Slaying You

Chapter One

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CROSSFIRE

Four days earlier in Penrose, Colorado

Wright leaned over his shoulder, peering out at the road ahead. "Shit, man. Can you even see?"

Peterson didn't answer, intent on driving. The prison bus was a beast in the best of times, and this was definitely not that. The wiper blades were basically just moving ash back and forth, smearing it across the windshield in dark streaks. Visibility was down to a few yards, the entire sky blotted out by smoke. It wasn't much past noon but looked like twilight, the only sign of daylight an apocryphal red sun.

It's like driving into hell, Peterson thought, repressing a shudder.

Wright wasn't helping. Every few minutes he'd let out a low whistle and say something stupid, like, "You sure this road is still clear?"

No, dumbass, Peterson wanted to snap. I'm not sure of anything anymore. The road had been clear when they'd left the supermax an hour earlier, but how in the hell was he supposed to know now? Cell service was down, and they were supposed to stay off the radio unless there was an emergency.

It hadn't been like this when he drove to work that morning. The only sign of a wildfire then had been a slight tickle in the back of his throat as he belted out "Jolene," evoking memories of camping with his dad when he was a kid. Aside from what looked like morning fog, you'd barely have known a fire was raging nearby.

Well, it sure as shit looked like it now. On this section of Route 24, you usually could see for miles, low, scrub grass-covered hills stretching into the distance. But now, all that dry brush was aflame. The wildfire was eighty acres wide and growing by the minute. The smoke to his right was tinted red, and he would've sworn heat was coming off it. Should I call in? Their bus had already been diverted once because I-25 was overtaken. If this road had become impassable, too, wouldn't someone have let them know?

Peterson swore under his breath. It was the warden's fault for waiting so long to start the evacuation. Granted, shifting more than three hundred of the nation's most dangerous criminals to different prisons probably wasn't easy. He'd heard rumors that Colorado State Penitentiary had flat out refused to take any, claiming they didn't have beds to spare. Which was why he was driving these assholes to Sterling Correctional instead, nearly two hundred and fifty goddamn miles away. And at the rate they were going, they wouldn't get there until nightfall.

Peterson really didn't want to be dealing with these creeps after dark. He was a year into this gig and already hated it. Lifers like Wright got off on the power trips, but that wasn't his scene. If it weren't for the benefits, he would have left after a month; now, he was just waiting on a transfer to minimum security. At least there you were dealing with human beings. A glance in the rearview mirror showed two dozen figures in dusky orange scrubs, each shackled in a bus seat. As the last guy hired, Peterson had been assigned the worst of the worst: cartel bosses, serial killers, even a couple of goddamn terrorists. They were, to a man, eerily silent and expressionless. He wondered if that meant they were as freaked out as he was.

Either that, or they were plotting something. One of them was a notorious escape artist, and when he'd gotten the assignment, Peterson's first thought had been, Shit. I bet we end up getting mowed down by a bunch of narcos with AR-15s.

But even they wouldn't be crazy enough to drive through this, he thought grimly.

"Shit!" Wright cried out.

Reflexively, Peterson hit the brakes. The rear of the bus skidded as the tires fought for purchase. Wright was thrown against the wire gate separating them from the prisoners, his yelp matched by shouting from the back. There were a scary few seconds as Peterson rode the tipping point; he could feel the back of the bus wanting to cant sideways, dragging them with it. But the beast righted herself at the last moment, and he heaved a sigh of relief.

It was short lived.

"Ho-ly Christ," Wright breathed, leaning forward.

The fire had jumped the highway, leaving Peterson staring at a solid wall of flames. It looked how he'd always pictured the Red Sea when Moses parted it, red stretching up on either side and smoke swirling in between. Tendrils started to leach into the bus despite the closed windows, and a few of the assholes in the back started coughing. One swore in Spanish, yelling for them to turn around. Within seconds the cry was taken up by the others, a cacophony of men screaming for him to head forward, or back, Just go, you bastard!, Drive, asshole!, along with a lot of choice comments about his mother.

"Peterson," Wright said from his shoulder. "Hate to say it but they're right, man. I think we gotta go back."

Peterson realized he'd frozen. He shook it off and checked the side mirror. It didn't look much better behind them, but at least that section of road was familiar. He cautiously shifted into reverse and slowly started to back up the beast. Route 24 was just two lanes, barely deserving of the title "State Highway." He cursed under his breath; this was going to require a twenty-point turn.

