Expecting to Die

Let Kywin explain to his boss why the police were talking to him, she thought,
as she and Alvarez walked up the sharply inclined road to the main parking lot,
where Alvarez’s Subaru sat baking in the intense sunlight.
As they slid into the interior, Alvarez asked, “Next stop? A&B Painting?”
Pescoli nodded. A&B Painting was the establishment where Kywin’s brother,
Kip, worked.

---

CHAPTER 18
B
ianca hunched down in the passenger seat of her dad’s vintage Corvette. She
was usually confident, but today, after last night’s meeting of the Big Foot
Believers, when she’d felt as if she were on display in front of what seemed to
be the whole damned town, she felt unsure. She’d always thought she would
love fame and the spotlight, but not like last night. It had been cool in a way, yes,
to be the center of attention. Well, almost. Actually Barclay Sphinx had been the
star of the night, but she still felt a little weird about it.
Which made this trip with Lucky all the more awkward, so she’d put on dark
glasses and avoided eye contact with anyone else who happened to be driving
around. Lucky was behind the wheel, taking her to meet with Barclay Sphinx.
His side window was down, and he rested a tanned arm on the ledge and drove
with one hand on the wheel. As much as she wanted to hide, her father was on
display, grinning, joking, on top of the world.
But, of course, he wasn’t nursing a sprained ankle, a split chin, and a few
other bruises. Nor had he been chased by a monster and found a dead body
floating in the creek.
Through the dark lenses, she hazarded a sideways glance at him. He was so
pleased with himself, his hair blowing around in the breeze, his head moving
faintly to the beat of a song from the eighties or nineties that was blasting from
the speakers, some old Bon Jovi song. He sang along. “. . . had a job on the
docks . . . down on his luck . . . someday . . .”
Bianca wasn’t so pleased with herself. In fact, she felt kind of rotten because it
seemed like she was sneaking around. Okay, sure. She did a lot of things behind
her mother’s back. It wasn’t that big of a deal as a rule. Usually she felt that the
less Mom knew about her life, the better. It just made things easier, but then she
wasn’t usually in collusion with her dad, keeping secrets from Mom. Even
though Lucky denied that there was anything underhanded going on, she knew
otherwise.
“Don’t be so suspicious,” he’d said when he called and told her to get ready,
that they were going to meet with the producer. “This is a good thing.”
“Mom won’t like it. You heard her.”
“Oh, she’ll come around. It’s just her nature, what with her being a cop and
all, to be overprotective. And come on, her hormones are all out of whack with

---

this pregnancy. I’m surprised they still let her work. She’s big as a barn. Just get
ready and I’ll swing by and pick you up. I’ll be there in half an hour. Let me
handle Mom.”
So here she was, driving with her father to a meeting with Barclay Sphinx at
the Wilderness Motel. “It just feels like I’m lying to Mom,” she said, reaching
down to scratch her calf where the damned ankle brace rubbed. “You know,
sneaking around behind her back.”
“When has that ever stopped you?”
“Very funny,” she said.
“We’re not sneaking around, okay? You’re with me. I said I’ll handle your
mother, and I will. But I can’t bother her with this. She’s in the middle of that
homicide investigation, and she’s pregnant, and you all just moved into that new
house. She has a lot on her plate right now.”
He was equivocating, making excuses, dancing around the truth, and they both
knew it.
Nonetheless, Lucky wheeled into town, switched lanes, and stopped for a red
light, his car idling loudly. On the other side of the highway, Bianca saw another
car at the light and wouldn’t you know, Emmett Tufts was driving with Rod
Devlin riding shotgun. Lara and Maddie were in the backseat. She slid lower in
the seat, didn’t want them to see her and didn’t understand why.
Lucky turned down the radio. “Now’s the time. The opportunity. We—you
might not get another one. Barclay called me this morning. He’s had a change of
plans and has to drive to Oregon for something, he didn’t say what, but he’s
leaving town today, and he needs to nail down a few details, the biggest one
being if you’re going to be in his show. It’s a ‘go,’ that’s what he said, his exact
words, ‘a go,’ but he has to figure out the first few episodes, what the story line
is. He’s already got a team on the way.”
“A team?”
“I think a production crew. He’s got the basic story in his head, but they have
to completely work it out. He outlined it the other night, didn’t he?”
“So it’s a script.”
He lifted his right hand off the steering wheel, flattened it, and tilted it up and
down. Maybe yes. Maybe no. “It’s your story. Remember?”
She did, though she wasn’t all that keen on reliving one of the scariest nights
of her life. She remembered running down the hillside, the beast racing behind
her, and then tumbling into the creek to find . . . She closed her mind to the
thought of Destiny’s body submerged in the water, pale hair floating around her
face....
“He wants you to be a part of it. The star.”

---

The light changed and he hit the gas, tearing around a corner and speeding
along the road. She turned her face as they whipped past Emmett Tufts’s black
Mustang. Two miles later, they pulled into the Wilderness Motel, a two-story U-
shaped building. Out front, near the awning that covered the space by the front
doors, stood a nine-foot-tall wooden sculpture of Big Foot. The creature seemed
to be walking toward the front door, looking over his shoulder as if to see if he
was being watched, but definitely heading inside the Wilderness.
Fitting, Bianca thought, and probably the reason Sphinx had chosen this motel
out of a half dozen in the area. A text came in and she checked her phone.
Maddie. Well, well, her “friend” hadn’t contacted her in a while.