“I’ll come, too.” Conrad jumped up. But then he remembered and glanced at Molly.
“Go on,” Molly said. “It’s fine.”
“No,” he said. “I’m here to take you home.”
“You guys can meet me there,” Eva said and was halfway down the hall before they could answer.
“But where? What’s the address?” He shouted after her.
But she’d already disappeared into the elevator.
Crap. He thought about running after her but instead sent her a quick text. “Need address.”
She didn’t respond. Damn it. Had she ditched him?
31
Eva held her breath until the elevator doors slid closed. She’d been hoping that Conrad wouldn’t chase after her. She didn’t want him and Molly to come. If things went south, she didn’t want them there. They’d be complicit to a crime but, also, she didn’t want them to see what she was capable of. If she had to, she’d take the guy out.
Once you saw death up close, it was hard to ever go back to where you were before.
And if it wasn’t their guy, it would be easier to talk her way out of it if she were alone.
Her phone dinged. Conrad asking for the address. She ignored it.
She’d be in touch later, once she had evaluated the situation at the house.
Francesca’s text had said the young man, Sebastian Carlson, lived with his parents.
As she slid behind the wheel of her rental, Eva thought of Jonathan. He should probably alert his contact. But Eva wanted to get there first. What if the FBI agent alerted the local police. She wasn’t sure what protocol was, but she knew that she didn’t—couldn’t—trust the locals to stop this guy. Especially when it seemed there were incels in the department. She’d call Jonathan later when she figured out how dangerous the situation was.
For all she knew, she could show up, confront the kid, and if he was meek, call the police then. If he tried to run, she could take him down and tie him up, leave him there for the authorities to find.
And personally, she also had to avoid police at all costs. There was still a warrant out for her arrest.
In some ways, it seemed like another lifetime.
A nightmare where she had found her family massacred in their Malibu home.
Now, in the car, warm from the Florida sun, she flashed back to that horrific day.
She’d been at a parent-teacher meeting, biting her tongue so she didn’t tell another mother to fuck off. Eva had been wearing a pink sweater, which now seemed like a strange costume she had donned for her role as Rich Malibu Housewife.
In some ways, it was a role. She’d been in hiding. The Sicilian mob had a hit on her head. She’d streaked her hair blonde, dressed in designer clothes, and completely fallen in love with being a mother and wife.
During the meeting, she’d received a text. It was a photo of a severed head. She’d recognized the person instantly. It was a head she herself had taken off. Her first murder. The one that allowed her access to the Mafioso world. After that, they had made her the first woman of honor, —a donna d’ onore, in Sicily. But then they had turned on her and put a price on her head, sending her into hiding for a decade.
Seeing the head, she knew she’d been found. She’d raced home, dread filling every inch of her body, only to find her husband, daughter, and son, brutally murdered.
She didn’t want to live after that. But when she found out she was the main suspect in her family’s slayings, her will to live sprung from her vendetta.
It took a few weeks, but she tracked down the killer and made him pay with his life.
At that point, Francesca had rescued her and given her a new reason to live: training an army of women to take down the Sicilian mob who had taken everything away from her since she was a child.
Without realizing it, Jonathan had guilted her into a side hustle—an unpaid hustle of course: forcing shitty parents to give up custody of kids. Always by brute force and threats and intimidation.
Somehow, all that had led to her driving down this Florida road with the windows down and the faint scent of salt on the breeze.
Her phone’s GPS brought her right to the front door.
The West Park neighborhood was older with colorful block homes with squat palm trees out front. His house was yellow with white trim. As she pulled up in front of the house, she immediately knew something was wrong. The door was ajar. A large potted palm on the small front porch was overturned, and dirt spilled down the steps.
Then she saw something that sent a zing of alarm through her—a dark red smear on the white front door. She scanned the driveway that crawled alongside the house to a garage in the back. The garage door was wide open. The garage was empty.
Eva grabbed her gun as she flung open her door, but she already knew with a sinking feeling that ChadHater was long gone. As she closed the car door, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. A huddle of neighbors two houses down eyeing her, holding their cell phones. Well, she couldn’t worry about them right now.
Racing up to the steps, heart pounding, Eva prayed that she wasn’t too late. But as soon as she stepped inside, she saw the bodies. The legs faced toward the door. There was nothing left of the heads. Only a close-range shotgun blast could’ve inflicted that kind of damage. No wonder the neighbors were outside. The gunshots had probably been heard for a mile. In the distance, the sound of sirens carried across the thick muggy air.
Leaping over the bodies, she raced down a hall, glancing into open doorways. There. A frayed Minecraft poster was taped to the door. She kicked it open all the way. The sound of sirens was growing closer.
