Never Saw Me Coming

by Vera Kurian

  Luckily, Yessica wasn’t there to complain about the mess I was about to make in our common area. I began to beat up the stack of pages, crumping the paper, dog-earring random parts, making them look aged by smearing and wiping them with dirt, spilling some old tea to create a stain. Maybe in person you could tell the aging of the manuscript was fake, but I didn’t need it to look that real—I would use a filter. I snapped a picture of the cover, then DMed it to Emma. Then I flipped to the page where the word twins appeared the first time and sent that, as well. Ready to talk now, bitch? I stared at the green bubble. No answer.

  But then—finally: Do you understand that I am going to end you?

  Do you understand that I am going to expose you? I wrote.

  What even is that—it doesn’t mean anything.

  It’s from a book John Fiola was writing. You know, Wyman’s student when YOUR FATHER was going around killing people?

  His dissertation?

  I thought about the missing copies of Fiola’s dissertation. What’d you do—steal all the copies from the library and burn them? If you weren’t so lazy you’d know he was also writing a book. And I have the only copy. Of course, this wasn’t true, but I needed her to think I was stupid enough to say this. I will make a deal with you.

  You have nothing I want. I will end you regardless. You are the absolute worst. Your little barbecue confirmed everything I already thought about you.

  My mouth fell open. I wanted to ask her why she hadn’t ratted me out to the police, but maybe she wanted to save me for herself, and I definitely didn’t want to admit to any kind of barbecue.

  WTF are you talking about? Here’s the deal. You leave me alone, or I will tell the entire world you are the CRD’s daughter. TMZ will be busting down your door.

  You know I could just kill you and take that book, right?

  You could try. Or we make a pact. I don’t know why you are killing people and I don’t care. But there’s no way you can get A or C. They are both armed to the teeth—C’s family are gun nuts and he hired personal security. I know you cant even get into his building.

  Lol, MICHELLE.

  lol you would have gotten them already if you could. But I can hand deliver them to you.

  ???

  A trusts me and C wants to fuck me. I can hand them over like little sheep. You get your manuscript. Then you leave me alone. There was a long pause where she didn’t say anything. Think about it, I warned. This is my final offer.

  She didn’t answer. I put my phone next to my laptop and tried to tell myself to calm down. I had an entire French essay to write and my Bio exam to study for, but I kept Googling “Vietnam booby traps.” But then my phone pinged.

  You have a deal.

  57

  Part one of my plan was in motion. I knew Emma was smart—smart enough to have been getting away with all of this. She was at least somewhat reasonably a match for me—except she had one fatal flaw, which her stupid Instagram account revealed. Pride. She was documenting evidence that could count against her, but she did it, anyway—I guess it matched up with her interest in photography somehow. She was arrogant and assumed she was too smart to get caught. She probably thought I was stupid enough to think that I would hand over the book and she would hand over my life.

  She would have no idea what I had up my sleeve. But I would need Charles.

  I texted him: We need to come up with a plan. We can’t just wait around.

  Filling out the paperwork for a restraining order against T and filing tomorrow, Charles responded. He sent me a still from Kristen’s webcam—he hacked it more than a month ago.

  He did? Too bad Trevor wasn’t really the killer: for a split second I thought about how it would be convenient if someone took care of Kristen for me. I pictured myself soothing Charles’s broken heart afterward.

  Fucking creep, he added. She’s somewhere safe now.

  What about you?

  Have fun, he answered. Gun, sorry, autocorrect. I was going to head over to ft hunt in a bit.

  I wondered if I could convince Charles to give me one of his guns. He had already said no, but maybe if he saw me scared and in need of protection he would give in. The dorms are being stricter about security, I wrote. but when people think about security they’re never thinking about girls sneaking in. It’s how I get away with stuff.

  I’ve noticed, he wrote. Are you at home?

  Yes. This murder spree is cramping my style.

  Poor thing, he wrote.

  Come over, we can scheme this out

  He fell silent. I went back to my computer, occasionally glancing over to see if he was going to write something. I sighed, then picked my phone back up.

  You’ve been avoiding me, I wrote.

  ?? I literally just texted you

  We’re never going to talk about what happened?

  Nothing to talk about.

  You’re an ass

  There was a long pause, then he wrote, What are you up to? which was about as infuriating as infuriating gets. “What are you up to” is pretty much the fuckboi way of cowardly suggesting interest without actually suggesting it.

  Studying in bed

  Sounds hot.

  Could be, I wrote.

  Oh?

  I had fun the other night

  Clearly, he wrote. You came really hard.

  I did. You’re such a tease

  ??? he wrote, indignant.

  Come over. Yessica isn’t here

  I can’t.

  You’re no gun.

  I’m gun, he insisted.

  Send me a pic

  Are you kidding? I could never run for Congress, he said.

  I laughed. You could literally be a rapist and still get into congress lol.

  Lol, he wrote.

  Send something tame then.

  There was a pause on his end. I shifted on my bed, excited. Then a selfie popped up in the chat box. He had his shirt off, revealing his smooth unblemished skin, the indentation of muscles. He was built the way I liked—not too beefy but definitely someone who went to the gym. He might have been naked, but the picture was cut off at his narrow hips, a thin blur of dark hair leading down from his navel. Your turn, he said immediately.