He was halfway through it, the bus perpendicular to the road and straddling both lanes, when Wright shouted again. Higher pitched this time, really more of a scream.

Intent on making sure the unwieldy bus didn't slide into the trench lining the berm, Peterson chanced a look where Wright was pointing.

A semi was coming straight at them, screaming out of the smoke at a hundred miles an hour. Through the windshield, Peterson could see two men in cowboy hats, their eyes wide and mouths open. The truck braked hard, stuttering into a skid. The back swung out as it started to jackknife, but it was too late. There wasn't even time to pray before the semi slammed into them.

Chapter Two

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TWO SMART PEOPLE

Forty miles outside Las Vegas, Nevada

I shuffled through the bills in my hand again, then said, "Um, I actually gave you a hundred."

The mini-mart cashier narrowed his eyes. "You sure 'bout that?"

I nodded earnestly, trying my darndest to look truthful.

He hesitated, then lifted the drawer and chuckled. "Well, hell. Sorry, miss. You wouldn't believe how many folks try to pull a fast one."

"Really?" I ruefully shook my head, reflexively mirroring him. "Terrible. Who would do such a thing?" Me, I thought. Up until a couple months ago, most definitely me. But I'd finally put my life as a grifter firmly behind me, once and for all. Hell, these past few months I'd practically become a poster child for law-abiding citizens.

"Here you go. Change for a hundred." As the cashier passed me a stack of bills, I caught movement in the security mirror mounted behind him. Glancing at it, I saw a teenager slip a bag of chips in his jacket and tsked internally. Sloppy. Kid was definitely going to get caught.

The cashier's eyes started to shift toward him. Impulsively, I tucked a five in the tip jar to distract him. "That's for you."

He threw me a puzzled look. "Well, thanks. Just so you know, that's mainly for when I get someone coffee."

I shrugged. "Good karma. Pay it forward, right?"

As I left, the kid darted through the door right ahead of me. In a low voice, I said, "You should be more careful. Juvie's not worth a bag of chips."

The kid startled, then muttered, "Fuck off, Grandma."

As he loped away, I called out, "I'm twenty-four, shithead!" So much for being a Good Samaritan. It would serve him right if he got caught next time. Carefully balancing my stack of snacks and drinks, I cautiously navigated back to my parked Audi.

When I got to the car, a pair of hands reached out of the passenger window. "Wow! You went crazy in there."

"Just grabbed the basics. Take these," I said, passing over the Icees.

Relieved of the worst of my burden, I circled the car and climbed in, tossing the snacks on the center console. Kat was frowning into one of the Icee cups. "Is it supposed to be brown?"

"Oh yeah," I said, nodding firmly. "We got lucky. They had pineapple and Coke."

"So this is Coke-flavored?"

"Of course not," I scoffed. "It's both. Classic mix, trust me."

Dubiously she took a sip, then wrinkled her nose. "It tastes appalling."

"It'll grow on you," I promised.

"I sincerely doubt that," Kat said. "So why zombies?"

"Why not?" I shrugged. One of the best things about my relationship with Kat was that since day one, we'd been engaged in an ongoing conversation with no clear start or end point. I would pick up the thread of something we'd talked about a week earlier, and without my having to provide any context, Kat was right back in it with me. I'd never experienced that with anyone before. For example, we'd spent most of the drive from San Francisco debating which type of fictional apocalypse would be preferable if given a choice. "I mean, slow zombies, obviously."

Kat shuddered. "I hate the fast zombies."

"Yeah, the ones in World War Z were terrifying."

"I Am Legend were worse," she said. "I still have terrible nightmares about those."

"Same. But slow zombies are manageable. You just shore up your compound and wear long-sleeved leathers whenever you leave it."

She was already shaking her head. "The zombies always break in."

"Impossible," I said. "Because my compound has a half mile of defenses on all sides. The outermost ring has a moat, then pointy sticks, then a fence, then another moat, and more sticks . . ."

"Impressive," she said.

"Thanks. I've put some thought into it." I shot her a grin. "What about you?"

"Aliens," she said decisively.

"Seriously?" I threw her a look.

"Yes. I believe they will most likely be friendly and solve all our problems."

"Or they'll terraform our planet while enslaving and eating us."

Jutting up her chin she said, "I accept the risk."

I burst out laughing; the gravity her German accent lent her words always cracked me up. "You're a nut, you know that?"

