Page 73 of My Killer Blind Date

Holy shitballs.

Zoe Dawson.

Right there in black and white.

My lungs are suddenly unable to inflate.

I open the messaging thread and scroll to the top, my pulse thundering in my ears. It starts in late November of last year.

Liam: Hey! What’s up? Surviving the cold snap?

Zoe: Hey handsome. Sure am. I happen to have a slanket.

Liam: No way! I always see ads for those. Worth it?

Zoe: Absolutely. Also, you mention tattoos in your bio – care to share what and where?? 👀

It continues in a chatty vein – no time to read them all. I scroll down feverishly until the last message. From the day Zoe disappeared.

Liam: Just confirming tonight at Wine & Thistle

Zoe: Confirmed! See you soon. I hope you’re prepared for a thorough inspection of your tattoos – a girl has to make sure they’re real. I’ll be wearing red. 👿

And then, the messages end.

I’m not just sick to my stomach, but everywhere, like my actual skin wants to vomit too.

Proof.

I’m so fucking mad at myself. Convincing myself that just because the meat bags were beef, and he had no deep freezer, it couldn’t be him? Fuck! That’s not rational! He could have a secondary cabin! Or a storage unit!

I hear his footsteps outside the door and practically fling his phone back on to his nightstand.

‘G’night,’ he says with a dorky smile on his face. ‘You’re nice. This is nice.’ Then, he tucks in, and within seconds, his heavy breathing tells me he’s out.

I sit up in the dark, knees gathered close to my chest, pulse racing. What do I do? Wake him, confront him?

No. That could be incredibly dangerous. Even if I grabbed my stun gun beforehand, he’s so much stronger, not to mention, we’re in a remote location. Would anyone hear my screams for help?

I could look for his car keys and leave now, alone. Yes. That’s smart.

I creep out of bed and open his nightstand. No keys there. Are they in his wet jeans from earlier? No, we tossed the wet stuff in the dryer – he has to have moved them. I creep upstairs and use my phone flashlight to look around. Not on the kitchen counter, or in the drawer. There aren’t that many places to hide keys, but their location is not obvious.

Also, I should think this through better. If I leave with his car, couldn’t he have me charged with theft? Wouldn’t that be ironic, if no one could ever prove he was the murderer, but I got slapped with jail time for fucking grand theft auto …

The actual logical thing to do right now is to stay up here on the main floor, away from him. Wait until morning. Pretend everything’s fine when he wakes up so that I don’t trigger any kind of murderous rage on his part. Then, get out of here and back to the city asap. The instant my cell has service again, I’ll call Barnett. Now he won’t be able to ignore me. He’ll have to bring Liam in.

I’m shaking. I’m about to have closure. But it’s not the closure I wanted.

All my psychologizing from the past week about failure and letting go and pursuing my fucking dreams feels so stupid now. Why the hell would I think that a leap of faith would work for me? It’s never worked before. Maybe it works for people like George, but I’m different. At least my bad boyfriends from before were just cheaters. Dating a killer is a new fucking low.

I let myself feel shitty about the loan too, because why not. I was being all glass-half-full at first, but screw that. The microloan is only half of what I need. Who am I kidding? I’ll never save fifty grand. I’m barely keeping up with my bills.

Outside the windows, the moon is reflecting on the lake, making a long, glimmering trail of white to the horizon. I look at it for a while, too angry with myself to even feel sad. I am never again looking at a man’s forearms.

After a while, I grab a fuzzy throw, wrap it around myself and lie on the couch. But I already know I won’t sleep a wink.

Chapter Twenty-five