Page 58 of Ten

“Yes. What other Adrian would I be asking about, Eric?” Eric glanced at Ilya, and I suddenly had the feeling there was something important I didn’t know. “What is it?”

“The rumor I’ve heard,” Eric said, staring at Ilya with laser focus, “is that Adrian didn’t run anywhere.”

“Well, I mean, if he didn’t run...” My voice trailed off as I finally understood what he meant. “Oh.” I looked at Ilya who seemed very interested in Wilford’s handmade collar. “Ilya?”

“You can’t possibly expect me to answer that.” He flicked his finger against the bell on Wilford’s collar.

“No answer is an answer,” I reasoned. Adrian was dead. There was no doubt about it. Which led to more questions. Where was his body? Why hadn’t anyone told Chess?

“What about the lawyer?” Ilya bent down to let Wilford scuttle off to chase dust in sunbeams. “Who was paying her bills?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t given that information.” Eric leveled a stare in Ilya’s direction. “But I bet you know someone who could find it.”

Ilya chuckled. “I bet I do.”

“What about Chad? How did he get mixed into this?” I had been thinking about that nosy bastard all morning. I didn’t dare look at my social media accounts, but I was certain they were filled with ugly comments.

“The podcaster?” Eric asked. “I don’t know.”

“He’s a leech,” Ilya interjected from his new position by a window overlooking the front of the property. “He’s desperate to be the nextGrizzy’s Hood News,but he’s too slow, too fake, and too fucking annoying to ever be her.”

“If she was on the case, she and her followers would have already solved the whole damn thing,” Eric grumbled.

“In twelve hours or less,” Ilya remarked, his gaze still focused out the window.

As the two of them talked about notable crimes she had helped solve around Houston, I picked up the phone Kostya had given me and used it to Google Chad and Kiki’s dead lawyer. There had to be some missing links. It probably wouldn’t be obvious. Law enforcement would have seized upon that.

Who would have the kind of money that was needed to set up Kiki’s escape? Why would someone help him? Was Chad trying to build his career on this? I could only imagine what sort of views he would get if he followed a serial killer’s escape and capture, right up close and personal. He probably had dreams of a Netflix docuseries in his eyes.

I ate some more of my sandwich while falling down the rabbit hole of Chad’s history. He was a failure at everything he tried. He’d self-published aGame of Thronesknockoff that had seventeen one- and two-star reviews on Amazon. He’d switched to thrillers, but their reviews were just as savage.

He’d moved on to true crime podcasting and a YouTube channel, but he hadn’t managed more than a few thousand views on any video. He seemed to be always one step behind everyone else, chasing stale stories and regurgitating case details without anything new or fresh to entice followers.

Except now, his social media accounts were on fire. Kiki’s escape, the shooting, the fire at Allure—his new followers were eating it up. There was a deep dive video that I couldn’t bear to watch, even on mute, where he delved into Kiki’s crimes.

Scrolling through it, I found trial photos of my injuries from the night Kiki tried to kill me. The prick had a snapshot of Lorelai’s grave, and my heart skipped in my chest, the painful memories twisting my gut and making my lungs hurt.

I didn’t even bother looking at the comments. My heart was beating so fast, and my ears were getting hot as I swiped to his next video. This one was a breakdown of Kiki’s connections to Adrian and Tony. He had included images of the house where Tony was killed as well as redacted case documents regarding the child sexual assault videos and images found near his body.

When Chad began to discuss Adrian, images of Chess and Callie, photos that must have been taken very recently, lingered on the screen. There were short clips of Callie waiting in line with her mother at Chick-fil-a, flapping her hands and making the jerky neck motions that happened when she was overstimulated. She spun around a few times, and Chess gently redirected her away from the next closest person in line, making sure her daughter was free to move without bothering anyone else.

Chad flashed an image of a crying Chess, probably no more than sixteen years old, after she had been arrested in a car that was moving drugs. I always thought those types of juvenile photos were locked down tight, but apparently not. She seemed humiliated and ashamed in the photo, and I could only imagine how scared she must have been to be arrested.

The subtitles on the screen infuriated me. Chad insinuated Callie’s autism and heart defects were caused by Chess using drugs while pregnant. Nothing could have been further from the truth. It was cruel and disgusting, and if I ever saw this piece of trash again, I was going to kick him square in the nuts.

“What’s wrong?” Eric asked. “You look like you’re about to set someone’s house on fire.”

“Look at this shit!” I flashed the phone at him. “Look at what he’s saying about Callie and Chess!”

Ilya moved closer to see what was on the phone. He grimaced and immediately reached for his phone. “I need to make a call.”

“Why?” I asked, but he didn’t stick around to answer.

“He’s probably calling Nikolai or Kostya to warn them.”

“About?”

“Artyom seeing that video,” Eric replied. “Imagine what he’ll do to Chad if he finds out what’s being said.”

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