my best over-the-top shocked voice. ‘Oh my God! What happened to her?’

‘I haven’t really followed the story. I just saw a headline. I guess her body—’ He winces. ‘Sorry, I don’t want to get too graphic. But it wasn’t pretty.’

‘This is terrible!’ I say, and I don’t even have to fake my distress. ‘Did they catch whoever did it?’

‘Not that I’ve heard.’ His expression darkens and a muscle in his jaw feathers. He looks angry. Almost … scary. ‘I always wonder about the partner in those cases.’

‘She was single.’

Liam’s gaze seems to penetrate my soul. ‘You seem to know a lot about her. But you didn’t know she died?’

My heart skips a beat. Thankfully, the ticket seller is waving us forward.

‘Oh, hey! Our turn!’ I sashay up to the counter, clasping my hands so they don’t shake. ‘Two tickets, please!’

Liam pays, and I happily let him, since this date has already cost me hundreds of dollars in clothing and weapons.

‘So you didn’t follow Kayleigh, then?’ I say as we board a bucket, closing the tiny gate behind us. The bucket sways gently as we take our seats across from each other.

‘No, but headlines about women disappearing always catch my eye.’

A shiver moves up my spine. Of course they’d catch his eye, if he was scouring the news to make sure the stories weren’t reporting anything that led back to him. The bucket lifts; we’re going up. The ground falls away and I grip the railing.

‘Oh? Why is that?’