Lady Killer (Dead Girls Club #2)

19. Luz

Chapter nineteen

Luz

S imone agreed to meet me for coffee at the Gentle Bean Café. It was a small, student co-op that charged an obscene amount for an ethical latte, but it was a price I was willing to pay to get some answers.

Autumn had, of course, my complete and unconditional support to love anyone she chose. I just needed to make sure Simone was worthy of being that someone.

And that she’s not a sheep.

It was a possibility I couldn’t ignore .

She clearly had some sort of connection to Aaron based on her reaction when she saw us at the party. And while my gut told me Simone was trustworthy, too many girls had turned up dead lately for me to risk Autumn on a hunch.

So, under the guise of wanting to talk about Japanese pottery and get to know my bestie’s girlfriend, I met with Simone on a Monday afternoon early in February.

I arrived at the café on time, surprised to find her already seated inside. She stood up from a cozy corner table to greet me with a small smile.

“Luz.” Her posh British accent put a whole new twist on my name.

“Hi, Simone,” I said, making an effort to smile.

I liked her. Why was I nervous?

If she’s hiding something that could hurt Autumn, it’s going to suck . . .

Oh, yeah.

“I’m just going to grab a latte. Can I get you anything?” I said, coming to a stop in front of the table.

“No, thank you. I already ordered a cup of tea. They should be bringing it over shortly.”

“Cool, uh, I’ll be right back then.” I shuffled backward away from the table before pivoting to head to place my order .

I ordered a latte and one of those giant chocolate chip cookies they always seemed to have at fancy coffee shops.

By the time I returned to Simone, her tea had arrived, along with my cookie.

“They said your coffee will be along shortly.” She blew gently before taking a tentative sip.

Simone was beautiful in a regal sort of way. Her umber skin glowed even in the dim light of the coffee house, and she had full dark lips and defined cheekbones that gave her an aristocratic air. She wore her black kinky curls cropped close to her head. More than anything, she carried herself with a sense of commanding grace—her posture was perfect as she sat tall with her hands placed one on top of the other.

“You said you wanted to talk about Japanese lacquerware?” she said, eyeing me over the still steamy cup of tea.

My mouth was full of cookie, and I took the opportunity to prepare my approach.

Simone beat me to it. “Or did you want to talk about something else?”

A straight shooter. That I could appreciate.

“Yes, actually,” I said as I dusted the crumbs off my fingers.

She arched one manicured eyebrow at me. Her nostrils flared as she shifted ever so slightly in her seat.

“The night we met, at the Andover party,” I began, choosing my words carefully.

Her slim fingers tightened their hold on the large white mug, but she merely looked at me appraisingly before speaking. “When you dumped Autumn on me?”

“I didn’t—?”

“One full-fat latte, over here?” A barista cut me off.

“Oh, yes,” I said, waving.

He placed it on the table, and every second felt weighted as I considered how to parry Simone.

I sat back with my latte in hand and crossed my legs at the ankles. “You can’t tell me that it didn’t work out for the best?” I raised my drink to take a sip.

“I could have been anyone.”

“And are you?”

Simone stalled for a minute. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.” Her cultured accent grew thicker.

“You’re not the only one who’s interested in protecting Autumn. You knew our late friend Aaron, right?”

Autumn’s grief over Aaron, and now Melody, ebbed and flowed. When I asked her if Simone had known him, she said that she hadn’t and that she’d been her rock during the last couple of months .

Simone pressed her lips together, looking around the coffee shop. She opened her mouth, a lie on her tongue, and I cut her off.

“You recognized him that night. He and I were headed upstairs shortly before he disappeared, and you looked at us with recognition and then something else," I said. "You didn’t have any problems with me when I was dancing with you three minutes earlier, so it was Aaron who made you react like that. Why?”

Sometimes the best defense was a good offense. I couldn’t let Simone start asking her own questions about what I had been doing that night.

Her mouth opened wide to protest, but that wasn’t what I zeroed in on. It was the tinkling sound of her cup rattling against its saucer as Simone’s hand trembled.

And then it clicked.

“What did he do to you?”

Simone’s eyes went big as tears fought to make their way out, but instead, a Brit through and through, she simply steeled her spine and sniffed loudly before shaking her head to clear the tears.

Her courage was raw and painful to watch, and I wondered if perhaps I had been too hard on her .

“How do—?” She faltered for a second, shifting her jaw tightly. “How did you know? Did he . . .” She trailed off and looked at me imploringly.

“No, well, he tried but . . .” I mirrored her speech, letting her fill in the blanks.

She let out a sigh of relief.

I doubted she was thinking that Aaron had tried, but I’d lured him to the woods, then knocked him out and cut out his heart. But at least this way, I wasn’t lying directly to her.

“Same, well, similar, I suppose.”

“What happened?” I asked, keeping my voice soft and my eyes locked on her.

She shrugged and looked away, pinching her lips, before turning back to face me. Her eyes didn’t meet mine again, instead she stared off into the distance behind me as she spoke.

