Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 71212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
I couldn’t do that. Not when the stakes were so high. Amoura could be the one lead that got us to the Midnight Chemist and ended this nightmarish saga. I had to be delicate with this. This was for Tristan, and for Amoura’s brother, and for every other victim this sick fuck had taken.
Tristan…
A pang of worry entered my gut. I looked at my watch. It had been twenty minutes since I had left, so Eric and Noah were probably getting there now. No alerts from my alarm system, either.
Still, the worry gnawed a little harder.
“That’s fine, whatever.” She leaned back, following her cat’s gaze out the window. “It’s not like I’ve got anything to hide.”
I hit the red Record button and set it down on the scratched-up coffee table, next to a stack of magazines that looked like they’d be more at home in a dentist’s office. “First, I’d like to start off with the basics: What kind of person was Grayson? What did he enjoy doing in his free time?”
Amoura kept her gaze out the window. A faint smile twitched onto her lips before disappearing. “He was amazing. The best older brother a little sister can ask for, really. He was smart—a genius, actually. And he was kind and very protective. He also had a big heart and a near addiction to meeting new people. It’s probably what caused this all. His drive to socialize and connect.”
“Did he have a big social net?”
“Huge,” Amoura said, eyes turning back to me. There was a haunted look to her. A hollowness around her eyes that I hadn’t noticed earlier. “He worked at a bar in a ritzy hotel in downtown. Knew all the people that would go there. Made friends with everyone, always did. Even when we were kids.”
“The Mandarin, correct?”
“Yes, that’s the hotel.” She scratched at her neck. I noticed her eyes seemed to be darting to a semi-open drawer in the kitchen, an archway in the wall giving me a clear view. “Him and his boyfriend worked there together. That’s where they met.”
My head cracked to the side. “Boyfriend? Grayson was seeing someone?”
“Yes he was, but it was pretty new. I think they’d only been together for a few months before he passed.”
That was news to me. Apparently, the cops didn’t even dig far enough to see that Grayson was in a relationship at the time of his death. I wondered if the relationship was open or if Grayson was going behind his partner’s back when he found the Midnight Chemist online.
Or maybe…
“What’s his name? The boyfriend?”
She started to bite her nails, chewing pretty vigorously on her pinky. I could hear the clacking of teeth against nail. “Mason Martinez. He’s probably still working there. But don’t even mention my name. I don’t want to get involved in this, not with whoever did it still being out there.”
I wanted to point out that “getting involved” could mean the difference between saving more lives or sacrificing them like scared lambs. Instead, I nodded and decided to continue down this track. There’d be time for moral lessons later.
After I got what I needed. “Did you and Mason ever meet in person?”
“We did, a few times, yes.” She spoke from behind her fingers, her words twisting as her lips tried to form shapes around the nail biting. “He seemed cool. They were happy together, which I figure is all that matters. If I’m honest, I never got the best vibe from Mason, though. It sometimes felt like his attention was elsewhere but… well, what do I know? I didn’t want to get too involved.”
“Now, this might seem a little intrusive, but any bit of information could help crack this open. Do you know if Grayson and Mason had an open relationship?”
Amoura let out a stiff breath. The sound of simmering meat and potatoes became fainter but still present, while the smell of dirty cat litter only seemed to intensify. Maybe one of them took a spite shit to try and get me out of here.
“He’s had open relationships in the past,” Amoura said after a short pause. Her hands were under her legs now. I didn’t really clock any of her behavior as off or suspicious in any way. She was likely just an anxious person being put in the difficult situation of talking about her murdered brother. That wasn’t easy for anyone to handle.
But I didn’t want her getting so emotional that she shut down. I needed to shift gears.
I looked up at the clock on the wall and realized I also needed to speed things up. The longer away I was from Tristan, the worse I felt. Like an invisible tether pulled taut between the miles that separated us, getting tighter and tighter with every passing minute.
“Did your brother ever say he was meeting someone else? For coffee or drinks?”