Page 88 of Serial Killer Games

“No, hernameis Cat.I didn’t lose a fucking pet cat. I didn’t bring my cat with me to try on shoes at the mall.”

“Ma’am.”

“Is that a thing that happens? People bringing their cats to the mall?”

The skinny young mall cop rocks back and forth with his moist lips pressed to his walkie-talkie. He absently picks a mole on his neck, his eyes fixed forlornly on the Cinnabon to our right closing up for the day. He’d been waiting in line when I’d approached him.

I scan the crowd milling around us. There’s a reason her coat is bright stop-sign red. Cat wandering off, head in the clouds? All of this has happened before; all of this will happen again. A glowing, hard-to-miss jacket has always been my hack, but at this time of year, there are so many false alarms. My eyes snag on a flash of crimson—someone’s Christmas gift bag. Another splash of vermilion—just a giant fucking bow tied around a pillar.

The handles of my bags are cutting right through my fingers. They’re as bloodless as Jake’s. He’s a dimple in my brain where my thoughts gather a hundred times a day. I brush him away irritably. I’ve been feeling like an idiot ever since the night of the blackout. After I put Cat to bed, I sat up in the dark waiting for him. What had I blurted out at him when Cat appeared? Itoldhim to come back, didn’t I? We were supposed to have a real conversation about where things stood.

It’s been two weeks since I’ve heard from him. He probably ended up hopping on a plane, after all. Awkward, chaste making out on a rickety sofa with a single mom while her daughter interrupts is not how any man would choose to spend his remaining time on this planet.

“How many exits are there?”

The mall cop’s eyes rotate slowly in his head to connect with mine.

“You can’t tell me you don’t know how many exits there are,” I say in disbelief. “What if you and your little mall cop buddies needed to secure the building?”

He’s looking everywhere but at me. Mentally he’s licking his thumb and flicking through all one and a half pages of the work training manual.

“Or, random hypothetical, what if a little girl got separated from her mother on one of the busiest days of the year and was abducted from the building by a stranger and lured out to the parking lot—”

“Abductions by strangers are very uncommon,” the mall cop says defensively.

“I bet that’s a real consolation to the families of abducted children.”

“Does your daughter know your phone number? Would she be able to ask a grown-up to call it?”

Of course. My phone number has been drilled into her ever since she could speak. I’d already thought of all this on my own, but at his reminder, I want to hurt someone. Myself. I let my phone die.

She was just trying on shoes. She’s old enough now to be by herself in busy spaces for a few minutes. We’ve been practicing. It’s an essential skill for an only child–single parent dyad. I was just outside throwing out her empty hot chocolate cup, and when I came back, she was gone.

It’s the perfect opening for aMurderers at Workepisode. Someone will listen to it and be relieved they’re not like those otherstupidermothers. No, they’ll always have a charged phone. They’ll make sure their child’s sense of stranger danger isn’t compromised by sending strange men to take care of school pickup. They certainly won’t be a single mom, trying to make Christmas happen on their own. They’ll have a spouse to take the kid to do Christmas stuff instead of dragging the kid along to see the unglamorous, unmagical behind-the-scenes work.

“Would this grown-up be willing to do that for her, or is he too busy luring her into a windowless van with the promise of a litter of puppies—” All of the fear and tension abruptly leave my body. I know where Cat is.

A second mall cop arrives, and Mall Cop One radiates relief.

“The cat has a red coat?” she asks me. “Do you mean to say its fur is orange—?”

“Is there a pet store here?”

“You think it’s gone looking for food?” she asks, and I bite my tongue. She frowns and walks me over to the glass railing rimming the second floor of the open atrium, the food court below. She pans the view thoughtfully. “There.”

I follow her outstretched finger and spot a pet store across the way, on the same floor as us, but on the far side. Another flash of red—andthisone, this one is a little red peacoat.

I could expire from relief. I peel away from the rail.

“Ma’am?”

“Thank you,” I throw over my shoulder, and for once I mean it from the bottom of my cold, dead heart.

I keep my eyes on Cat as I start the circuit around the atrium. I bump into a man and get spun around on the spot, but she’s still there when I look again. Still there. Still there. I round a fat pillar…and she’s gone.

No, she’s just moved. She’s walking away from me now, and—my heart sickens—

Her hand is held tight in that of a strange man.

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