“You think he’s using his own sister to send his creepy notes for him?”
“I guess we’re about to find out.”
CHAPTER 41
Birdie
The school looms before me, a monument to decay. Graffiti covers the walls, and broken windows stare down at me. The place that shamed and banished me for something I’d never done. How long has it been abandoned, left to rot?
“You’re doing great. I’ll be here every step of the way,” Tristan’s voice comes through the wide-range, wireless earpiece I’m covering with my hair.
“Are you in position?”
“Affirmative. You can go in. Remember, let me have visual on you at all times.”
I touch the back of my pants, where I conceal one of Tristan’s guns under my jacket, making sure it’s not showing. I have a knife tucked inside my boots, too. It doesn’t hurt to come prepared. “All right. Let’s do this. Let’s get that asshole.”
At 3:15 p.m., the Florida sun casts long shadows through the empty hallways. Heart in my throat, I make my way to the main corridor where it all began.
“Where are you, Detective?” Will he wait in my classroom? At the parking lot where he used to pick up his sister?
I move through the corridors methodically. My classroom first. The science lab where I used to eat lunch alone. The library where I’d hide from Aaron. The pantry where I secretly cried about the men in my life. I check every room and circle back to the parking lot. Nothing. No one.
“Tristan, do you see anyone? Any movement?”
“Negative.”
“Well,” I check the time on my phone. It’s 3:29, “he’s not here.”
A text dings from my phone. Unknown number.
Right time. Wrong place. This is not where we first met, darling.
My heart skips a beat. More messages follow immediately.
Nice rifle. Not so discreet. I can spot it from miles away.
Naughty, little butterfly. You brought a third wheel to our date.
“Shit,” I breathe.
“Birdie, what’s going on? Do you see anything?”
My phone dings again.Lose the bodyguard or your precious protector and his two friends join in the afterlife. I’m watching all of them.
Terror shoots through me. He knows about Dixon and Riley too.
I flinch with another text notification sound.Café Luna. You know the place. I’ll be waiting. Ditch the earpiece and the phone. Come alone or they all die.
Café Luna. I used to get coffee there all the time. The barista—was it Fernandez? Gonzalez—always remembered my order. That’s where Butterfly Man first saw me? That’s where the detective and I first met?
“Birdie, what’s happening? Talk to me.”
“Tristan.” I glance around the empty parking lot and go back inside. “He knows you’re here. He’s just texted me. He knows where you are. Dixon and Riley, too.”
“Fuck. Get out of here, Birdie. Now.”
That would be the smartest thing to do, but he knows I can’t do that. I have to see Butterfly Man. I have to see the face behind the mask myself.