Time seems to fold in on itself in slow motion.
The terror flowing through me is spreading, slow sticky fingers that take over every muscle.
“Who is dead?” I cry out softly.
Oh god.
Who?
Who?
“They were murdered!” she cries, then erupts into even louder sobs. “The guy, he came for dad.”
Oh my god.
“He came for him, we weren’t there,” she goes on in hysterics. “Maggie, he shot them both, they’re dead. Mom and dad are dead.”
“I…” I don’t know what to say, what to feel. Surely this isn’t actually happening. This isn’t happening. This has to be a joke or a misunderstanding or maybe I’m dreaming? I look around me and I just see blurs and colors. I must be dreaming. “Are you…are you sure? Where is Pike?”
Prologue
Maggie
New York City
* * *
“That is the absolute last time I’m trying online dating,” Sam says to me with an exaggerated sigh as she leans back in the couches we’ve taken over in the corner of the bar.
“What happened this time?” I ask her this out of courtesy because I know she’s going to tell me anyway. Plus, Sam is a pro at online dating at this point. It doesn’t matter how many times she says she’s quitting, the next day she’s back in the proverbial saddle, swiping left and right and complaining about dick pics. I should probably note that she doesn’t exactly complain about getting them, it’s just that the dicks in said pics aren’t up to her standards.
“What didn’t happen?” she says, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. “I mean, we just met up for drinks down in the village, which is fine. Super casual, you know? And in person he was a tiny bit more attractive than his picture online.”
“Which pic, the one in his profile or his unsolicited dick pic?” I ask.
“For your information, no dick pics were sent, unsolicited or not. Anyway, so he wasn’t bad looking though I could already tell we didn’t have that easy chemistry I hoped we would. Halfway through the date, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going home with him. Then he showed me his sex playlist.”
I raise my brows. “Sex playlist?”
“Yeah. On his phone. And the music was really good.” She shrugs. “So I slept with him.”
“You’re insane.”
“I know. I know.” She shakes her head before picking up her margarita and leaning over to take a loud slurp of it. “Worst part is, he put it on shuffle and I hadn’t seen the entire list. So when he was going down on me, Never Going to Give You Up came on.”
I burst out laughing. “You were Rick-rolled during sex?”
She nods frantically. “I couldn’t come if my life depended on it! So I said I had to leave and quickly got out of there. Highlight of the night was getting a kebab on the way home. My life is a never-ending cycle of bad decisions and falafel.”