Page 25 of Kill Your Darlings

It’s true.No good deed goes unpunished.

Not that all my deeds had been good ones.Even in the moment, I’d never kidded myself about that.But I sure as hell had never intended to dobaddeeds.I had never acted out of malice.

Did Finn think I was a sociopath?In addition to the other things he thought about me?

Maybe.

Would I know if I was a sociopath?

Maybe not.

What I did know was that I needed to stay as far away from former San Clemente homicide detective Phineas Scott as humanly possible.No more apologies or explanations or efforts to stay friends.Finn was now a threat to me.A clear and present danger.

Butwashe?Or was that my mounting paranoia kicking in?

He didn’tknowanything.And without having at least a starting point, there was no way of his ever finding out more than he’d already guessed.That I had a past.Secrets.That there were things in my life I preferred keeping to myself.

That was it.That was the extent of what he knew.Okay,andI was reserved, I had trust issues, and a fear of intimacy.Oh, and yes, I’d been hurt.

In short, your typical forty-year-old American male.

I mean, talk about trust issues:Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Finn Scott!

There was no reason to think he was going to start poking around in my past.He wasn’t a cop anymore.There was nothing for him to gain by starting his own personal investigation.I believed him when he said he was grateful to me for the help I’d given throughout his career.He was not going to go out of his way to try to ruin me.He had enough going on in his own life without expending time and energy sifting through the rubble of mine.

All I’d ever wanted was peace and quiet and a life spent safely folded between the pages of books.And I’d had that for two very short decades.And then, foolishly, I’d begun to want more, to think that more was possible.

But it wasn’t possible.At this point, I would be beyond lucky to find my way back to the sanctuary of that peaceful, quiet life I’d built for myself.

The bar in the lobby was mostly empty when I arrived back at the hotel.Cool, quiet, and mostly empty was exactly what I needed, and I sat down to browse the small menu card of signature conference cocktails.Today was the first full day of panels, which explained the relative calm on the ground floor.

I spotted Hayes Hartman and several other of the young guns of neo noir huddled in one of the cozy seating arrangements near the huge windows overlooking the bay.They were laughing too much and too loudly, and I surmised they were priming the pump before their panels.

The waitress appeared and I ordered the Red Herring.Vodka, Aperol, blood orange, lemon juice, and a splash of sparkling water—garnished with a twist of orange peel.

Citrus, so…practically breakfast juice.Not that I was a big day drinker.I wasn’t a heavy drinker at any time, really, but I had a long afternoon ahead—and there was no point pretending I wasn’t shattered after the heart-to-heart with Finn.

Anyway.

I glanced at my watch, tried not to listen to Hayes sharing more literary insights from across the room.

“The thing is,” Hayes was saying, his voice perfectly modulated for projection, “neo-noir isn’t about shadows and trench coats anymore.That’s aesthetic window dressing.What we’re really talking about is existential rot in the age of late capitalism.The femme fatale isn’t a woman now—she’s the algorithm.The detective?He’s a ghost.Or a gig worker.If your protagonist isn’t actively losing his grip on reality, what are you even doing?That’s not noir.That’s just...crime fiction in a hat.”

Had anyoneaskedhim?

Thankfully, my drink arrived to numb the pain.

It was nice.The cocktail, that is.Bright and playful but with a sneaky kick.I was three sips in when a cheerful female voice said from behind me, “Reporting for duty, sir!”

I managed not to jump, pasted on a smile of welcome, turning in my seat.

“Cherry!How was your flight?”

Cherry Bing, my PA, was a small, twenty-something Asian-American woman.She wore black jeans, black T-shirt, black blazer, and black ballet flats.The uniform of the young NYC legacy editor.Her hair was piled on her head in one of those deliberately messy I-ran-my-hand-through-it-while-reading-something-brilliant styles.She’d been working for me for about six months, and I already considered her indispensable.Her excitement and enthusiasm for the business was a daily reminder of why books, why fiction, still mattered in a world dominated by technology.

“It was great!I got to sit with Amelia.”

“That’s nice.”Amelia was our romantic-suspense editor.I’d already heard from Lila that W&W considered RS in decline, and as they already had their own romantic-suspense line, they would have trouble justifying a second.

---