Serial Hottie (31 page)

“What do you mean, ammunition?”

“I guess you don’t understand because you haven’t been around my whole life, but this?” I gestured to myself. “The Ellie you’ve met this summer is not the Ellie people are used to. For some reason everything’s different. I’m talking epic proportions.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
different. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I don’t think anything’s wrong with you.” Seth grinned. “I happen to like every single thing about you.” His smile fell away and his eyes tightened the tiniest bit as he added, “Except maybe your fondness for Dave Holcomb.”

“Well,
you
might like the new me,” I said, ignoring the Dave crack. “But nobody else seems to know how to deal with it. My sister. My friends. Definitely not Dave—I still can’t believe the moron kissed me. My parents have pretty much gone off the deep end. ‘Growing and changing’ is the phrase my mom used when she tried to talk to me this morning. And now the J’s will be home in a week and a half.”

“Ah, yes. The prodigal friends returneth,” Seth said. He’d kept his tone light, but whether he knew it or not, the spoon in his hand was now bent at a ninety degree angle.

“Yes. They’re coming home, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Why should you have to do anything? Aren’t they your best friends?”

“Exactly,” I said. “They know me better than anyone. They aren’t going to be able to deal with me.
I
can’t even deal with me. They’re the last thing still normal in my life, and when they come back and see me wearing pink and hanging out with my—”

I choked on the word and Seth laughed at me. “Boyfriend, Ellie. Your boyfriend. You can say it.”

Except I couldn’t. “With
you
. They’re going to freak. Then I’m going to get mad at them for being idiots. You’ll get all jealous and hate them like you do Dave, and I’ll have to make a choice. If I choose you, then the J’s are going to want to kick the tar out of you, and when they try you’ll kill them. Then they’ll be dead, you’ll be in jail, and I’ll be forced to hang out with Angela and Dave for the rest of my life.”

Seth cocked an eyebrow at me when I was finished with my rant. “Thought this all through once or twice, have you?”

“I’m serious!”

Seth pulled me to his chest and I wrapped my arms around him without even thinking about it. This boyfriend thing had its perks.

“Ellie, try to relax a little,” Seth said. “Would it help if I promise not to kill them? I can’t promise I’ll like them. In fact, you’re right, I pretty much already hate them. But I can control myself. I won’t make you choose.”

“You won’t have to,” I said miserably into his chest. “They’re not going to like me now, anyway. I’ll be too much like a ‘chick’ for them now.”

Seth pulled me away from his chest. He took my face in his hands, locking me in an intense gaze. “Ellie?” He slowed his tone like he was lecturing a two-year-old. “Do you like your new clothes?”

“Yes,” I admitted grudgingly.

“And do you like hanging out with your sister and her friends?”

“Occasionally.” Even more grudgingly.

Seth’s smile softened. “And do you like having a boyfriend?”

I glared as hard as I could at Seth as I grumbled, “Yes.” He looked too amused with my answer.

“Well, then who cares what your friends or anyone else thinks, so long as
you
like you? And you know how much
I
like you.” Seth kissed the tip of my nose, then let go of my face. He took another bite of our ice cream after bending his spoon back into shape.

“Your parents are only worried about you because they love you, and Angela seems thrilled that you’re willing to go shopping and let her do your hair now. Everyone else will come around. And if they don’t—and lets hope for my sake that they don’t—well then, I’ll just have to take back my promise not to kill them.”

Seth was smiling brightly. “That’s not funny,” I told him.

“Good,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

When I first answered the door Monday afternoon and found Senior Detective Andre Pierce of the Detroit PD, I was floored. Aside from the fact that the guy was all official and scary looking with a gun strapped to his hip, he seemed to be here to talk to me.

I’d kind of assumed it would be Seth knocking, because I hadn’t seen him since our Patty’s outing yesterday. He said he had things he needed to do last night, and I hadn’t invited him to the hockey game this morning. I didn’t think it the best idea, given his distaste for Dave, and knowing how much the guys have started harassing me since they discovered my “nice rack.”

So, yeah, big scary inner-city cop who seemed to know exactly who I was when I opened the door was quite the shock. “C-Can I help you?” I stammered.

He smiled with ease. “You must be Eleanor.”

“Uh, yeah.” I heard my mom yelling at me to mind my manners in my head. “I mean, yes, sir.”

“Detective Pierce is just fine, Eleanor.”

“Ellie.”

“Okay, Ellie. I’m here to do a follow-up on a report your sister filed yesterday afternoon.”

“Angela filed a police report?”

“She did, indeed. I need to ask her a few more questions. Is she perchance home at the moment?”

“Uh, yeah.” I turned my head toward the stairs and yelled, “Angela!” It was the first word I’d spoken to her since our fight. “Door!” I looked back at the cop, wondering if I was supposed to let him in. I didn’t. I just opened the door a little wider and said, “She’ll be right down.”

“Excuse me, Ellie?” the guy asked when I started to walk away. “I’d like to speak with you, too, if you don’t mind. I’d like to hear your take on things.”

“What things?” I asked slowly. I was starting to have a bad feeling.

Before the cop could answer me Angela came downstairs. She stopped short when she saw the uniform in the doorway. “Oh,” she said, surprised. “Hi.” She shot a nervous glance my direction, and that’s when I understood.

