“You were duped, Xan.” A grin brightened Johan’s face, although it wasn’t entirely good-humored. There was a hint of murderous rage in it, too. Just at the edges, perhaps, or in the flash of his teeth. “Duped by a two-bit fucking actor. Which means Kitty isn’t dead at all. She’s alive and well, and still a threat.”

“Motherfucker.”

“His name is Luke Kingsley. He’s made a handful of shitty movies, even a couple of decent ones. This is not one of them.” Johan gestured at the TV screen. “He’s most famous for killing his wife.”

Xander shook his head. His eyes were extremely large. There wasn’t much in the way of intelligent life behind them. Johan took out his phone, hit the Google app, and typed LUKE KINGSLEY into the search field. It brought up a series of images, including the notorious photograph of him with blood all over his shirt. He showed this to Xander, then showed him another shot of Luke on the set of A Bullet Affair, and finally, from a couple of months before, him and Kitty at a funeral in Inglewood. This had caused a minor flurry online because Kitty was young and Black, and not dissimilar in appearance to the wife Luke had killed. Johan recalled asking Kitty about it at the time, and she’d waved it off. “I was doing the guy a solid,” she’d said. Now Johan sneered. The sight of them together—best fucking friends forever—raised his core temperature by several degrees.

“Jesus Christ,” Xander said, looking at Johan’s phone. Not touching, though—not with those sugary paws. “I’m sorry, Johan. I guess I fucked up. But damn, the guy was convincing.”

“In the same way Chris Hemsworth is a convincing Thor?”

“No, he seemed . . . real. Like a cop.” Xander’s eyebrows flared and he pointed at the security cam shot on the MacBook. “He had an ID, for Christ’s sake.”

“He had a movie prop.”

“And photos, Jesus, those photos.”

“Staged,” Johan said.

“Fuck.” Xander gritted his teeth. “I mean, that was a ballsy fucking move. He didn’t know for sure we wouldn’t recognize him.”

“It was a desperate move. A scared move. It also shows that they knew involving the real police wasn’t their best option.” Johan looked at the photo of Kitty and Luke again, then dropped his phone back into his pocket. “That’s good for us, of course. And smart on their part. Although it’s safe to assume Kitty will have told the actor everything she knows. That makes me very . . . anxious.”

“We’ll take care of him,” Xander said. “He can’t be hard to find.”

“If we get to him, we’ll get to Kitty.”

“Leave it to me.”