Page 64 of Lady Killer

“And are you?”

Simone stalled for a minute. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.” Her cultured accent grew thicker.

“You’re not the only one who’s interested in protecting Autumn. You knew our late friend Aaron, right?”

Autumn’s grief over Aaron, and now Melody, ebbed and flowed. When I asked her if Simone had known him, she said that she hadn’t and that she’d been her rock during the last couple of months.

Simone pressed her lips together, looking around the coffee shop. She opened her mouth, a lie on her tongue, and I cut her off.

“You recognized him that night. He and I were headed upstairs shortly before he disappeared, and you looked at us with recognition and then something else," I said. "You didn’t have any problems with me when I was dancing with you three minutes earlier, so it was Aaron who made you react like that. Why?”

Sometimes the best defense was a good offense. I couldn’t let Simone start asking her own questions about what I had been doing that night.

Her mouth opened wide to protest, but that wasn’t what I zeroed in on. It was the tinkling sound of her cup rattling against its saucer as Simone’s hand trembled.

And then it clicked.

“What did he do to you?”

Simone’s eyes went big as tears fought to make their way out, but instead, a Brit through and through, she simply steeled her spine and sniffed loudly before shaking her head to clear the tears.

Her courage was raw and painful to watch, and I wondered if perhaps I had been too hard on her.

“How do—‍” She faltered for a second, shifting her jaw tightly. “How did you know? Did he . . .” She trailed off and looked at me imploringly.

“No, well, he tried but . . .” I mirrored her speech, letting her fill in the blanks.

She let out a sigh of relief.

I doubted she was thinking that Aaron had tried, but I’d lured him to the woods, then knocked him out and cut out his heart. But at least this way, I wasn’t lying directly to her.

“Same, well, similar, I suppose.”

“What happened?” I asked, keeping my voice soft and my eyes locked on her.

She shrugged and looked away, pinching her lips, before turning back to face me. Her eyes didn’t meet mine again, instead she stared off into the distance behind me as she spoke.

“It was September. I was out at a party with a group of friends I’d met at orientation. One of the girls said she could score us some MDMA." She put her tea. "When we tracked down her connection, he didn’t have enough pills for all of us, so I told the rest of them to go ahead, that I was cool going without.

“After a little bit, they were all starting to feel the effects when the girl’s boyfriend showed up. He was a junior here,and he had brought along some friends of his. One of them was Aaron. We were all just dancing and having fun when he asked why I wasn’t partying like my friends, and I explained there wasn’t enough. That was when he offered to hook me up.” She stopped, her eyes darting to mine for a second before looking away again.

“Except what he gave me wasn’t what he said it was . . .”

The GHB.

This time I was the one having to control myself as my grip around my cup strained. I wanted to tell her so many things. That I had killed him. That I was glad the bastard was dead. That I would do it again in a heartbeat.

“I’m so sorry, Simone. I didn’t know.”

I meant them, but the words still felt empty. What good was sympathy to survivors?

She sniffed again and dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “He didn’t—My friend got into a fight with her boyfriend and dragged me out of there less than ten minutes later. It wasn’t until we got to our dorm that I realized something was wrong with me, but by then it was too late. My friends weren’t in any state to help, and I guess I passed out in my bathroom.”

She was lucky she hadn’t choked on her own vomit and died.

“I woke up the next morning . . . the last thing I remembered was talking to Aaron. My friends filled in the blanks . . .” She swallowed.

I weighed her words.

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