“Tell me you didn’t! You called the cops on my boyfriend? Are you insane?”

“Well, you obviously weren’t going to!” she yelled back.

“Of course I wasn’t!”

The cop cleared his throat. Something about a police officer makes you feel the need to obey. Both Angela and I stopped and waited for instruction. “Ladies? May I come in, so we can get this all sorted out?”

Once we were all seated in the living room Angela said, “So how come you’re here? I already told the guy yesterday everything I know. And to be honest, I don’t think he believed me very much. I didn’t think he was even listening to half of what I said.”

“Because what you were saying was idiotic,” I grumbled. “I’m sorry, Officer, my sister is totally wasting your time. Seth is no more a murderer than I am.”

The stupid guy patronized me with a smile and then said to Angela, “It’s our job to follow every lead, no matter how small, Miss Westley. If you’re truly concerned, then you did the right thing by calling the police. Now, if you could just start at the beginning?”

“But how come? I told the cops everything I knew yesterday.”

“I’m from the Detroit PD. Lead investigator on the Slasher case. I have a lot more information than your local department. Might find something in your story that the Canton black and whites missed.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“So, tell me about this boy Seth.”

That stupid traitor told him everything! She told him about how the murders started right after he got here and how at first I was the one who thought he might be the killer. She told him how Seth was stalking me and how I said he’d kidnapped me. She even told him about Seth’s knife collection and his aim. Then she went into detail about his parents’ deaths and his possible personality disorder. That seemed to interest the guy a lot, and he asked me a ton of questions.

Then Angela went on to explain how we followed Seth and saw him with that secret agent-looking guy and how he went to the crime scene in Garden City. When she told him about how he was asking her all kinds of questions about Travis, this also interested the detective. “And who is Travis?”

“Just some tool I blew off.”

“He’s this senior over at Stevenson High in Livonia. He likes Ellie, too, and when he asked her out Seth got all crazy jealous.”

“He did not!” I protested. “He just didn’t like that Travis basically stalked me. Dave didn’t like Travis, either, but I didn’t see you calling the cops on him!”

“Dave didn’t break into your room and force you to be his girlfriend. Seth is a psycho and a stalker. Why can’t you see that?”

“So Seth broke into your house?” Detective Pierce asked. He was taking notes again. He was probably running out of pages in his notepad by now. “And he’s forcing you to be his girlfriend?”

“No,” I told him, and then told Angela again. “No!”

The cop waited for explanation. “All right,” I huffed. “He came in my bedroom window. Which I opened for him! And yes, he said I didn’t have a choice in being his girlfriend, but that was only because he knew I wanted to be, but I was just too nervous to say yes. He’s not a psycho. I want to un-file the complaint against him.”

The detective laughed at me like I was this silly little girl. I swear I was
thisclose
to going to jail for assaulting a police officer.

“I’m sorry, Ellie. It’s my job to follow up on all leads. And while the story does seem purely circumstantial, you have to admit there are a lot of similarities between this young man and the killings.”

“Well, don’t you dare put my name on that complaint with hers. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

“Don’t worry Ellie, I’m quite aware of your feelings on the matter.” The guy stopped talking then and studied me with a distant look in his eyes. “It is remarkable,” he said, almost to himself, “how much you fit the profile. You look just like one of the victims.”

“Heather Monroe,” I whispered automatically.

The temperature in the room dropped a good ten degrees. All of us shuddered.

“I can see why your sister is taking this so seriously,” Detective Pierce said of Angela, almost admiringly. Then he turned to me, his face full of concern. “I would think you’d be more worried about your safety considering the situation.”

“I am.” I couldn’t help the whine in my voice and kicked myself internally. “Just because I don’t think Seth is a freaking serial killer doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. I don’t ever leave the house alone. I don’t go anywhere near downtown, and I’m locked up tight here every weekend. My dad practically guards me with a shotgun.”

“Good girl.” Detective Pierce finally rose to his feet. “Well, thank you ladies for your time. I’ll look into this and—”

“But he didn’t do anything!”

“I promise I’ll be very discrete, Ellie, and very thorough. I won’t go pointing any fingers at anyone if I’m not absolutely one hundred percent positive with hard evidence to back me up.”

Something occurred to me then. Something horrifying. “Are you going to talk to him?” I gasped. “Are you going to tell him Angela called the cops on him?”

“Oh, no, of course not.” He paused. “I’d ask that neither of you say anything, either. If there is any truth behind this theory, we don’t want to scare him off. I’ll just look into it quietly and if I need anything else from you, I’ll let you know.

“Don’t worry, Ellie, most likely you’re right and this is all just a misunderstanding. In the mean time, though, you might want to be a little more careful. Don’t be alone with him, always carry a phone and a can of pepper spray, and keep doing what you’re doing to stay safe. We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Angela and I both watched out the window until the police cruiser disappeared down the street. Angela moved first. “Ellie, I had to,” she said. She sounded upset, almost enough to cry. Though, what she had to be so upset about I couldn’t for the life of me understand.

I was so angry. I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier in my entire life. I was so angry that I didn’t even want to hit her. I couldn’t even look at her. I just turned from the window with shaking hands and headed for my room.