Page 13 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

Good Lord, who’s writing this person’s dialogue? Were they twirling their black mustache at the same time?

“When was this?”

“A couple of days before the car accident.”

“So, your brakes failed right after someone threatened you, and you didn’t think the two were related?”

He doesn’t say anything, just scowls for an answer.

“Did they contact you afterward?”

“No.”

“Hmmm.” I touch the back of my dress. The gelato is half dried and has hardened into some new substance. “And what about after yesterday?”

“I haven’t heard anything from them since that last message.”

“Which you received how?”

“Through encrypted text.”

“Unsigned, I assume?” He nods. “Do you still have them?”

“They disappear after you read them.”

“No screenshots?”

“No.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Didn’t you used to be a private detective?”

“No need to mock me.”

“Right, sorry. I’m just… surprised.”

“At?”

“All of it, frankly. I wouldn’t have thought you’d cave to blackmail.”

His face changes to that vulnerable look again.

He’s going to have to stop doing that.

“I don’t want to go to prison. You understand that, surely.”

Oh, I understand. “How long would you get?”

A fantasy montage is running through my mind. Connor in an orange jumpsuit holding some scratchy towel and those slipper shoes they make prisoners wear. His thick hair growing lank and gray.

No one’s ever said I lack imagination.

Connor grimaces. “I understand the sentence for being an accessory is lengthy.”

We lock eyes again and we’re having two conversations. The things we say out loud and the things that are simply understood between us.

“As interesting as this is, we need to go,” Harper says. “We’re already late.”

“To be continued,” I say to Connor.

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