Interesting. The woman wasn’t a front woman. She was his girlfriend that, what, took him over? Cunning women I tell you.

“Has our favorite vermin finally found himself in a predicament?”

“Seems so,” Dave confirmed.

​Chapter 36

Fallon

Unknown: I need to speak with you regarding an important matter with your company.

I should have just looked at my phone before I fell asleep. The creepy texts needed to end and I had enough to fill up a scrapbook to commemorate my sophomore year as being the worst year yet. I wondered when the other shoe would drop.

Whatever. It could wait until after breakfast.

“Where’s Kelly?” I asked James.

“She left pretty early and returned only a little while ago.”

“Have you slept?”

“Not in my job description.”

Fair enough.

The fridge was fully restocked at some point last night and for that I was grateful. Whoever it was left my favorite foods and there were packages of sour gummy worms on the counter. Breakfast was to commence and I hoped I didn’t throw it all up.

I clicked on the TV to do some light watching while I cooked and a breaking news story was the first thing that came up.

“College student Shane Jones was found recently deceased of an alleged drug overdose late last night when a couple was out late night and discovered him in Willow Bay face down. Please be aware that these images may be disturbing to some audiences.”

Kelly’s boyfriend found dead from an overdose? That was something I wasn’t expecting to hear this morning. Part of me felt like it was related, but there was so much going on in this area that it could be an isolated event.

I didn’t think that it was.

Pictures flashed across the screen showing blurred out Shane face down in the bay. All I could think of was when that guy fell from the third story window and hit the ground. The sickening sound he made when he hit cement.

James was in the kitchen cleaning up the glass and juice that I dropped on the floor before I realized I even dropped it. “Don’t move. I’m going to clean up this glass before you step around with your bare feet.”

I didn’t even hear it shatter. “I’m so sorry!”

”No, no. Don’t move.”

People seemed to be dropping like flies. There was no way that Shane’s death was a coincidence when he was the topic of conversation not that long ago. Kelly started dating him and all seemed fine to me. If he was dealing or doing drugs, there should have been some sort of indication of that.

Right?

Outside of Kelly smoking occasional weed, bumping coke, and going to parties—where they obviously had more drugs—she never seemed the type to get into the world of hard drugs or dealing like that. She never showed signs–