Clothes covered every inch of the carpet. A small twin bed was pushed up against one corner. The sheets had slipped off revealing a faded blue mattress. A massive desk took up one wall. It held a large desktop computer, a keyboard and nothing else. Using a knuckle so she wouldn’t leave a fingerprint, Eva tapped the space bar. The computer screen flickered to life. It was waiting for a password. Taped to the screen was a helpful note: username: ChadHater password: DDay2020. She looked around for a second and then punched in the username and password. The screen came to life, revealing the screensaver. Giant black words on a white background: “You’re too fucking late.”
Now the sirens were even closer, Eva ran out of the room. Pausing in the living room, she scanned a wall of photographs. There. A picture of a young man with two older people. It was ChadHater and his parents. Another photo was next to it. This one just of him. A graduation photo. He was older now, but that was as good as she was going to get.
She ripped it off its nail and ran out the door. Within thirty seconds, she was in her car squealing down the road in the opposite direction from which she’d come. The direction she’d come was the main entrance to the development. She only prayed there was another way out. As she rounded a corner onto another street, she saw flashing lights in her rearview mirror pulling onto the street at the other end.
By swerving in and out of the blocks, she managed to weave her way back to the freeway, keeping an eye on her rearview mirror for any police cars. There was a better than decent chance that one of the neighbors had written down her license plate.
She pulled into a mall parking garage and found a deserted floor. Quickly, she took a Leatherman out of her glove box and exchanged license plates with another small Mercedes convertible.
There was a chance the Mercedes owner would notice the different plates and report them stolen, but it would buy her a little bit of time. It was better than nothing. She yanked her hair back in a ponytail, pulled on a ball cap from her bag, and headed back to her hotel.
On the way, she dialed Conrad.
“It’s begun. His parents are dead.”
“No!” He sounded gutted. “I’m logging on right now.”
Eva heard tapping as she waited.
“Nothing,” Conrad said. “There’s not a single post from him. No message either. No manifesto.”
“He left the username and password taped to his desktop. When I logged on, the screensaver said ‘You’re too late.’”
“He’s messing with us,” Conrad said. “He must know we’re on to him.”
“How’s Molly?”
“She’s great.” Eva could almost hear him blush through the phone.
“Good. Can you guys meet me at my hotel in thirty?”
“I think so. Stand by.” He held his hand over the phone. Eva could hear mumbling. “Yeah, we’re good.”
“I’m at the Plaza Royal. Suite 550.”
32
Sebastian/Username: ChadHater
The patrons at the coffee shop glanced at him when he walked in, but their gaze didn’t linger. All those surgeries had been worth every penny. His mother had mortgaged the house behind his father’s back and taken out several loans to pay for the major reconstruction of his jaw. Dr. Frank had said the jaw surgery, would give him the most bang for his buck. And he’d been right. More than the other surgeries, that one had completely changed the way he looked. His mother had wept when she picked him up from the airport.
“I’m just so happy for you, son.”
For a second, seeing her tears, he’d mistakenly interpreted them as love and considered sparing her, but then a wave of rage tore through him. She wasn’t crying because she was happy for him. She had paid for the surgery because she couldn’t stand how hideous he was.
What was that crap about “a face only a mother could love?”
That didn’t apply.
She was happy because now her son looked normal, and she didn’t have to see his ugliness anymore. That was why she cried.
Now, as he sat at a corner table and relived killing his parents, he felt the faintest flicker of remorse. The look on his mother’s face when he held the gun up wasn’t fear, but hurt. He pushed that away. He refused to let even a shred of guilt creep into his mind. His mother was a heartless Stacy. She’d never hugged him. Not even when he was little. She couldn’t stand to touch him. He was too hideous. It was her fault that he turned out the way he was
Logging onto Incel Nation, he sent a message to the One-Eyed Jack.
“The shooting is going to be tomorrow at that lame makeup conference. You still want in? Meet me there at six. I’ll show you how it’s going to go down, and we can figure out a role for you to play.”
Sebastian felt eyes on him, and it brought him sharply back to reality. He must’ve been talking to himself. A woman across from him quickly looked away. But then she looked back and smiled. For once, a woman wasn’t staring at him for his unattractiveness. The scars from his latest surgery hadn’t even completely healed, and it was already doing its work.
He was not only normal looking, he was attractive.
She even blushed because she had been caught staring at him. He hadn’t been talking to himself. She was looking at him because she found him good looking. It sent a wave of confidence rippling through his body. And right then, he was relieved he’d changed his original plans. He was not going to go out in a blaze of glory.
But everyone would think he had.
And in a sense, the person he was before, Sebastian, was dead.
He’d give himself a new name.
How about Chad? The irony.
He hid his smile.
How appropriate. He’d take on the moniker the incel community used to describe guys who could fuck anyone anytime they wanted.
Yep. He was Chad.
He smiled at the woman beside him.
“How’s it going?”
He’d practiced the right tone for years—a sexy nonchalance.
“Good,” she said shyly.
He stuck out his hand. “I’m Chad.”
33
The valet was at her side as soon as she put the car in park. It was the valet with the man bun.
“Ms. Spade.”
