Joe Victim: A Thriller

“Two bad people,” he says.

“Two bad people,” she repeats. “Lawyers who were doing bad things.”

“Exactly,” he says. “So the question is the same—does this change things?”

“No,” she says.

“Good,” he says, and leans back into the chair.

“But we’re only after Joe,” she says. “Not any of the cops escorting him. No more lawyers. There’s been too much blood spilled already. Just Joe.”

“Of course,” he says. “The cops are the ones trying to lock him away. They’re on our side.”

“And the cop who came to your door?” she asks. “What did he want?”

“Schroder? Well, he’s not a policeman anymore,” he says, sounding a little cautious. “He just wanted to ask if anybody else had come to mind.”

“Come to mind about what?”

“About suspicious people at the group. I’m not sure who he’s after.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him nobody came to mind.”

She heard their conversation from Angela’s room. She knows Schroder showed him a photograph of her. She knows they spoke about her, they even used her real name. It was probably a copy of the same photograph she found in the back of Schroder’s car, the photograph taken the day Cindy got bookended by two guys at the beach she’d never met before. In that photo Melissa has dark brown hair. That was her natural hair color—well, still is, technically—though these days she dies it black and keeps it short. And of course she wears the wigs. Even long wigs. And for Raphael, her hair is long and black.

“That was it?” she asks.

“Yeah. It was pretty routine,” he says, and she thinks back to last night when Raphael climbed into her car. In their time spent chatting before that, he’d been excellent at concealing the truth. He’d known then she wasn’t who she said she was, and she’s sure he knows it now. “So, how about we go over this plan a few more times? It’s why we’re here.”

She takes another sip of her water and puts it down. “Okay,” she says.

“It shouldn’t change anything,” he says. “At least you know I’ll do it. I’ll pull that trigger.”

Raphael is wrong. It does change everything. Not the fact he killed two lawyers, but the fact he’s lying about his conversation with Schroder. He knows who she is, and now it’s her job to hide that she knows that. It also means she’s going to have to adjust the plan because Raphael is going to adjust it too. It’s a matter of staying ahead—and that’s something she’s always been good at. Only person who’s beaten her since she stopped being Natalie and became Melissa is Joe.

Raphael is a killer, and that side of him is going to be on display on Monday morning, and not just with Joe, but with her too.

Bullet one will be going into Joe.

And bullet two, she is sure of it, will have her name on it.





Chapter Thirty-Four


I end up missing lunch because of my busy schedule with my psychiatrist, with Schroder and my lawyer, and then my psychiatrist again. So by early afternoon my stomach is twisting in knots. Which is when prison guard Adam comes and sees me. He has a sandwich. I’ve missed meals before because of other appointments, and I faced the same problem back then that I’m facing now—you just don’t know what’s in the food that prison guards bring to you, and it’s their job to make sure you get something.

“Bon appétit,” Adam says, which I figure is Latin for Fuck you.

I unwrap the sandwich and peel back the bread. There’s a bunch of pubic hairs between a slice of cheese and a slice of meat, enough of them to knit a jersey for a mouse—which is ironic because the last time Adam brought me a sandwich there actually was a dead mouse in it. I wrap it back up and hand it to Adam, who doesn’t take it.

“It’s either that, Middleton, or go hungry.”

“I’ll go hungry,” I say, just like I went hungry with the Mickey sandwich.

“We’ll see,” he says, and he wanders off, leaving me alone in my cell.