Page 22 of Serial Killer Games

I watch the handsome stranger fill his basket slowly. A hunting knife. Rope. Duct tape. A saw. Bleach. A tarp. Extra large, extra sturdy, reinforced garbage bags. This is a man who takes initiative to plan date night. No weaponized incompetence here.Don’t forget protection, I think. He tosses a pair of safety goggles in the basket.

I have my own shopping to do. I take a basket from the stack.

At checkout I run into the handsome stranger again. Literally.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a prim voice, and he turns to see who knocked his elbow with her basket.

“No worries,” the stranger says.

“Christmas shopping?” I ask. “What’s Santa giving everyone?”

“Homemade gifts, this year. Everyone wants their pound of flesh.”

I suppress a smile. “Sounds like you have your work cut out for you. At least it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg.”

His lips don’t even twitch. He peers in my basket. I have a wrapping paper four-pack, scissors, and tape. “Now that’s something I’m not good at,” he says. “The presentation.”

“Presentation is everything. I’m a veryhandywrapper. I getmy head right into it.” I bite my lip. “I know we’ve only just met…”

“Has it really only been thirty seconds?” he says.

“…but if you needed help wrapping—”

“As a matter of fact—”

“Because it would be no trouble…”

“If you’re sure…”

“It would have to be your place. I have carpet, and my landlord is very tetchy about security deposits.”

“Understood.”

The doughy teenager behind the register watches, mystified, as I pick up this handsome monster and invite myself to his place. Jake pays up and leads us out. He stops by a shabby Toyota, and I walk around to the passenger side and grip the door handle, waiting. A bobble head stuck to the dash, two empty coffee cups in the console. I’m going to snoop through the glove compartment as soon as he lets me in. The real Jake Ripper waits inside. The lethally funny loner with the dysfunctional family, dead-end job, and—if it’s me he’s taking home—hopeless dating prospects.

Jake fishes a fob out of his pocket, and the car adjacent purrs to life. The Aston Martin from basement parking. I manage to keep my mouth from falling open, but it’s touch and go.

I stare at him, his glasses lit eerily by the headlights of passing cars, concealing his eyes. There’s the jingle in my ear.

But then a car pulls up behind us and sits there with its lights on, and in that beam of light, he’s just Jake again. I can see his eyes. Behind that perfect mask, he’s as uncertain and pleased by this turn of events as I.

“Itisyour car.”

He hesitates. “I’m borrowing it. I would never move a body in my own car.”

I step closer and peer inside. No bobble heads. No cups.

“Not losing your nerve, are you?” he asks.

There it is again: the uncertainty. I could devour his uncertainty and nervous pleasure crumb by crumb. I could huff them out of a bag for a high.

I shrug nonchalantly. “The entire premise of dating as a straight woman is being alone with men who are potential murderers.”

“That’s very insulting,” he says. “Potential?”

He opens the door for me and there’s a tug in my brain, a reason not to get in—real life, waiting at home for me—but I flick it away and duck inside.

We cruise uptown, the city light spilling into the darkened interior and lighting up Jake’s gloved hands on the wheel. He parks in a reserved spot in the basement of a tall new building, pulls the goods from the trunk, and leads me to the elevator.

---