#MurderFunding Read online

  “Disgusting is more like it,” Jackie said, sounding as if she was about to vomit. “I can’t believe someone thinks that’s a good idea.”

  “Thankfully, we’ll be up the mountain over winter break when it airs,” Mateo said, then smiled expectantly at Becca. “You’re still coming with us, right?”

  Becca hesitated. A couple of weeks ago, she’d jumped at the chance to spend a week with Jackie, Mateo, and his family at their cabin near the ski resort at Keyes Peak, but now she wasn’t sure if she should leave her mom and Rafa alone so close to Christmas.

  “It’ll be good for you,” Jackie said, sensing her uncertainty. “You need to do something fun. What’s the point of having two weeks off from school if all you do is stay home?”

  “I don’t know,” Becca said. “Sleeping for two straight weeks seems kinda exciting right now.”

  “You’re coming,” Jackie said. “That’s final.”

  “Fine,” Becca said with a grin as she ducked into the bio lab. “But I won’t like it.”

  The rest of the day was a blur. Bio to Calculus. English to Humanities. Government to Art History to study hall. Becca was on autopilot for most of it, moving from classroom to cafeteria to hallway like she’d done for days and months and years. For the most part, everything was the same: the same people, the same lessons, the same hallway chatter, though the daily conversations had shifted from The Postman’s most recent kills to the latest police reports about vigilantes hunting down the Painiacs’ families or reports on the whereabouts of the Death Row Breakfast Club. Still, the same fevered pitch of pop culture enthusiasm infected the halls of Marquette Senior High School, and yet somehow, today felt different.

  It wasn’t just the stream of “Sorry, Becca” or her friends’ attempts to keep their conversations buoyant and substance-free that was weird. An out-of-body sensation haunted her. For a few moments, here and there, Becca almost forgot that her mom had died. She’d be laughing at one of Mateo’s jokes or internal-monologue-ing about how boring Mr. Cartwright’s lectures were, and in that instant, her life was exactly the same as it had been two weeks ago. It was as if she were floating above the tragedy that was her life, gazing down upon it with an objective eye. Then a memory would come flooding back, punching Becca in the gut and momentarily knocking the breath from her. She’d be graveside again, her mom and brother weeping, while Becca did nothing.

  By the time the final bell rang, Becca had a throbbing headache. All she wanted to do was go home and collapse into bed.

  Usually—which meant every single day—she went to Jackie’s after school, but today Becca couldn’t handle two hours of good-natured gossip and animal memes on YouTube. She dashed off a quick text of explanation to her best friend, then headed for the parking lot.

  Becca stomped across the asphalt toward Rita’s old Ford Explorer, a beat-up hulk of non-ecologically-friendly SUV, and practically ripped the door off the hinges as she opened it, angry that school hadn’t offered her a complete escape from reality. She tossed her backpack across to the passenger’s seat, then climbed behind the wheel. But she didn’t start the car. She just sat there, panting, waiting for the tears to stream down her face.

  They never came.

  What the hell was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she cry?

  The lot began to empty out. The furor of post-school chaos crescendoed, then dissipated, leaving Becca alone in her car. But as stillness settled around her, Becca became keenly aware of someone standing in the trees, watching her.

  There was a sharp sound, a foot snapping a dried twig in half that Becca could barely hear through the cracked car window, but it was enough for Becca to look up into the trees. Standing much as she had at the cemetery, half-obscured by the thin trunk of a white pine, was the girl with the camera.

  SHE WORE THE SAME boxy black jacket, the same jeans, but she’d added a pair of sunglasses, which obscured most of her face. Her dark, asymmetrical hair was tucked behind her ear on one side and hung down across her face on the other, and her hands, partially covered in purple fingerless gloves, held the same camera.

  The girl stood frozen, the camera shoulder-high with the lens aimed at Becca, and even though they were close enough for Becca to discern the jeweled stud of a nose ring in the girl’s left nostril, the girl didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t make any attempt to explain why the hell she’d been following Becca around.

