Bex avoided her laptop all night. She unplugged it and tucked it under her bed as if those extra precautions could somehow cut her off from any response GAMECREATOR could have left or any more references to her “celebrity” father.
The next morning, she was poking at the peanut butter sandwich on her plate when Denise walked into the kitchen, her face half-obscured by the cardboard box she was carrying. She dropped it on the table with a slight thud and a puff of dust.
“Okay, Bexy, red or black?”
Bex blinked, half her sandwich in her hand. “What?”
“Red”—Denise peered over the box, shaking a red pom-pom that looked like it had seen better days—“or black?” She shook a similarly shabby black pom-pom in the other hand.
“What is all this stuff?” Bex stood, peering into the recesses of the box. “Is this a boa?”
“Ah!” Denise curled the feathery thing around Bex’s shoulders. “This was from the senior talent show!”
“Senior? Like college senior?”
“High school.” She shook the poms. “Rah, rah, rah! Kill Devil Hills!”
“You went to KDH? Why didn’t I know that?”
Denise shrugged and continued rifling through the box. “This thing has been in the garage for ages. I thought maybe you’d want some of this stuff for the big game.”
“Big game?”
“Big game.” Denise dropped two strands of red and black beads over Bex’s head. “Tonight. Last game of the season. Football?”
Bex slapped a palm to her forehead. “I can’t believe I forgot.”
“I noticed you’ve been kind of distracted lately. Everything okay?”
Bex nodded sharply, her lips pressed together in a tight, bloodless smile. “What else is in here?”
“Just some old school stuff of mine and Michael’s. I thought the KDH stuff might be cool for you to have.”
“Yeah, thanks. So, did you and Michael meet in high school then?”
Denise shook her head. “No, we didn’t meet until after college. It took a while, but I was eventually able to lure Michael out of the city and out”—she spread her arms wide—“to the beach.”
“Oh. What city was that?”
“Raleigh. Seems like a lifetime ago, but it was only about nine years ago that we moved.”
Bex’s face must have blanched because Denise’s eyes darkened and she put a hand on Bex’s arm. “Hon, are you okay? You went kind of pale.”
Bex thought about Michael and Denise in Raleigh, living and breathing and being in the same town where she had lived, where she was Beth Anne Reimer, daughter of the “most prolific serial killer” in North Carolina’s history. They must have seen the papers, probably followed the story on the news. Everyone else did.
They may have even read her name or seen her, Beth Anne Reimer, in that stiff velvet dress, the kid who turned her own father in, the kid who was raised by—and therefore shared the same tainted blood as—a serial killer. Bex’s heart did a double thump when she thought that Michael and Denise could have recognized her from then to now. Something about them living in Raleigh and living with her now tugged at her, ratcheting up the slight tremor of anxiety that never seemed to fully go away.
Bex tried to force a smile, to put some nonchalance into her voice, but it came out high and slightly cracked.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about the game.” She took the pom-poms. “These will be great. I’ll just have to find something school colored to go with them.”
Denise checked her watch. “Well, you’ve got about nine hours until kickoff. Plenty of time to pillage the closet or”—she rifled through her wallet and handed Bex some bills—“the mall. Call the girls. Get out.”
The girls.
That same newsreel spun again in Bex’s head. The girls. The victims. Unseeing eyes; hollowed, dirty cheeks; cracked, once-pink lips now an ugly headstone gray.
“Going to the mall is still a thing, right? Bex?”
Bex snapped back to attention. “The mall? Yeah, totally. I’ll do that. I’ll call Laney and Chels.”
Denise stared at Bex, who remained seated. Then she added, “I’ll call ’em now.”
Bex took the stairs two at a time, her anxiety not lessening even in the relative calm of her bedroom. She yanked out her cell phone and zipped right past Chelsea’s and Laney’s numbers, stopping at the entry for Detective Lieutenant Schuster. Her thumb hovered over the call button, the animated telephone-receiver icon bouncing up and down. What would she say to him? Everyone knew that the Wife Collector was out there, escaped.
Bex thought of the request flashing on her computer screen: GAMECREATOR has requested a private chat…
She hesitantly pushed the button, counting the rings until Schuster’s voice crackled over the line.