Todd Strasser - Kill You Last

Ashley crossed her arms tightly and glanced back at the lunch line, as if she was eager to go. “That’s all you wanted to know?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, okay, great. See ya.” She started back across the cafeteria.

As I watched her go, I thought about her last question. Was that all I wanted to know?

That’s when I realized I’d asked the wrong questions.

I was in the library last period when I got a text from Gabriel: C my txt last nite?

I’d totally forgotten. The previous night, his text had come just a moment before the e-mail threatening to kill me. No wonder I’d lost track. Now I texted back: Yes. Sorry. TTLY distracted.

Gabriel: C U After schl?

Once again the memory of the party came back. How frustrated he’d gotten when I hadn’t been willing to go somewhere alone with him. And how I’d felt bad about misleading him and had given him that kiss.

Roman and Whit had both warned me that he might be dangerous. But they’d never spent any real time with him. While he did seem narcissistic and lacking in empathy, he didn’t strike me as particularly threatening. Besides, it wasn’t like I could invite either of them along if I agreed to meet him.

And there was still a chance he might know something that would help me prove Dad’s innocence. So I texted: OK.

He wrote: PUUP?

No, I thought. I might not have believed he was dangerous, but I’d told myself not to take any chances with anyone, and that included getting in his car or going anywhere alone with him.

I wrote: Meet SMWHR?

He wrote: WHR?

It was nice out, so I suggested the park near the Sound. On a day like today, it would be filled with people.

We agreed to meet at the wooden gazebo on the rocks by the water’s edge. When I got there, Gabriel was sitting on a bench.

He gave me a friendly smile. “Hey, how’s it going?”

“Okay, I guess.” I sat down beside him. The sun warmed my face. Its rays glinted off the water. Sailboats rocked at their moorings. “I mean, not great. You heard the news about that girl this morning, right?”

Gabriel nodded. “Terrible.”

I was relieved to hear him say that. Maybe he wasn’t so self-absorbed after all. Maybe all that glancing at his reflection was just insecurity. You had to give people the benefit of the doubt. Especially when they were as gorgeous as Gabriel.

“It’s hard to believe,” he went on. “These girls signed with us, and now they’re turning up dead?”

“Just one,” I reminded him.

He slid his eyes at me, as if to ask if I really believed the other two girls hadn’t met the same fate.

“I know,” I admitted. “You have to think that whatever happened to her happened to the others. I’m just praying I’m wrong.”

“And maybe it’s still all some kind of incredibly weird coincidence,” he said. “Like maybe it has nothing to do with their being your dad’s clients. Maybe there’s something else that links those girls that no one’s even thought of yet. The problem is, nobody knows. And nobody’s going to know until they know, you know?”

I felt a slight and unexpected smile grow on my lips.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing. I completely agree. It’s just all those knows, you know?”

He shot me a self-deprecating grin and said sheepishly, “Welcome to my huge fifty-word vocabulary.”

I chuckled, once again glad he’d asked me to meet him. It was a relief to see his charming side.

A seagull landed on the rocks and cocked its head as it studied us with one eye.

“Take a walk?” Gabriel suggested.

“Sure.”

We started on a path along the shore. Ahead was a low brick structure-the bathhouse of the small beach club for town residents open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Now that the season was over, town workers were preparing it for the winter. From the cans and drop cloths piled near the entrance, it appeared that they were giving the inside a fresh coat of paint.

Gabriel craned his neck through the open front doorway. “What’s in there?”

“Lockers and changing rooms families rent over the summer.”

“I want to see.” He took my hand and led me inside. My hand in his felt very natural, as if he needed my assurance while he explored this new place. But at the same time, like anyone else in my position, I was acutely aware of the possibilities. Would he try to kiss me next? Did I want him to?

We walked down a corridor bordered by freshly painted lockers, the smell of drying paint in our noses. Just as we passed the ladies’ room, I felt Gabriel’s hand tighten. He stopped and turned me toward him, pulling me close.

We were alone.

I felt his arms go around me.

I closed my eyes.

His embrace tightened.

Then tightened more.

Suddenly, I felt myself being lifted off my feet, my arms pinned at my sides. Alarm spreading, I opened my eyes and tried to squirm out of his grasp, but his grip was too tight and too close for me to get any leverage.

“Gabriel, stop! What are you doing?” I gasped when I realized he was dragging me into the ladies’ room. He swung the door closed behind us, then pushed me hard against the walls.

When my eyes focused, I was staring at a knife.

The blade was curved and sharp on one edge and serrated on the other. I stopped breathing and felt as if my heart was trying to crawl into my throat. Gabriel held the knife just below my neck.

“Don’t move; don’t yell,” he whispered.

I’m not sure I could have done either, even if he’d ordered me to. I was frozen with fear.

“Don’t do anything dumb, and you won’t get hurt,” he growled.

I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. My heart thumped so hard I could feel the pulse throbbing in my neck. Breathe, I told myself. If you stop breathing, you’ll faint. But I was beginning to feel sick and light-headed with fear. So it was Gabriel? He was the killer?

“I need money,” Gabriel said.

I heard him clearly, but was so surprised that I almost asked him to repeat it. Money? “I think I have thirty dollars.”

“No, stupid!” he snapped. “ Real money. Fifty thousand.”

What? “I don’t-”

“Your father has it.”

My father? Fifty thousand dollars?

“He’s been avoiding me. Won’t go into the same room, won’t answer the phone. I made him so frickin’ much money, and now it’s like I don’t exist.”

I was trying to understand, but my brain was sluggish with fright. The knife looked new and sharp, and it was so close to my neck. “How?”

“How what?”

“Did you-”

“Make him so much money?” Gabriel finished the sentence. “I was the cheese in the mouse trap. Janet would talk the pigeons in, and then I would soften them up for the kill.”

Mice? Pigeons? Was it advisable to tell someone holding a knife to your throat that he was mixing metaphors?

“The kill?” I repeated.

“We didn’t kill anyone,” Gabriel growled. “That’s just what we called it. Janet got them to come to the hotel, but once they were there, it was my job to romance them, make them feel beautiful enough to think they could be models, make their mothers feel beautiful enough to think their daughters could do it. I was the closer, the charmer, the one who got the mothers to part with the money. Without me the whole thing wouldn’t have worked.”

“But Dad paid you, didn’t he?”

Gabriel snorted. “Nothing compared to what he kept for himself. And now I need more, and he’s got it, and you’re going to get him to give it to me.”

That’s when it dawned on me. I was being kidnapped? Held for ransom?

“He’s got till the end of the week, or I go to the police.”