“Good afternoon,” she said and reached for his hand, slipping folded cash into it. “Could you keep my car close by for the next twenty-four hours.”
The kid didn’t even blink. “Of course. If you call ahead, tell them Tanner has your car, and I can have it waiting by the time the elevator hits the lobby.”
“Perfect,” Eva said. “Thanks, Tanner.”
Up in her room, Eva quickly turned on her TV, carrying the remote with her as she changed out of her black maxi dress and into black, close-fitting pants and a snug black tee-shirt. She wrapped her sandals in a plastic bag and buried them in her suitcase. They had blood stuck to the soles from walking across the living room at the ChadHater’s house. As she tugged on her tall boots, she flipped through the different TV channels to see if the local news had picked up on the double slaying.
The regular broadcast news probably wouldn’t start until noon, and she wasn’t sure a double homicide in the Miami area was really that unusual or newsworthy. Scanning the news from the last few days had showed her that murder was common practice in Miami.
She glanced at her phone. Conrad and Molly would be here soon. She dialed room service and ordered salads and fish and fruit and waters and coffees and, just in case, sodas.
When she answered the knock from room service, the elevator dinged and Conrad and Molly stepped out.
Molly’s skin was ashen, her eyes black and blue. Her nose was still enormous.
“Oh honey,” Eva said and wrapped her in a hug as she helped her into the room.
Once they were seated, settled around the coffee table in her suite, she told them to dig in.
Eva was studying the photograph she’d grabbed off the wall.
“Don’t forget the surgeries by Dr. Frank,” Conrad said. “He probably looks completely different now.”
“We need a current photo,” Eva said.
After a few minutes of searching on her laptop, Eva punched in numbers on her phone.
“Dr. Frank please,” she said.
“I’m sorry he’s with a client.” The man’s voice was clipped and efficient.
“Tell him it’s a matter of life and death.”
“Who is calling?” the man said, clearly perturbed.
“Put Dr. Frank on the phone now or you might be responsible for the next mass shooting.”
“Hold on.” By his tone the guy didn’t seem entirely convinced but, he apparently didn’t want to take any chances.
After a few minutes, Eva heard a click and then a throat clear.
“This is Dr. Frank.”
Eva didn’t give her name and didn’t mince words. “One of your clients, Sebastian Carlson, has threatened a mass shooting in the next twenty-four hours. He murdered his parents and is in hiding. We need a recent photo to disseminate to law enforcement and the public.”
“Which client again?”
“Sebastian Carlson.”
“I’m not allowed to provide any information on clients because of HIPAA.”
“What?” Eva said. Then she remembered. It was an American thing—a useless piece of paper she had signed every time she’d taken Alessandra and Lorenzo to pediatric appointments. It guaranteed patient privacy.
“I don’t give a fuck about HIPAA, Dr. Frank, and in this case, you shouldn’t either.”
“I could lose my license.”
“Only if someone found out.”
There were a few seconds of silence.
“I have to think about it.”
“While you are thinking about it, dozens, maybe even hundreds of people could be massacred. You might be able to prevent that by bending the rules a little,” Eva said. She paused for a few seconds. “Can you live with those lives on your conscience?”
“I just don’t know.”
“The only person who will know that the photo came from you is Sebastian Carlson.”
“Well—”
“He blew his parents’ heads off with a shotgun a few hours ago. I saw the aftermath firsthand. It was terrible.”
“Who are you?” Dr. Frank said.
“That doe
sn’t matter.”
She heard the clicking of fingers on a keyboard.
“He was here last month. I have a recent photo.”
“You can text it to this number.” Eva rattled off her cell.
“I have no idea who you are. For all I know, you could be making this all up.”
Eva had been busy searching on her laptop as they spoke. She found the 911 call from the shooting on a scanner website. She copied the audio file and emailed it to the address on Dr. Frank’s site.
“Check your email.”
“What?” He sounded confused.
She waited. After a few seconds, she heard him playing the audio of the 911 call. Then more typing.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “That’s his billing address.”
“I’m not making this up, doctor.”
“I have to think about it. I have to go now.”
“There’s no time.”
“I’ll decide within the next hour.”
“That’s too long,” Eva said.
But then he hung up.
“Damn it!” She shook her head. He had been so close to sending it. She looked down at her phone, almost expecting it to ding that there was a text message.
She’d taken a great risk, giving him her personal cell number. It wasn’t easily traceable, but it was something she gave out only to a few select people in her inner circle.
Conrad looked at her. “I don’t think there’s anything else you could’ve said. You were very convincing.”
“Not convincing enough, apparently.”
34
Sebastian/Chad/Username: ChadHater
Sebastian/Chad
UserName: ChadHater
The plan was in place now. He was on the move. He sent one last private message to his cop buddies, asking if they’d heard anything, but both of them had said the coast was clear. He was good. Law enforcement hadn’t yet heard about his plans.
One-Eyed Jack Page 10