  Following me around. On Saturday, Becca had just assumed the girl was filming her mom’s funeral. Some kind of death fetish maybe. But now here she was at Becca’s school. It wasn’t the funeral this chick was interested in—it was Becca.

  Becca had seen a movie like this once—a sociopath stalks his coworker, taking video footage of her, which ends with him filming her murder…as he was murdering her.

  Yeah, that was so not going to happen.

  Throwing open the car door, Becca squared her shoulders and marched to the end of the asphalt.

  “Who the fuck are you and why the fuck are you following me?” She tried to sound tough, just in case this girl had any ideas about dragging Becca back into the woods and decapitating her.

  The girl continued to stare, seemingly dumbfounded.

  “Hey!” Becca snapped. It had been a long day. She didn’t have any patience left. “I asked you a question.”

  “Two,” the girl said slowly, finding her voice.

  “Your name is Two?”

  “No. You asked me two questions.”

  Great. A fellow smart-ass. “Are you going to answer or am I going to have to call nine-one-one and report a psycho stalker in the Marquette High parking lot?”

  Instead of getting angry or defensive, the girl merely smiled as she clicked off her camera, then pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead. “You can if you want, but I’m not actually doing anything illegal.”

  Becca felt something catch in her stomach. It was the first clear look she’d gotten at the girl’s face, and even though five seconds ago she was thinking that this chick might try to murder her for a snuff film, she had to admit the face smiling back from the pine grove was stunningly beautiful. Unlike Becca’s thin, crooked mouth, this girl’s lips were full and plump, like one of those makeup models in a Sephora ad. She had high cheekbones, illuminated as if she were wearing a shimmery highlighter though Becca was pretty sure the girl wasn’t wearing a whit of makeup. Her skin was supple, a luminous light brown, and her eyes were a surprisingly deep greenish hazel, bright and shining beneath hooded lids.

  Becca was 100 percent positive she’d never seen this girl before Saturday. Marquette, Michigan, wasn’t exactly a bastion of gorgeous cool chicks with awesome hair and nose piercings, and despite Becca’s small social circle, she definitely would have noticed this girl around town.

  As much as Becca was instantly attracted, it didn’t change the fact that this stranger had been following her around with a video camera. “I’m pretty sure videotaping me and my family without consent isn’t legal.”

  “Only if I sell it,” the girl replied, glancing at the camera, which now hung limply at her side. “Or distribute it for public consumption.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m Stef,” the girl said. “Stef…” She paused, as if trying to decide what last name she was going to use. “Stef Ybarra.”

  Becca wondered if that was actually her name. Doubtful. “Funny, I was just calling you Creepy Stalker Girl in my head.”

  “You can if you want.” Stef looked as if she didn’t give a shit what Becca thought. “You sound just like her, you know.”

  Record scratch. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your mom. You have the same voice.”

  Aha. So this was one of Rita’s zoology students from NMU. That…still didn’t make any sense. “I’m pretty sure Dr. Martinello wouldn’t appreciate you filming her wife’s funeral.”

  “I was gathering evidence.”

  Full stop. “You were gathering evidence about my mom’
s funeral? News flash, she’s still dead.”

  Stef tilted her head to the side. “Um, no. About your mom.”

  Ruth? Couldn’t be. She must mean Rita. “If you want to interview my mom about her research, you’re supposed to go through the university to set up an appointment.”

  A crease formed between Stef’s eyes. She looked confused, as if not entirely sure what Becca was talking about. “Not that mom.”

  “Clearly I’m hallucinating,” Becca said.

  Stef stared at Becca for a moment, greenish eyes scanning her face. The crease deepened, a wrinkly chasm between her eyebrows. “Oh my God. You don’t know!” Stef’s voice was breathless, shocked, and the shift in tone accompanied the return of the camera, pointed at Becca’s face. The red power light indicated that Stef was filming again.

  “Know what?” The pounding in Becca’s temples intensified, cranked up by Stef’s weirdness. She wanted to go home, crawl into bed, forget this day ever happened. She literally had no clue what this chick was hinting at, but cute or not, Becca was officially tired of the conversation.

