Todd Strasser - Kill You Last

“I have to go,” I said, and got up.

“You sure?” Gabriel asked, surprised.

“There’s school tomorrow, and I still have some homework to do. But thanks for the drink and for showing me your place. It’s really beautiful.” I walked so quickly toward the door that Gabriel practically had to jog to keep up. So much for trying not to act like I was in middle school.

He got to the door at the same time I did. I assumed he was just being a gentleman and opening it for me.

But instead, he put his hand on the doorknob and kept it there.

I felt myself go rigid.

Was he going to stop me from leaving?

He moved close, and I felt a shiver.

“Gabriel, please, not now,” I heard myself say, trying very hard not to sound scared or panicked.

I felt his finger go under my chin and gently lift it until our eyes met.

“Another time, then?”

“Yes,” I said, silently begging him to let go of the door.

He turned the doorknob and at the same time kissed me on the lips. It was just a peck, and it happened much too fast for me to react. The door swung open, and the next thing I knew, I was striding down the hall to the elevator.

I pressed the button and waited, my heart thumping. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gabriel standing in his doorway, watching.

As the elevators opened, he said, “Hey.”

I turned, and he gave me a smile and a wave. “Get home safe.”

I drove home super careful. Not that I’d had that much to drink, but I was rattled. What had just happened? The more I thought about it, the more uncertain I was about what bothered me so much.

Was it the way Gabriel had acted?

Or the way I had?

What was the big deal? It was just a drink in his apartment. He really hadn’t made any unwanted moves, and even if he had, so what? I’d had plenty of experience dealing with that.

So then, what was it that bothered me so much? I didn’t really know. Maybe something intuitive. Or maybe just my imagination.

By the time I got back to my neighborhood, I felt calmer. I’d decided that neither of us was at fault. We’d just gotten our signals crossed.

I parked in the driveway. By now the media was gone, and only a few dark cars were parked on the street in front of our house. I got out, pausing for a moment to breathe in the fresh cool air and gaze up at the stars sparkling in the sky.

That’s when I realized someone was coming up the driveway toward me.

It was a man.

And he was big.

My gasp of fright must have been loud, because he suddenly stopped. By then I’d backed partway around the car and was on the verge of letting out the loudest scream I could muster.

We stared at each other, and in the dark I recognized him as the one who’d helped me through the crowd of media people and into my house earlier in the day.

“What do you want?” I asked in a quavering voice, my heart racing like a hamster full tilt on a wheel.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to catch you before you went inside.”

“Oh.” I was still breathing hard. “Okay, but from now on? It’s really not a good idea to approach people in the dark like that.”

“Gotcha. Like I said, I’m sorry. You okay?”

“Just a little freaked,” I said. “So what are you doing here?”

“I was hoping I could ask you some questions.”

“Questions?”

“About those missing girls?”

“Why?” I was still too flustered to follow.

“I’m a journalist.”

Suddenly, I got it. “So that’s why you helped me into the house today? To get me away from all those other journalists so that later on, you could find me alone and get the story for yourself? Smart. I’m impressed. You’ll go far.” I came around the car and started toward the back door, feeling incensed and angry. The one thing you could always count on when guys were nice was that they usually wanted something.

“Wait,” he said.

“Sorry. I’ve had a really long, hard day.” I kept walking. “So just please go away.”

“But-”

“Are you aware that you’re trespassing?” I asked as I opened the back door. “If you don’t get off my property right now, I’m calling the police.”

“What did you think of Sarah Lawrence?” he asked.

Halfway in the door I stopped and stared through the dark at him, confused. “How…?”

“We passed each other this morning,” he said. “At school. I mean, my school, not yours.”

“You go to Sarah Lawrence?”

“Go, black squirrels,” he said.

I’d noticed that morning that black squirrels were some sort of informal Sarah Lawrence mascot, which had seemed strange, though not as strange as the idea that this guy had actually seen me there.

“Yeah, I meant to ask someone about that,” I said, feeling myself relax. “What’s the story?”

“The black squirrels?” he asked. “They used to be the unofficial school symbol, but now the administration wants us to think of ourselves as mighty gryphons, the mythical half lion/half eagle.” He held out his hand. “I’m Whit.”

I hesitated, then decided it couldn’t hurt to shake. My hand disappeared in his. “I’m Shelby. I’ve never met a Whit before.”

“Short for Whitman. Whitman Sturges. That’s how you know I’m a WASP. Both of my names could be either first or last. Whitman Sturges, or Sturges Whitman.”

Strangely, that made me smile. Maybe after such a hellish day, what I really needed was a little levity. “So you’re a WASP gryphon black squirrel?

“You got it. I can fly. I can sting. I’ve got sharp teeth. And I know where all the nuts are buried.”

I grinned. “We really passed each other at Sarah Lawrence this morning?”

“You were taking the campus tour. And then later I drove over here to cover the story, and there you were again. What my statistics professor would call an infinitely improbable coincidence.”

There was something about him that put me at ease. That disarming quality some people have that makes you believe whatever they’re saying. I wondered if he’d developed it to compensate for his intimidating size and presence.

“But you’re also a reporter?” I asked.

“A stringer. For the Snoop.”

“The what?”

“The Soundview Snoop? Your up-to-the-minute hyper-local news site? www.soundsnoop.com. ”

“Never heard of it,” I said.

His broad shoulders sagged with disappointment. “Tell me about it. Neither has anyone else. It’s still pretty new. And the only place on the Net where you can find out which of your neighbors broke the pooper-scooper law last week.”

“So it’s online?”

“Electronic journalism is the future. Newspapers are the past. Pretty soon we’ll have so many trees, we won’t know what to do with them.”

Once again I found myself smiling. “So why did you say you’re a stringer? I thought that’s what people did to tennis rackets.”

“It’s an old newspaper term. Basically means I’m a freelancer. Only when you’re freelancing for an Internet start-up, the emphasis is on free.”

“Aren’t you keeping pretty long hours, considering you’re not getting paid?”

“I look at it as learning on the job. Like an internship. And who knows? If I do well on this story…maybe even scoop some of the professional journalists…some news organization might be crazy enough to hire me for real.”

Suddenly, I felt as if I’d awoken from a spell. As if, for just a moment, I’d forgotten what a journalist did. Why was I talking to him? All his charming banter served one purpose-to get a story about my father.

“You are good, you know that?” I said, feeling my jaw tighten. “