Page 116 of Serial Killer Games

She lets out a breath. “She’s covering for you. What are we going to do about her?”

“She can wait.”

She nods, eyes wide, feet apart in a fighting pose. “Table the discussion of this paradigm shift for now?”

“Put a pin in it and circle back later for a proper face time, because we have other things to discuss.”

Dodi stares at me. I stare at her. I press G, the doors close slowly, and there’s the fairground feeling as we watch each other in that small, falling space, my entire future life flashing before my eyes. I have time—so much time now—and yet I’ve never felt so pressured in my life to get something done as quickly as possible. It can’t wait.

“I’m walking it all back. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

I’m dropping clichés like a Hallmark ghostwriter, but what else are you supposed to do when there’s no other way to say it? The message lands. I see her feelings on her face for once. Surprise. Relief. Regret. Sadness. So much sadness. She winds her arms tight around her midsection instead of around me.

“And I love you,” she says bravely. “I wish I could spend the rest of my life with you, too.”

And I knew, theoretically, Dodi was capable of crying, but it’s something else to see it happen. Her face doesn’t wind up or turn red. She just calmly, quietly sheds tears, like a placid stone statue performing a miracle in a deserted transept for her one true believer.

I completely fucked up my delivery.

“You can.”

“What?”

“My real grandparents are almost a hundred. Can you put up with me that long?”

She smears her tears across her face with her coat sleeve. “What?”

She didn’t understand a word of what Cynthia said on the roof about my parents. “Bill did a DNA test—”

And I don’t need to explain anything else, not this second, because “DNA test” are the magic words that make a hereditary disease vanish in a puff of smoke. Dodi’s mouth falls open and a shuddering breath comes out. She shivers as a secondary earthquake ripples through her mental landscape and shiftseverything, and she needs a minute to assess the lay of the land in the aftermath. I can give her as many as she needs because I have alotof minutes now.

“Fuck’s sake, Jake!” she says, swiping at her eyes. She’s furious and relieved and trying so hard to turn the tears off. “That’s the sort of thing you lead with!”

The movies say this ends in a dramatic kiss. I step close, and she reaches for me—

The elevator doors heave open and three firemen shoulder in. I grab Dodi by the hand and pull her outside into the circus of ground zero. Lights flash, people shout. It’s insane to watch any of this. His body is there—rightthere. I watch the paramedics zip the body bag and lug him onto the stretcher like a sack of potatoes.

This isn’t the place for that kiss, either. “Let’s go for a drive.”

Dodi wrinkles her nose in disgust at the thought of the stinky Lambo, but I fish the key fob out of my pocket and place it in her palm. She stares at it.

“I didn’t steal this one,” I say. “It’s yours.”

She rotates the fob slowly in her hand and stares at the logo, then presses the lock button. A beep sounds behind us. She turns and stares at the sleek red car, her mouth hanging open.

“What?How?”

But the beep also startles a police officer standing half a dozen feet away. He spins around and our eyes meet.

It’s Baby Cop.

His nostrils flare, and he’s about to duck his head and walk in the other direction, but then he freezes. His eyes bulge and his mouth falls open.

“Jesus shit!” he yells, staring at something inside Dodi’s new car.

It’s Willow, still sitting shotgun after helping me meet the required passenger number for the carpool lane during holiday gridlock, her uncomfortably round, open mouth pressed to the glass like a tank-cleaning fish.

Another cop jogs over to assist Baby Cop. “What the fucking hell—what’s wrong with her?” The new cop slaps the glass. “Lady?Lady!”

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