  Stef’s green eyes flicked up from the camera’s view screen. “Your mom Ruth Martinello…” She turned her head sharply as if unsure how to continue, then cleared her throat and started again. “Ruth Martinello had another life.”

  Becca rolled her eyes. “Please. Are you going to try and tell me that my mom was what, a secret stripper? A CIA operative? An escaped convict with a price on her head?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  Stef stood very still as she continued to film. “Your mom was the Alcatraz-sanctioned executioner known as Molly Mauler.”

  EVERY TIME DEE GUERRERA heard a helicopter buzz over the twentieth-floor condo she now called home, she was sure a news crew had found her.

  The sound of chopping rotor blades was such a normal, everyday part of growing up in Los Angeles that Dee had rarely noticed them before. But now, as she sat propped up in an unfamiliar bed, her mangled right leg a crisscrossed mess of surgical scars and healing wounds, every single helicopter outside her window was a potential harbinger of doom.

  Ironically, just two weeks ago it had been a helicopter that had been her savior when the Coast Guard landed on Alcatraz 2.0 and lifted her, Nyles, and Griselda to safety. Then, the dull roar of the approaching chopper had given Dee a sense of release, signaling the end of her struggles and pain. But the joy of their rescue, and of Dee’s reunion with her dad, was short-lived, as the realities of “Life After Alcatraz 2.0” became all too real.

  Her dad had tried to shield her from it, pasting a bright smile on his face from the moment they left San Francisco General Hospital a few days after her first surgery, but Dee could see the frayed edges of the smile, the deep circles beneath his eyes that betrayed sleepless nights and days fraught with worry. Dee’s first hint of what was in store for them came when she was discharged from the hospital through a subterranean garage, and not into her dad’s Prius or her stepmom’s minivan or even a rental car of some generic make and model. Nope, her wheelchair was pushed up to the side door of a massive black SUV, with darkly tinted windows and driven by a burly man she’d never seen before.

  Turned out, his name was Javier, and he, along with three colleagues, were the Guerreras’ new bodyguards, accompanying Dee and her dad back to Los Angeles.

  And not to the cheerful bungalow in Burbank that had been Dee’s home before the Barracks on Alcatraz 2.0, but to a massive, high-security condominium complex near UCLA where Javier and his team could keep Dee and her dad safe.

  Because, apparently, a lot of people wanted Dee dead.

  Her dad never directly told her what was going on, but some careful eavesdropping and clandestine googling had painted a pretty grim picture of her reality. Their Burbank home? Besieged by news trucks. Her whereabouts? Hunted for, every day.

  Just as Nyles had predicted, Dee was suddenly the most famous girl in the world.

  The media was benign in comparison to the death threats. Former fans of The Postman blamed Dee and her friends for the app’s demise, just as the dwindling supporters of the president held her responsible for the impending impeachment trial, and as speculation about the identity and whereabouts of The Postman himself continued to spiral out of control, the anger and frustration of the Postmantics were focused on the Death Row Breakfast Club. Websites, Twitter feeds, and entire Tumblr accounts were dedicated to fantasizing about their deaths, sharing dubious information about their pasts, and trying to piece together where they were hiding.

  At the Guerrera compound, Javier inspected every piece of mail that arrived, and only a short list of people were allowed access to the condo. According to the news, Dee’s location had yet to be discovered, but every time she heard a helicopter, she was sure that the legion of Internet stalkers and paparazzi hunting for her had finally made the discovery of a lifetime.

  And Dee was terrified to think what that might mean, not just for herself but for her friends, and for her dad.

  “Good morning, sleepy face!” Dee’s dad slipped into her room, grinning from ear to ear. “How is the patient feeling?”

  Dee smiled back. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, Dad.”

  “I know,” he replied as he fretted around her bed, opening and closing the venetian blinds to achieve the perfect balance of light and shadow. “Just teasing. Do you need another pillow? How about some water? With a bendy straw, like when you were little.”

  “Dad, I’m fine.”

  He inched the pull cord down, moving the parallel slats a nanometer, before turning back to his daughter. “How’s the pain?”