  Not so prudish I stripped to my black lace bra and underwear and repositioned my phone until I could snap a picture good enough. Lips parted slightly, looking directly at the camera.

  God you’re fucking sexy, he wrote.

  I can come over there, I suggested.

  Not safe, he wrote.

  Then bring your gun and come here, I said. I won’t lay a hand on you and we should talk. Seriously, has there ever been a bigger load of BS than “We’ll just talk”? Maybe “Just the tip.”

  There was an excruciatingly long pause. Ok, he wrote.

  “Yes!” I shouted into my empty room. Come up the fire escape, I said. No one will see you.

  He didn’t respond, maybe not wanting to acknowledge that technically he was sneaking around. I circled my room, picking up dirty clothes and shoving them under my bed. I ran to the bathroom and freshened up, brushing my hair and spritzing perfume. I ripped my sheets off and replaced them with fresh ones, shoving the used ones under the bed, as well.

  By the time I heard the reverberations of someone climbing the fire escape, I was cozy under my sheets, hair neatly arrayed, pretending to read a paperback of Infinite Jest. Charles rapped on the windowpane with his fingertips. I lifted the latch I had installed and he edged the old window up with a scraping noise. He crawled in somewhat gracelessly, walking on his hands for a few feet before the rest of his body fell in. We both laughed. I stayed under the sheets but moved over, and he lay beside me. I was on my side and he was on his back. “We need a plan,” I whispered.

  “What about evidence gathering?”
>
  “I’m zeroing in on the killer, but I need your help. I need to get them to a certain location at a certain time.”

  “What location?”

  “The McMillan Sand Filtration Site. It’s this abandoned construction site.”

  “Why there in particular?”

  “I just need to tie up some loose ends,” I said, playing with his hair.

  “What loose ends?” he asked, turning and looking directly at me. In the dim light his pupils were huge.

  “This and that,” I teased.

  “Chloe...where’s Will? I haven’t seen him in more than a week.”

  “What am I—his keeper?”

  He picked his head up off the pillow. “Did you...do something? At the sand place—is that where you did it?” I laced my hands over my bare stomach and said nothing. “I won’t tell anyone,” he whispered.

  “Good, because there’s nothing to tell. Will was a piece of shit and he deserved what he got.”

  “I know he’s bad... Do you think—do you think he did it more than once?”

  “Does that fucking matter?” I snapped.

  Charles held up his hands innocently. “I don’t know. So, your plan is that we get Trevor or Emma there and, what—make it look like they’re responsible for Will?”

  “Maybe.” I beseeched him with big eyes. “They could overpower me—you’re the only person I can ask for help.”

  “What about Andre?”

  “I don’t trust Andre.”

  “Racist!”

  I snorted. “Not because he’s Black—Andre’s a one-hundred-percent psychopath. He puts on this totally wide-eyed earnest act all the time, and people like you fall for it.” That, and there was certain information Andre could never know about me, stuff that Charles already knew.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I haven’t completely figured it out.” I had, actually. Charles, Andre, and the manuscript were my bait. She wouldn’t expect us to be working together, and between the two of us and any firepower Charles had, we could overpower her. “I need physical backup Saturday night. I haven’t worked out all the logistics but I need you there with your gun. We might need to go early to set up traps.”

  Charles shook his head. “You have a plan for everything, don’t you?” It was as good as a promise. I squeezed his arm reassuringly, putting my head back down on him.

  “What am I going to do with you?” he murmured, playing with my hair.

  “Anything you want,” I offered.

  He shook his head, exhaling with frustrated humor. “I shouldn’t even be here,” he said, more to himself than to me. He turned to look at me, his face right next to mine on the pillow. “Do you know why I like being with Kristen?” he whispered. “Besides who she is. I like how normal we are together.”

  “Is that a good reason to be with someone?”

  “Do you have any idea what I felt when they broke into her house?”

  “I’m not denying that you think you love her.”

  “What, then?”

  “I’m just saying that she’ll never understand you. The darker parts of you. That there’s an empty vessel under the mask.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “No one could ever love that vessel but someone else just like you.”

  I couldn’t read the expression on his face. “Sometimes it’s exhausting to act all the time.”

  I wriggled closer to him and pet his hair. He didn’t have any product in it the way he had the night of the Halloween Ball. It was soft, strands of blond mixed in with brown. He swallowed, the action making his Adam’s apple bob. “What if we just made out a little—does that count?” he whispered.

  I shook my head, crossing the space between us. We kissed, my white bedsheets forming a protective barrier between us. Above the sheet his hand smoothed down my back, stopped at my waist, then pulled me closer. We moved without any sense of urgency but the aching tension still built in me. I felt his lips on my throat. Something hard poked at me and it took me a split second to realize that it was his gun, tucked under the waistband of his pants. He shifted on top of me, pinning my arms above my head by the wrists, and I squirmed under his weight, wanting to touch him everywhere.

  “Charles,” I whispered.

