Todd Strasser - Kill You Last

Whit touched the back of his head again. “You wouldn’t have any ice, would you?”

“Yes. Be right back.” I went down to the kitchenette and put some ice in a plastic bag. When I got back to the photo studio, Whit was aiming his flashlight at the cabinets. I gave him the bag, which he pressed gently against his head.

“Thanks,” he said. “Guess we better start looking.”

That caught me by surprise. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Believe me, it’s not the first time I’ve had my bell rung.”

“Football?”

“Low doorways. I’m always banging my head.” He slowly pushed himself up to his feet.

“Shouldn’t we do something about what just happened? I mean, call the police or something?”

“And say what? That we were breaking in and I got beaned by the person who’d broken in ahead of us?”

“We didn’t break in,” I said. “I have a key.”

“And when they ask what we were doing here in the middle of the night?” he asked, crossing to the first file cabinet.

I didn’t have an answer for that.

“Whoever it was is gone,” Whit said as he pulled open a cabinet and shone his flashlight inside. “All we’d be doing is drawing attention to ourselves. I’m supposed to be writing stories, not making myself the subject of them.”

The cabinet was filled with light reflectors, filters, and colored gels-but no files. We started to look in other cabinets, but they were also filled with photographic equipment.

“What made you think your dad kept files in here?” Whit asked.

“I’ve seen them,” I said, swinging the flashlight around the studio.

“Maybe he brought them in from the office,” Whit said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. My flashlight beam swept the walls and stopped on two large storage cabinets mounted high up. We found a ladder, and I climbed up and looked. At first it appeared that the cabinets were filled with backdrops and rolls of colored paper. I was about to give up when something told me to shove things out of the way and see what was behind them.

Bingo! In the back of the cabinets were cardboard boxes. When I opened one, I found files inside it. There were half a dozen boxes, and I started handing them down to Whit.

A few moments later we were sitting on the studio floor, reading files with our flashlights. Unlike the disorganized mess in the office, these files were orderly. The first three boxes were filled with purchase orders for head shots and makeup and other fees. There were hundreds of them, almost all for jobs in small cities in a radius of about a hundred miles from Soundview-Hartford, Springfield, Albany, Binghamton, Allentown, Wilmington, Trenton, and more. All of them girls who’d placed their dreams in my father’s hands.

It was disheartening. Not just because of the money Dad had taken from them, but the dreams he’d stolen and false hopes he’d perpetrated. And the dishonesty bordering on outright theft. Pulling up purchase order after purchase order, I couldn’t help wondering if the whole thing hadn’t been one big scam from start to finish.

My BlackBerry vibrated. It was Mom, probably calling to say there was school tomorrow and she wanted me home. I didn’t answer. Hardly a minute passed before a text arrived, this time from Roman: WRU?

I texted back: Cnt Tlk, and continued looking at the files. Whit stood up. “Just gonna get some more ice,” he said, and left the studio.

I finished one box and started the next, expecting to find more purchase orders. But this one contained a few dozen head shots. Why, I wondered as I pulled up photo after photo, were these head shots here instead of in the files in Janet’s office with all the others? It seemed odd until I glanced at one, started to move to the next, then froze.

I went back and looked again.

Ashley Walsh…

“Oh my God,” I muttered.

“You find something?” Whit asked as he returned holding a new bag of ice to the back of his head.

“Uh, no, something else. I mean, nothing. Not important. Sorry.”

Whit scowled at me, but I started thumbing through the files again, pretending everything was fine. Meanwhile, my thoughts were churning. So it wasn’t just girls who lived a hundred miles away. They could live right here in town. Besides Ashley, how many more were from Soundview High?

My BlackBerry vibrated again. It was Mom, and I knew without answering that she wanted me home. I turned to Whit. “I have to go.”

“It’s okay.” He turned back to the files.

“You have to go, too.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“You can’t be here without me.”

A surprised blink. “You…don’t trust me?”

“It’s not that. It’s just that if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be here right now. I feel responsible.” I girded myself for the argument I expected from him about how important it would be to my father that we keep looking for information about Jane/Janet. So I was surprised when Whit said, “Okay.”

When we left, I made sure the back studio door was firmly locked. A chilly breeze swirled around the parking lot, and I hugged myself to stay warm. Whit and I faced each other in the dark.

“How’s your head?” I asked.

He touched the back of his skull and winced. “Pretty tender. But it’ll be okay. A couple of Tylenols, and I should be able to sleep.”

I glanced at the back door. “I thought you were going to argue about having to leave.”

“I was tempted, but I understand where you’re coming from. It’s your dad’s place, and you don’t want strangers going through his things.”

I felt a scowl cross my face. Whit saw it and asked, “What?”

“It’s funny. I mean, I hardly know you, but you don’t feel like a stranger.”

He tilted his head curiously, but in the dark, it was difficult to read his expression. Even more puzzling to me was why I felt that way.

Suddenly, a pair of headlights swung into the parking lot.

Whit and I were illuminated.

And blinded.

Our only escape route blocked.

The car’s door swung open, and someone got out. Still blinded by the headlights, I couldn’t see who it was. My heart thudded hard in my chest.

“Hey.” The voice was friendly and unexpectedly familiar.

“Romy?” I shielded my eyes against the glare and felt lightheaded with relief. “Turn off the lights. You’re blinding us.”

“Oh, sorry.” She reached into the car and cut the headlights.

It took a moment to readjust to the dark. “What are you doing here?”

“Your mother called,” Roman said. “You told her you were going to my house, so I didn’t know what to say, and then she pretty much knew anyway that you weren’t there.”

There was something odd about the way she was speaking and how she kept glancing at Whit.

“So…you decided to come look for me?” I asked.

“First I texted you, but you texted back you couldn’t talk, and then I got worried that maybe you were in some kind of trouble.”

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

“Just a lucky guess. Like, where else would you be?” Roman said.

I found that hard to believe. Meanwhile, she kept glancing at Whit, so I introduced them.

“I’ve read your stories in the Snoop, ” Roman said. “They’re really good.”

Whit thanked her, and she turned to me again. “So what’s going on? What’re you doing here?”

I didn’t know how to answer. Besides, I’d just realized something. There was one sure way she could have known Whit and I were here-if she’d been here first. Had she been the one who’d slid the plastic into the doorjamb, hit Whit over the head, and run out? What better way to divert suspicion than to return and act like she didn’t know what was going on?