Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

It made you think.

But some of these incel guys had taken it too far. Like, getting violent. Attacking women. Running down strangers with a car. That was wrong. Guys like that, they were spoiling it for the rest of the movement, giving it a bad name. Kind of like when—

“Excuse me, do you work here?”

Travis turned.

Holy shit.

It was a girl. Standing right next to him. Okay, not a girl. This was a young woman, probably his age, a year older or younger maybe. And she was a good-looking young woman, blond hair down to her shoulders, slim, jeans with ragged little holes around the knee. She smelled nice, too. He had no idea what the smell was — something flowery, duh — but he liked it. He was taken aback for several reasons. One, she was an actual female in the comic shop. Okay, you didn’t want to make a sexist generalization, but the fact was, the ratio of males to females in this shop was about ten to one. Sure, you saw a few. Often, they came in with their boyfriends. And once in a while, there’d be a girl in here who was generally interested. Like, say, an art student whose interest was more curriculum related.

“Well, do you?” she asked.

Travis realized that since she had first asked him if he worked here, he had done nothing but stare at her.

He blinked, cleared his throat, and said, “No, no, I don’t.”

“Oh,” she said, looking disappointed. “I didn’t see anyone on the cash register, so I thought maybe you were in charge.”

Travis, his stomach fluttering, glanced over at the counter by the front door. “Oh yeah. I guess Danny ran out to get a sandwich or something. He should be back in a second.”

“Okay,” she said, turned away briefly, then turned back. “Maybe you can help me anyway.”

Travis’s mouth suddenly felt very dry. “Um, okay.”

“I don’t really know all that much about comics and stuff, but I wanted to get something for my nephew, who’s going to be twelve next week and I wanted to get him something for his birthday.”

“Okay.”

“I know he likes Batman, so I was thinking maybe a Batman comic.”

“There’s only a million of them,” Travis said. “There’s like, classic stuff from the fifties and sixties and seventies, and then it started getting all serious in the eighties with Frank Miller and the Dark Knight stuff. And then there’s the Elseworlds series, and—”

“Elseworlds?”

“Like, totally alternate timelines or universes. Like, if Batman lived over a hundred years ago and was in London instead of Gotham City and was hunting for Jack the Ripper. That’d be an Elseworlds kind of thing.”

“I don’t know if that would be appropriate for a twelve-year-old,” she said.

“Oh, sure,” Travis said. “By age twelve I’d read The Killing Joke and the Arkham Asylum stuff and it’s all pretty intense and violent and kind of sick, but I turned out okay. They’re really good. If he hasn’t read those, I bet he’d like them. Do you know what Batman books he’s already got?”

“Not really.”

Travis swallowed hard, working up his courage. He hoped he could be heard over the beating of his heart. “Let’s go over where the Batman stuff is,” he said, leading the way, brushing up against her ever so slightly as he moved around her.

“Okay, here,” he said, waving his arm at an entire section devoted to Batman graphic novels.

“Wow,” she said. “I had no idea. There’s like hundreds of titles.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I used to read Batman like crazy but not so much anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not so into superheroes. I mean, they’re okay, but not my thing.” He had turned his head slightly sideways so that it was easier to read the spines. “Here’s a good one.” The comic was so jammed in between other editions that he struggled to extract it. He lost his grip once because his fingers were sweating. But once he freed the book, he handed it to her. His fingertips left small, sweaty marks on the cover that slowly evaporated.

“ The Long Halloween? ” she said.

“A classic. Written by Jeph Loeb, who produced stuff like Smallville and Lost .”

“Oh my God, Lost ,” she said. “I binge-watched it last year. I loved it, well, except maybe the ending. I’m not even sure what happened.”

“Same here. But it was a great ride.”

“I loved that episode where you thought it was a flashback, but it was actually a flash-forward, and—”

They heard a bell jingle and both looked in the direction of the door. Danny, the store proprietor, clutching a Subway bag, found his way back behind the counter.

“So, uh, Danny’s back,” Travis said. “You should probably pay for that before he gets too far into that sandwich. He usually gets double onions and could drop you dead from ten feet away.”

That made her laugh. Travis could not remember the last time he’d made a girl laugh. At least, not in a good way.

The woman held up the comic and smiled. “So, like, thanks for this. And all your advice.”

“Yeah, sure, okay,” he said.

“What’s your name, anyway?” she asked.

“Travis,” he said, and then, just to be sure, added, “Travis.”

“I’m Sandy,” she said, flashed a smile, and walked away.

Just in time, too, because Travis could feel this huge woody growing in his pants and was afraid if she’d stayed any longer she might have caught a glimpse of it under his jeans. Christ, if it popped out, he’d be knocking books off the shelves.

He went back to where she’d found him, just as Danny called out, loud enough for anyone in the store to hear him, “Hey everybody, just a heads-up. If you got any doobies in your pocket be aware there’s a couple of narc-y, cop-looking types across the street.”

That didn’t worry Travis. He didn’t do drugs.

His heart rate was getting back to normal, the bulge in his pants was diminishing, and his hands were not nearly as clammy as they’d been only a minute earlier.

He should have asked her last name. He should have asked where she lived, or worked. No, no, that would have been a terrible idea, because then he would have had to endure the embarrassment of her struggling with some excuse for not divulging any personal information.

Okay, fine, be one of those types. Maybe those crazy incel guys were on to—

“Can I thank you by buying you a cup of coffee or something?”

Travis almost sprained his neck turning his head so quickly. “What?”

“There’s a place like two doors down,” Sandy said. “Interested?”

Springfield, MA

Miles was as freaked out as Chloe was by the hand under Todd’s bed. She’d paused the image and expanded it to get a closer look. It appeared to be a man’s right hand, and the fifth finger, the smallest one, was unusually short, as though it had been cut off at the first knuckle.

“Was he there the whole time, while we were sitting there?” she asked as the two of them sat in the Pacer in front of Todd’s mother’s house.

“Had to be,” Miles said. “But then we heard that van up on the road, the brakes squealing. When we came back and I was trying to find the phone—”

“—I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the bed,” Chloe said, and started hyperventilating. “Holy shit, if he’d been there then—”

Miles placed a comforting hand on her arm. “But he wasn’t.”

“What the fuck is going on?” she asked, her eyes pleading for an answer as she looked at him.

“I don’t know. Whoever it was, he wanted that phone. I knew I hadn’t lost it.”

Chloe’s eyes widened. “Maybe it was Todd!”