Free Kill You Last by Todd Strasser Page A

done some things wrong, but he can’t actually be a suspect in the disappearance of these girls, can he? I mean…seriously, Mom, can’t you tell me what you really think?”
    The timer in the oven binged and seemed to snap her out of a trance. She pulled on some oven mitts. “Sorry, what did you say?”
    I repeated what I’d said, while she sliced the pizza and took a bowl of salad out of the refrigerator. “No,” she said, bringing the salad to the table. “I don’t think he could really be a suspect.”
    She started to eat a slice of pizza while I pushed my salad around with a fork. Once again it came to me that just because we didn’t think Dad could be a suspect meant nothing as far as the rest of the world was concerned.
    My BlackBerry buzzed. I quickly looked, then felt a sickening sensation when I saw that it was from [email protected]: Hope ur enjoying the news. xoxo!
    Of course, I thought miserably, it was the dinner hour—the start of the nightly news cycle. Placing the BlackBerry on the table where Mom could read it, I reached for the remote and turned on the TV. But whatever the anonymous e-mailer had been writing about wasn’t on the local news, and I had to surf until I found it on a network channel, where a reporter was speaking to a young blonde woman named Destiny Charles.
    Destiny was cuter than the girl who’d been on TV that morning. At first her story sounded the same as the one we’d heard before: she’d been approached in a mall by a woman claiming to be a modeling agent. Later that day, she’d gone to the hotel with her mother and paid a lot for the styling, head shots, and credentials.
    “I guess now that one channel’s found a girl who fell for the scam, every channel has to have one,” I said bitterly.
    But I was wrong. There was more.
    “So what happened after that?” the interviewer asked.
    “About a week later, Mr. Sloan called and said he thought he had a modeling job for me, but he wanted to meet and talk about it first,” Destiny said.
    “And what did you say?”
    “I asked if my mom could come.”
    “And what did Mr. Sloan say?”
    “He said it would be better if we met alone.”
    I felt myself start to tighten up. Oh no. Oh God, please, no!
    “Did you ask why?”
    Destiny nodded. “He said that he wanted to see how I acted on my own, without my mom there, because they were looking for a girl who projected maturity and independence, and that sometimes when girls were with their moms, they acted more like daughters.”
    “So did you meet him alone?” the interviewer asked.
    Destiny shook her head. “I was scared. It didn’t sound right. I mean, if he wanted to see how I acted alone, why couldn’t my mom bring me and then wait outside or something?”
    “Did you suggest that?”
    “No. I didn’t think of that until later. I was too nervous on the phone.”
    “So something about the idea felt wrong to you?”
    “I wasn’t sure. I mean, it could have been true that I didn’t act as mature when my mom was around. I just didn’t know.”
    “But something about it felt wrong?” the interviewer repeated.
    Suddenly realizing that I’d been holding my breath, I let it out. “She’s putting words in her mouth. She’s trying to get her to say it felt wrong.”
    Mom watched silently.
    “I didn’t know,” Destiny said again. “I guess I just didn’t want to take a chance.”
    The interviewer thanked her and the camera shifted to an anchor behind a desk.
    “So I guess we’ll never really know why the photographer Kirby Sloan wanted to meet Destiny Charles alone,” the anchor said.
    “I spoke to several photographers at well-established studios, and none of them thought it sounded right,” the interviewer replied. “Most of them couldn’t think of a reason why the girl couldn’t have been asked to project maturity while her mother was there.”
    The anchor nodded but didn’t comment. Thus, the last idea left in everyone’s mind was what