Prologue
Damn it, I screwed up. Again.
A woman’s body in a trunk isn’t a suitcase. It doesn’t fold in half, no matter how hard you shove. I wipe my hands with an old rag, but it only smears grease and someone’s sticky luck across my palms. My knees dig into the upholstery; my elbows jut out.
How did I become a kidnapper? No, that’s not right. Why am I such a bad kidnapper?
The pharmacy. Inside, it reeks of cheap mint air freshener. My head throbs like someone drove a framing nail straight into my skull. I stand by the shelf, staring blankly at rows of boxes. Through the glass storefront, I can see my battered sedan. I pray no nosy prick gets too close to the trunk.
I grab a pack of pills. For the headache.
At the register, I look like a waking nightmare. Greasy hair matted with sweat, shirt clinging to my spine. The cashier looks at me with pure disgust, as if I just crawled out of a sewer. Maybe I did.
“This too,” I say, slamming a bottle onto the counter. The plastic gives a pathetic crunch.
“Anything else?” she drones. The bags under her eyes are as deep as my debts, her voice dry as sandpaper.
“No. That’s it.”
I grab the water and practically bolt for the exit. The city at night isn’t a romance; it’s a rotting corpse dusted in neon. The air is thick and sticky, clogging my lungs with grit and exhaust. Inside the car, it reeks of sweat, cheap plastic, and my own fear. The AC kicked the bucket last year—God must really love me, choosing to fry me alive in this tin can.
“Mmm-mmph! Mmm!”
The sound from the trunk stabs at my ears. Rhythmic. Sharp. Like someone is driving piles straight into my brain.
“I know, I know! I’m sorry!” I scream into the void of the cabin, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white. “Everything went to hell!”
I tear out to the outskirts. Out here, the streetlights only work every other block, and the sky looks like a badly healing bruise—a dirty purple mottled with patches of black. The street is empty. The silence is so heavy I can hear the engine cooling down.
I slam on the brakes, jump out, and wrench open the trunk lid.
There she is. My personal idol, twisted into a knot on a yoga mat. In this light, her face is just a pale smudge, almost translucent. The moment the trunk pops, she tries to pour all her terror into a single scream, but the sound hitches in her throat—I’ve already pressed the cold neck of the bottle against her lips.
I try to be gentle, almost tender, as I cradle the back of her head, but my hands are shaking and she chokes anyway. Water spills past, washing away her scream, leaving only a wet wheeze and a raw, primal horror in her eyes. In the dim glow of the taillights, her pupils look like two black holes, slowly sucking the life out of me.
I toss the pills into my mouth. Chewing them is like gnawing on chalk mixed with bile.
I keep driving. Away from the city. Toward my new garage, where no one will hear the screaming.
Halfway there, it hits me. My stomach turns inside out right onto the steering wheel. I stomp on the brakes, tumble out the door, and vomit onto the hot asphalt. Only now does it click what I actually bought at the pharmacy. It wasn't for the headache. It was an emetic. I mixed up the boxes. My brain has officially turned to mush.
I collapse to my knees. My voice is dry, like desert sand.
“Oh God, forgive me! Sister, I’m sorry!”
I scream into the darkening sky until blood starts to leak from my throat.
I just kidnapped the biggest star in the country.
