Page 27 of Race With The Devil

I laughed. I guess she wasn’t interested in me. But it reminded me of my waterfall idea, that swimming hole I’d heard tell of. It would be the perfect place for her to touch me.

No. I had to keep my hands to myself. It had to come from her.

“Well, don’t worry,” I muttered. “The ball’s in your court.”

“Yes, but you’re the expert. Knowing who, where to touch, and when.”

“It doesn’t need to be that scripted, Unity. It only works if it’s in your heart.”

“But it is,” I thought I heard her whisper.

Just in time for Wolf Glaser to whoop. “Got ‘em!” he said vindictively, punching the air, causing Unity and I to abandon our chairs and jump on over to his screen. “Aha! What a nerd! Corey—I mean Dad was such a nerd he actually logged into Facebook the second after he sent the email to Tutti!”

“So this is the guy, for sure?” I asked.

Wolf lifted his chin in the direction of the printer. “Go see for yourself.”

Sure as shit, Wolf had printed out an exact replica of the offending email Tutti had given to us as evidence. “And his name’s Corey,” I said.

Unity gasped. “Lavinia’s last text! Remember, she said she had to drive Corey—“

“Corey to the U of Arizona the night he wanted to go hiking.” I finished Unity’s sentence for her. I rattled the back of Wolf’s rolling chair. “Let me see this Facebook page.”

Corey was your typical stoner guy, or perhaps fentanyl guy would be more accurate at this point. His blond buzz haircut was often covered by a knitted cap, and there was actually a photo of him wearing a yellow rubber apron, as though to protect him from chemicals he might be mixing. I could see he smoked cigarettes a lot, enjoyed Judas Priest, and his favorite saying was, “Hello, you blundering fool and your rite of underworld dreams. Follower or leader, your value equals dirt. I give illusions of cleansing flesh. No animal shall be spared.”

“Eyew,” said Unity. “He kills animals? And brags about it?”

“Maybe,” I said. “He could just want to make it seem like he does. Could be metaphorical. Notice anything else?”

“Yeah. He’s the guy who was staring at us when we were leaving Lytton’s house the other day.”

“Right. Tutti’s right-hand man, Corey Shabazz.” I read his last name off the Facebook page. For a guy who probably should be flying under the radar, he sure did post a lot of photos of himself and his mates making the sign of the horns while hovering over massive stacks of beer cans and the detritus of lines of white powder, el diablito. Funny, there were no girls in his selfies. But I kept flipping through until Unity said, “Stop.”

“That’s her,” breathed Wolf, rolling so close to me on his chair our thighs touched.

She was a gorgeous Apache woman, bowing to tradition by plaiting her hair and keeping it all back in one thick ponytail. She beamed at the camera with excitement, though I don’t know about what. A shock of lavender hair in the corner of the frame told us she was with her fiancé Tutti Morgan.

“Horse races,” said Unity.

“What?”

“See the scoreboard?”

If it was a scoreboard in the photo’s background, it was very tiny. Unity convinced us by saying with authority, “See? Win, place, show. And probables. They’re at the horse races.”

“Wolf, do a quick google on his address,” I said.

It only took him a few seconds to say, “1166 Route 66, Flagstaff—“

We looked at each other, then around the store. We wound up gazing at the ceiling as though waiting for it to leak.

Faster than fake news on Twitter, we all leaped into action at the same millisecond. Closing down programs, wiping browser histories, deleting files. If Corey was intelligent enough to send a threatening email to Tutti from a bogus account telling him to drop the investigation, this guy was as guilty as if he’d pushed Lavinia off the cliff himself. And he knew we were tracking him down, thus his appearance in front of Lytton’s house. So, while there was no point pretending we weren’t chasing him, there was also no point in leaving our footprints everywhere.

Wolf was stuck paying for our computer usage with a Bare Bones credit card while Unity and I made a getaway. Sure enough, a couple doors down a mailbox in a vestibule announced that C. Shabazz lived in one of the shitty apartments above.

I said, “If you’re going to be a hitman, maybe you shouldn’t put your name on your door.”

“What next?” asked Unity. “You wanna get your Glock from my saddlebag?”