  He pulled back a little, looking at me. With our faces only a couple inches apart, I could tell he was not wearing his contacts. Suddenly he cringed. “You smell like oranges,” he whispered.

  “Huh?”

  He blinked rapidly. “Burned oranges.” He got off me then, sitting on the edge of the bed to dig something out of his pocket, then stood up abruptly as he put something in his mouth. “Do you have any Coke?”

  “Excuse me?!” I near shouted.

  He dry swallowed. “I’m having an aura. It means I’m about to have a migraine. Do you have anything with caffeine?” He was already edging toward the window. I dug a room-temperature can of energy drink out of my bag and he downed half of it. “I have to go lie down.”

  “Lie down here—we’re not done talking.”

  “I’ll see you, Chloe.” He was already climbing back onto the fire escape. He was probably just chickening out, thinking that his migraine was punishment for cheating on his precious Kristen.

  “You’ll back me, won’t you?” I called after him, but he was already making his way down the steps.

  “I already said I would,” he called back.

  58

  Charles opened his eyes, the numbers of his digital clock bleary in front of him. The pristine lawn of the Fort Hunt house was completely bare of fallen leaves, misted over by dew. He put the news on the radio—he had been listening regularly, wondering if he would hear something about a certain missing college student.

  He headed downstairs, walking by his father’s office, where he was on the phone with someone. Charles made two Bloody Marys in the kitchen and then carried them into his father’s office. He was still on the phone, looking at his son with raised eyebrows as Charles set a drink down in front of him. A champion drinker, he had high standards. He took a sip as he ended the call, nodding his approval as he leaned back lazily. It was Thursday, but he was in Weekend Dad mode—a rare good mood. “I was back in Texas last week and ordered one of these. Guy brings it out with a fried shrimp stuck on the rim.”

  Charles laughed his disapproval, then sipped his own drink. The salty spice calmed him. Away in Fort Hunt, they were safe. Kristen was away from all that threatened her, and he didn’t have to think about the whole mess. Why not sit around and have a few drinks? Why not blow off midterms?

  The elder Portmont stood up, taking a bigger gulp. “I’m headed to London in about six—do you and Kristen want a ride?”

  Hop in the jet and off to London. Stay in a nice hotel and catch a few shows while his father had meetings with oil execs. Across the Atlantic, Trevor could never reach him. Why not? He didn’t have to help Chloe with whatever nonsense she was up to. But still, the problem wasn’t going to go away on its own, and Chloe would probably make it worse without him—it’s not like Andre would be able to stop her once she had her mind set. While he found Emma strange, he trusted his own judgment about her. Did he trust Chloe to be the fair arbiter of what would be reasonable evidence that Emma was dangerous? Of course not. “I would, but we have midterms.” His father nodded his approval and Charles, hearing Kristen and his mother emerge from the far side of the house, went out to find them.

  Kristen, sweaty from a private yoga lesson, headed up the stairs. “Come here!” he called. She laughed and ran, saying she had to shower. He caught up with her in the bedroom and, laughing, they undressed each other, pausing in between articles of clothing to kiss. They had sex in the shower, Kristen yelping when he turned the water cold so they could feel the contrast against the heat of their own bodies. Afterward they l
ay on the marble floor of the bathroom, wrapped in fluffy towels. “Why don’t we blow off midterms and go to London with my dad?”

  Kristen perched on one elbow and raised an eyebrow. “Because someone actually has a good GPA right now and doesn’t want to blow it because he worked so hard.” Charles sighed. “Come on. You just have the poli-sci one, then we can go to dinner as a reward.”

  “It’s at six,” he said, glancing at his smartwatch. “Who the hell schedules a midterm for 6 p.m.? What about you?”

  “My last two are take-home essays, so I can stay here and work on them.”

  He cuddled her, tucking her head under his chin. He had told her some of it last night. Not everything, of course—that the murders were connected, or anything about Chloe. But the stuff about Trevor hacking her webcam and the restraining order he had filed. He could tell that she was upset—freaked out by it—but that she forced herself to not appear so. Because she knew that if she got upset, he might take it out on Trevor and make it worse. “We’ll do our midterms,” he said, “and in a few days this’ll all be over.”

  * * *

  Charles cracked his knuckles, looking down at his own handwriting in the blue book on the desk in front of him. About a third of the class had already finished, turned their exams in, and left. This made him immediately want to get up and do the same, even though he hadn’t finished. He forced himself to remain and made himself go over every test question. Like a good boy.

  When he finally finished he headed down the stairs of the Arts and Sciences Building and outside. Some students huddled around a food truck that sold coffee and organic donuts. Charles looked at his watch—it was almost nine. He took out his phone to text Kristen, but froze when he saw a text from Chloe.

  ive caught our prey, all tied up and ready for fun. Then a champagne emoji and a pin indicating her location.

  “Shit,” Charles muttered. Who did she have tied up? Trevor? Emma? What was the plan even? And weren’t they supposed to do it on Saturday? Why did she have to jump the gun about everything? What if she went too far—or already had? He pictured Emma tied to a stake, Chloe prancing around her with a lit torch. Or maybe she had settled on Trevor—and while he was an asshole, doing something rash wasn’t in anyone’s best interest.