"Yes. And you love that about me."

"Yeah, I do," I said, reaching over and squeezing her hand.

Taking another sip of her drink, she winced and said, "Oh no."

"What?"

"It is growing on me," she said, faux terror in her voice.

"See?" I said triumphantly.

"It's oddly reminiscent of lebkuchen, even though it has none of the flavors," she said, cocking her head to the side.

"Mmm, lebkuchen. Totally my favorite," I joked weakly. That sort of statement always highlighted the gaping chasm between our upbringings. Katarina von Rotberg (which was actually the abbreviated version of her name; on her birth certificate, she had at least a dozen more tucked in between) was an actual baroness, raised in luxury and "finished" by Swiss boarding schools and what she referred to as her "stint at Oxford."

Let's just say that my life path had been markedly different. Six months ago, I couldn't afford a tank of gas, never mind an Audi to put it in. Being gifted three million dollars in cryptocurrency had changed all that. But even though I had money now, I wasn't fluent in the language that wealthy people like Kat spoke. Sometimes I bridled at that; other times it made me jealous.

"It's a kind of cookie," Kat explained. "Filled with fruit and nuts. Very popular around Weihnachten. Um, Christmas," she amended quickly.

"It's okay, Kat."

"I am not showing off," she said defensively.

"I know you're not." I sighed heavily and said, "I mean, neither of us can help how fancy we are, right?"

"So fancy," she agreed, cracking a grin.

"And hot, too."

"So hot." She shook her head. "It is a travesty, really."

"Hmm, I think travesty might be too fancy a word, even for us." I waggled a finger at her. "Get it under control, otherwise people won't be able to stand us. It'd be like staring into the sun."

She threw a chip at me. Nonchalantly, I scooped it off my lap and popped it in my mouth.

"Ew."

"Just trying to take the hotness down a few notches."

"Very effective," she agreed. "And yet you still remain very, very hot."

"Thank you."

"Perhaps we could stop off somewhere?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow while trailing her fingers up my thigh. "And arrive tomorrow instead?"

"That's tempting," I agreed. We'd spent quite a bit of time in bed over the past three months. Better still were the moments in between: nights on the couch watching movies and laughing together or fine dining at some of San Francisco's foodie destinations-places I never could've afforded a year ago (or even gotten into; it's amazing how being a millionaire literally opened doors). We had even spent one magical weekend touring Napa's vineyards.

For the first time in my life, I was in what felt like a normal, happy relationship. I was crazy about Kat. She seemed to feel the same way about me. All I wanted was to spend every minute with her for the indefinite future. Maybe even the rest of my life.

And if I was being honest, that scared the crap out of me. "Sorry," I said, clearing my throat. "I promised Dot we'd be there by dinner."

"Who are these friends again?" she asked around the Icee straw.

"Oh, just some people I met in Vegas when I stayed there last spring," I said vaguely.

"Well, I cannot wait to meet them. And to see Las Vegas. I have heard wonderful things!"

"Just so you know, it's not going to be anything like Ocean's 11," I warned. I'd discovered the hard way that Kat tended toward an overly rosy portrait of American tourist destinations, largely thanks to their heavily filtered appearances in movies.

"I bet it will be even better!" She grinned at me.

I smiled back wanly, wondering again if I should have booked a room at one of the fancier hotels on the Strip. But Dot had threatened to draw and quarter me if I did. And after all, we were going for her wedding; the least I could do was check us into one of her motels. Still, I was more than a little trepidatious about how Kat would react to staying somewhere that Tripadvisor described as "kitschy-cute, but watch out for bedbugs."

And that wasn't my only concern. Maybe it was finally time to come clean with Kat about everything that had happened last spring. In my defense, it wasn't easy to explain that while completing my college education, I'd been abducted by a Pokémon-obsessed serial killer in Tennessee who shaved my entire body and painted me blue, only to be saved at the eleventh hour by a weird lady named Grace. I'd found out later that Grace had spent decades tracking serial killers in hopes of catching a specific one: her psychopathic twin brother. And in a truly delightful twist of fate, that psychopathic twin had latched on to me as his next victim. He lured me to Vegas, killed one of my new friends, and kidnapped another, all of which led to a showdown in a motel room, where Grace shot him dead. And here's the real kicker: My newfound fortune came from that psychopath. In a move that seemed wildly out of character, Grace gifted it to me because she was already set financially.