I lean back into the couch, doing that thing where I’m scoping the crowd but trying not to make eye contact with the wrong guys. And by wrong guys, I mean the ones you have no interest in, ones who take a mere meeting of the eyes to mean something a whole lot more. I don’t know why simply looking at someone means you want to have sex with them but anyway.
My phone vibrates in my purse and I fish it out.
It’s a call from April which is weirder than weird. Maybe she could sense I was talking about her?
But even as I’m about to answer it, the unease in my chest builds and twists and I know this isn’t a matter of her checking in with me and seeing how I’m doing. That’s not like her. Something is wrong.
And usually when something is wrong, Pike or my parents would call me, not her.
My heart races as I press the talk button.
“April?” I ask, plugging my other ear and turning away from the noise of the bar.
Crying. I hear crying on the other end, sobbing, a kind of crying that isn’t born of a teenager getting dumped or bullied, but of something unfathomably worse.
“April? Is this you? What’s wrong?” I ask, trying not to sound panicked.
“Maggie,” she sobs. “Oh my god, oh my god. Maggie, they’re dead!”
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.