Page 13 of All Bets Are Off

Whatever turns you on, Livvie.

I froze, all the mirth draining from my features. When I turned the screen to Tallulah, she wasn’t laughing either.

“You don’t know who that is?” she asked finally.

I shook my head.

“Who would know to call you Livvie but not be in your contacts?”

A myriad of ideas flew through my mind. “Do you remember Brad Baker?”

“The serial killer? Yeah. I remember him. He sat next to me in homeroom.”

“Is two dead bodies a serial killer?” I asked, completely changing the tone of the conversation.

She pinned me with an “are you kidding me right now” look.

“Sorry.” My shoulders hopped. “I think you need three or more victims to be a serial killer. I can look it up.”

Tallulah made a disgruntled sound. “Girlfriend, he killed two people and tried to bury them in the desert. Women who turned him down for dates. I think that’s all we need to know about him.”

“Right. I only brought him up because what if it’s a situation like that?”

Tallulah rolled her neck. She was tall, willowy, with auburn hair and bright eyes. She didn’t have much going on up top but her low-cut shirts and cutlet padding allowed her to pretend otherwise. “Um … now you’re freaking me out.”

I was freaking myself out. Normally, she would be the one talking me off a ledge. Apparently, that wasn’t happening today. “What should I do?”

She took the phone from me, bopped her head back and forth, then started typing.

I’m at the Purple Zebra.

My mouth dropped open when I realized she’d sent our real location. “You’re telling the serial killer where we’re at? What in the hell?”

The return text was swift.

I’m on my way.

My heart started to hammer, and I was no longer interested in drinking my daiquiri. “You just sealed my doom.” I wailed it a little louder than was probably necessary.

“Or I arranged it so your serial killer will have a big helping of ‘I’m gonna beat your ass.’” She gestured toward the security guard—who was the size of three regular people—loitering toward the door. “Odds are it’s someone you know,” she said. “Maybe Rex lost his phone or something.”

I immediately started shaking my head. “It’s not like the old days when you have to change your phone number wheneveryou get a new phone. Rex has had the same number since high school.”

“Maybe he had to change it because he slept with the wrong bimbo and she’s threatening to chop up his bunny.”

I couldn’t wrap my head around what she was saying. “What bunny?”

“Haven’t you ever seenFatal Attraction?”

“That television show with Joshua Jackson? I tried watching it, but I was bored.”

Tallulah made a huffing sound. “Not that stupid show. The movie. The woman in it loses her shit and boils a bunny. Your brother seems like the sort of guy who would push a woman to bunny boiling.”

My immediate reaction was to laugh off the suggestion. When I thought about it, though, she had a point. “It’s not Rex.” I was certain of that. Okay, mostly certain.

“Then maybe it’s a former classmate or something who assumes you have their number stored in your phone.” Tallulah was using her most reasonable tone. “Didn’t you say Kayla Barton contacted you six months ago to see if you wanted to hang out with her?”

“I’m pretty sure she was trying to get close to Rex. The second I agreed to have lunch with her, she brought him up … and then never stopped talking about him.”

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