Todd Strasser: Kill You Last

A text showed up…from Gabriel: Thx 4 inviting me 2 the party. W2 meet again? 121?

That caught me by surprise. I could only assume that the quick kiss I’d given him after the party had smoothed out the earlier rough spots. It was flattering to think that he still liked me, but then I thought about the warnings both Whit and Roman had given me about him. I was thinking about how to answer his text when an e-mail popped up: I like you, Shelby Sloan. If I have to kill you, I’ll kill you last.

“This is amazing,” Roman said, staring at her iPad. We were sitting at a table in the library, waiting for school to end.

“What now?” I asked.

“ In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote?” Roman said. “It’s one of the best true crime stories I’ve ever read.”

“Coming from you, that’s saying a lot.”

“And it was written in the nineteen sixties,” she stressed.

“Oh, you mean, like before the invention of the modern alphabet?”

Roman gave me a droll “You’re so funny, Shels.”

My BlackBerry vibrated, and I slid it into my lap to read. It was an e-mail, which was odd, since none of my friends ever e-mailed anyone. Stranger still, it was from someone calling themselves vengeance13773288@gmail. com. This is weird, I thought, then opened the e-mail:

Ur such a sweet nice girl with Ur perfect house and riding around in daddys Ferrari. 2 bad U dont no what hes really up 2

Roman hooked her black hair behind her ear and looked at me curiously. She must have seen the perplexed expression on my face. “What is it?”

I handed the BlackBerry to her under the table.

“Creep show,” she said, handing it back. “Who sends e-mails? And what does he mean by what your dad’s really up to?”

“How do you know it’s a he?” I asked.

“The ‘sweet nice girl’ part. A girl wouldn’t write that.” Roman was my best friend and really smart, but sometimes the stuff that came out of her mouth was off-the-charts bizarre.

“Why not?”

“She just wouldn’t.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Says you,” Roman replied with a dismissive shrug.

“What should I do?” I nodded at the BlackBerry.

“Write back,” Roman said.

“And say what? Who are you, and why did you write this? If he wanted me to know who he was, he wouldn’t have used this creepy vengeance at gmail address.”

“Say that you already know what your dad does and that you’re dealing with it, thank you very much.”

“Good idea.” I thumbed in the message and pressed Send.

Roman looked past me. “Guess who just came in.”

I turned to see Chris Clarke, the tall and broad-shouldered all-state tight end with a 3.9 GPA, signing onto a computer. When he saw me, he smiled and waved. I did the same.

“He’s interested,” Roman whispered.

“I know.” Chris and I had been exchanging looks and smiles for the past week.

“You’d be such a perfect couple,” Roman whispered. “Has he said anything?”

I shook my head. “So far it’s been all smiles and nods.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for you to make the first move.”

Before I could respond, my BlackBerry vibrated again. It was another message from vengeance13773288@gmail. com. I quickly opened it and found one word: Liar.

After school, I drove to Dad’s studio and parked next to his bright red Ferrari. That car, I sometimes joked, was my only serious competition for his affections. I’d just gotten out of my Jeep when two men I’d never seen before came out of the studio’s back door. They got into a dark green sedan, with a laptop computer mounted inside, and drove away. It didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that they were police.

I let myself in and started down the wood-paneled hallway lined with autographed head shots of famous models and actors. Almost all the photos were autographed to Dad in black Sharpie with personal thanks and salutations. In the kitchenette, Mercedes was making coffee. Petite and pretty, with dark hair and gold hoop earrings, she was Dad’s stylist and general modeling agency gofer.

“ Hola, Mercedes.” I stopped in the doorway. “?C o mo esta Pedro?”

Pedro was her little boy, and, at the mention of his name, Mercedes would usually respond with a big smile and a story about his latest achievement or mischievous behavior. But today her brown eyes slid away, and she fingered the gold cross on her neck. “ Esta bien, gracias.” Her English was fairly good, but I liked to practice my Spanish with her. After high school, I planned to travel around Central America for a few months before starting college.

I wondered if Mercedes’s lack of enthusiasm had something to do with those detectives. “What did they want?” I asked.

“You should ask your father.”

Her solemn mood was unsettling. “Okay,” I said. “How do you say, Give Pedro a hug for me?”

Mercedes smiled weakly. “Pedro dar un abrazo para mi. Gracias, Miss Shelby.”

I continued down the hall to the office where Janet, Dad’s modeling agent and office manager, was standing at a file cabinet with her back to me. I didn’t want to startle her, so I knocked gently on the doorframe.

Despite my cautious approach, Janet jumped, the stack of files in her arms spilling to the floor, papers and head shots going everywhere. “Ahhh!” she sort of gasped.

“Sorry,” I said.

Someone else might have said, “It’s not your fault.” But Janet stared haplessly at the papers, photos, and files on the floor. Gray roots showed along the part in her brown hair. “Now what am I going to do? How am I ever going to figure out what goes back in which file?”

“I’ll help.” I knelt down to gather the files.

“No!” She practically barked. “Leave it alone.”

“But-”

“I said leave it. Please, Shelby?”

You could see that she was in an extra fragile mood today. When I straightened up, she was trembling. The tiniest things could sometimes send her into histrionics, but it usually took more than a few dropped files.

“What a freaking day.” She plopped down on the corner of her desk, crossing her arms tightly and looking jittery. Like the floor, the desk was covered with loose papers and photos. You had to wonder why Dad had hired someone so disorganized to be his office manager.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Two girls are missing. The dicks wanted to know what we knew about them.”

“Were they models?” I asked. Dad’s studio and agency did photography and got work for the models he represented.

“We did their head shots,” Janet said.

“What happened to them?”

She gestured with a shaky hand to the pile of photos and papers on the floor. “They’re probably there somewhere.”

“Not the head shots,” I said. “I meant, what happened to the girls?”

“Their parents reported them missing. They’re probably runaways.”

Across the hall, the door to the photo studio opened and Gabriel Gressen, ridiculously gorgeous hunk, part-time model, and Dad’s photo assistant, came out with a plate of Chinese food. I felt my heart flutter…and not because I found beef with broccoli irresistible.

With his dark eyes, wavy black hair, and chiseled looks, Gabriel was nothing short of drop-dead dreamy. Half the reason I stopped by Dad’s studio so often was to gaze upon his Greek-god beauty.

He crossed the hall and stepped into the office, holding out the food. “Anyone interested?”

If only he’d been offering himself, I thought.

“I’ll take it.” Janet reached for the plate and began to eat hungrily with her fingers.