  “I think it’s a little better today, actually.” And for the first time in two weeks, Dee wasn’t even lying.

  “I don’t believe you.” Her dad dragged a chair to the side of her bed.

  “I swear. I haven’t taken a pain pill since breakfast. Been getting a little bit better every day.”

  Her dad’s dark brown eyes were bloodshot when he looked up at her, his face weary. “I guess we all have.”

  Unlike Dee, he was lying. She knew he didn’t want her to see the toll the last few months had taken on him, but it wasn’t as if Dee didn’t notice the white hairs poking out at kinky angles from his black waves. Nor could she ignore the deep creases on his forehead or the fact that his clothes hung limp on his body.

  Silence fell between them, thick and murky, and her dad’s eyes trailed to the partially open window. She knew exactly what he was thinking about: her stepmom. It was bad enough that her daughter had been murdered, worse that Dee had been convicted of the crime. But discovering that Monica’s death was all part of some crazy girl’s plot against Dee? It was too much. Her stepmom had gone to stay with her sister in San Diego. She hadn’t even seen Dee since her release from Alcatraz 2.0.

  Not that Dee blamed her. Monica’s death, though not by Dee’s hand, was still on Dee’s head, and not a moment went by that she didn’t miss her stepsister. She’d had so little time to mourn Monica, to process her loss, as she’d been immediately put on trial and whisked away to Alcatraz 2.0. But as she sat in her new bedroom day after day, barely able to hobble from room to room on her crutches, she had nothing but time. Time to remember, and time to grieve.

  The chime notification on Dee’s cell phone pinged, and she was saved from the oncoming wave of melancholy by a text.

  “Nyles?” her dad asked. He was smiling again, as he always did when Dee mentioned Nyles. It definitely wasn’t the reaction Dee had been expecting from her overprotective father when faced with his daughter’s first boyfriend. I guess when your daughter almost dies, like, a million times, her first boyfriend doesn’t seem so dangerous anymore.

  Dee nodded. “Martin’s about to pull him into the underground garage.”

  “I’ll have Javier escort him up.” Her dad disappeared down the hallway with a wink as Dee pushed herself upright in bed. Her right leg, immobilized from the knee down after her
second reconstructive surgery, was purple and swollen beneath the brace and bandages, her toes looking more like miniature eggplants than digits. Which was pretty disgusting. Dee flung a blanket over her leg to hide the aftermath from Nyles.

  A few minutes later, Dee’s dad ushered Nyles into her room. He was smiling his toothy grin, his blue eyes bright with excitement, and it was only the potential pain in her leg that prevented Dee from throwing herself into his arms the moment she saw him.

  Nyles, meanwhile, all British and proper, waited respectfully until Dee’s dad pulled the door closed before he leaned over the bed and kissed her.

  It wasn’t the first time Nyles had pressed his lips to hers—far from it—but for Dee, the thrill hadn’t worn off.

  “The thing that I hate,” Nyles said, pulling away slowly as he eased into the bedside chair, “is that our first kiss was under less-than-romantic circumstances.”

  Dee smiled, remembering the first time he’d kissed her, which had been entirely a tactic to shut her up when he knew they were under surveillance. “True,” she said playfully. “But just think of how many chances you have to make up for that.”

  “Myriad.” He threaded his fingers through hers, gripping them tightly. “A lifetime. Now if only we could get you out of this bloody room.”

  Dee sighed. She was desperate for a change of scenery. “Any trouble getting here?”

  He shook his head. “Child’s play. Those brutes your father hired know their business. Picked me up in two cars and drove around for an hour before they made their way here.” He chuckled to himself. “Ironic since I could basically walk here if I chose.”

  “If it was safe,” Dee said, eyeing him closely. She didn’t want Nyles doing anything rash that might get him killed. Like walking down the streets of West LA in broad daylight. Her dad had managed to find him a guesthouse to rent nearby on the property of someone he knew from work. Someone he trusted. But Dee wasn’t sure how far trust would stretch when half the country was looking for Nyles. How long before a reward for information on his whereabouts was offered? Before a neighbor recognized him? Or a plumber working on the main house?