“It was September. I was out at a party with a group of friends I’d met at orientation. One of the girls said she could score us some MDMA." She put her tea. "When we tracked down her connection, he didn’t have enough pills for all of us, so I told the rest of them to go ahead, that I was cool going without.

“After a little bit, they were all starting to feel the effects when the girl’s boyfriend showed up. He was a junior here, and he had brought along some friends of his. One of them was Aaron. We were all just dancing and having fun when he asked why I wasn’t partying like my friends, and I explained there wasn’t enough. That was when he offered to hook me up.” She stopped, her eyes darting to mine for a second before looking away again.

“Except what he gave me wasn’t what he said it was . . .”

The GHB.

This time I was the one having to control myself as my grip around my cup strained. I wanted to tell her so many things. That I had killed him. That I was glad the bastard was dead. That I would do it again in a heartbeat.

“I’m so sorry, Simone. I didn’t know.”

I meant them, but the words still felt empty. What good was sympathy to survivors?

She sniffed again and dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “He didn’t—My friend got into a fight with her boyfriend and dragged me out of there less than ten minutes later. It wasn’t until we got to our dorm that I realized something was wrong with me, but by then it was too late. My friends weren’t in any state to help, and I guess I passed out in my bathroom.”

She was lucky she hadn’t choked on her own vomit and died .

“I woke up the next morning . . . the last thing I remembered was talking to Aaron. My friends filled in the blanks . . .” She swallowed.

I weighed her words.

I didn’t like it.

I wanted her to scream her truths from the rooftops until everyone on campus heard what a vile monster Aaron Croft had really been.

But what I wanted and what I could ask of her were two different things.

The system wasn’t kind to survivors of sexual assault. It was even worse when those survivors were Black women. It wouldn’t matter that she had a posh accent, or that her parents were well-off back in England. Without any proof, it was her word against a dead man.

I took a deep breath, the weight of Aaron’s crimes sitting heavily on both of us, despite our innocence.

Well, Simone’s.

“I understand.” My smile was weak, as was hers.

Reaching for her now-cold tea, she held it daintily in her hands before looking down into the cup.

Her voice was cold, and there wasn’t so much as a twitch in her hands. “I’m glad he’s dead.” She looked up at me from under creased brows as if anticipating my condemnation .

“So am I,” I said, inclining my head.

Her expression went tight as she debated my sincerity before she must have ultimately decided to in my favor, letting loose a weary sigh and sitting back into her seat.

“You can’t tell Autumn. She adored him,” she said.

I thought the truth was more complicated than that, but I didn’t see the benefit of disclosing that to Simone. “Of course, this stays between us.”

That was when I made a misstep.

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

“And yours is with me.” Simone paused. “What happened to you—with him, I mean. You said he tried but . . . but you got away too?”

There was a note of hope in her voice that made my stomach turn. Simone had been vulnerable and open with me, despite my initial reception of her today, and I was about to use that to manipulate her into dropping the subject.

“Oh,” I said, tucking my chin under, casting my eyes down to my hands, and playing with my nails. I opened my mouth as if to speak, only to close it again. I did this several times while slowly drawing my shoulders in more and more. Finally, I bit down on my lip before looking up at her with watery eyes.

“Sorry,” I whispered, darting my eyes down .

“Luz, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you,” Simone said earnestly, reaching over to wrap her hands around mine.

Her palms were incredibly smooth and soft, and I wondered what hand lotion she used.

“I’m just not ready to talk about it,” I said in a quiet voice, looking up at her again to see her nodding along.

“Yes, of course. Of course, I understand. If you ever change your mind and need to talk, I’m here, but yes, of course I understand.”

I wasn’t a monster.

Not yet anyways.

But I wasn’t so heartless that I felt good about taking advantage of Simone. It also wasn’t as though it would help her to know the truth.

“Was that the reason you wanted to talk to me?”

“I—I needed to know, you weren’t working with him,” I mumbled as I continued to nibble at my lip.

Justice wasn’t just. I wasn’t so reckless in my pursuit of it that I would do anything for it, but lying to and manipulating someone I somewhat liked was absolutely on the list of lines I would cross.

Her hands clenched mine. “You think, he was working with someone else? ”

“Well,” I hedged, “he had to get the drugs from someone, right?”

“Fuck,” she said wearily. “I knew that, obviously, but I never thought about it that way. I just—I’ve been avoiding thinking about it . . .”

“Do you remember, did Aaron have any other friends with him that night?”

Simone seemed to think. “Umm, he arrived with another guy, although he didn’t hang around. James? Jackson?”

“Jason?”

“Yes, that was it!” She frowned. “Do you think he was in on it?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

Jason was definitely getting bumped up the list, after I crossed Simone off.

Her phone buzzed with a message, and she smiled when she saw who it was.

“So . . . you really like Autumn?”

Her cheeks popped as she burst into a wide, closed-mouth smile. “I do.”

The woman went to rave about my bestie, her unbridled affection for my friend clear for anyone to see.

Simone was good for Autumn, and I made a promise to myself to keep them safe.

If anyone deserved a happily ever after, it was the two of them.