Page 3 of Hot Ghoul Summer

I sneered. “Funny that you asked me, but not Nicky. Trust me, I won’t do anything worse than you would do.” No. I’ll do so much better. I’ll keep her safe—and if at the end of my vacation, Molly wants to leave, she can leave.

I’ll just go back to living my unlife, alone. She’ll get to have a nice, long life without looking over her shoulder. I’ll do that for her.

And I’ll make sure dear Gary joins his associate pretty damn quick.

“Don’t ask any more questions. I could kill you now and solve all of our problems,” I whispered, twirling the blade expertly in my hand. “You can choose. Option one, Molly, at that address by midnight tomorrow. Option two, you, in the water with Nicky Cross in five minutes, because that’s where I’m going to shove his filthy corpse in a moment.”

That last bit was a bluff. I like to catch the fish here and I didn’t want to contaminate my dinner.

The bluff worked. Gary scrambled away. “I’ll bring her! I swear!”

I let him run. He limped and stumbled, one arm flopping. Broken. Battered. His hair was matted with blood, and his trousers reeked of urine.

When Gary made it back to a dented Chevy two-door, I suddenly popped in the passenger seat.

His scream was pure delight to my angry ears.

“Don’t try to double cross me. Because I’m everywhere, Gary. Do you understand?” I ran the tip of my knife over the knuckles of his good hand.

He whimpered. “She’ll be there. I promise.”

“That’s good. Or I’ll take you instead.”

YEAH. SO THAT WAS THE second day of my vacation. Today is the third. It’s ten in the evening, and that means one of two things will happen.

One, Molly will show up in the next two hours.

Two, Gary will suddenly have a nasty single-car accident as he tries to outrun me.

Oh, and a third thing will happen as well, no matter what.

I’ll spend the next two days doing paperwork.

Molly’s life is worth it.

Chapter Two:

Never, ever unblock creeps

I’M GREEDY.

Not like, obscenely greedy, but I just graduated from college with my nursing degree, which means I’m older and broker than a lot of other people just entering the full-time workforce. It also means I’m fast-tracked to get any job I want, but...

Yeah. May and June were a whirl of applications, interviews, and getting gift cards and checks in the mail as graduation presents. My mom, bless her Chardonnay-soaked brain, got plastered one weekend and insisted I unblock my dad and my step-dad, Loser One and Loser Two, because she had sent them graduation announcements and Loser One and Loser Two both promised they would send money to my QuikCash app.

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