“Back again, I see.” The words came out slow.
I nodded. “Can I get eighty on pump one?”
He punched a couple of keys on his register and grabbed the four twenties I held out, placing them in the drawer.
“I like the hair.” He smiled.
I was surprised he had even noticed the change. I must have been the only customer he’s had in the last ten days.
“Thanks.” I nodded, turning toward the door.
“Avery,” he called out.
The word made me freeze instantly, stopping me dead in my tracks. I swallowed hard and tightened my jaw. I couldn’t have heard that right.
“What was that?” I turned back toward him. Calvin must have knocked something loose in my head because that wasn’t possible.
The old man twisted his wiry beard. “Avery Adams.”
My shoulders tensed, and I took a deep breath.
He slid out a drawer underneath the register and flipped through a stack of papers. The old man held out his hand, extending a driver’s license. “You dropped it when you were in here. Tried to tell ya, but you sped off like a bat out of hell, so I’ve just been holding it for you. In case you came back.” He smiled, revealing cracked yellow teeth.
I closed the distance, retrieving the ID from him. “Thank you.” I smiled. “I appreciate it.”
“Of course. Safe travels,” he said with a wave of his hand.
52.
Avery
In the rearview mirror, I watched the sun go down. A ball of fire engulfed the skyline for a moment as Gunslinger 66 officially went out of business. The explosion was sudden and fiery, sending debris in all directions. Everything that was Grace Evans burned. The blood-soaked clothing, license, credit cards, and anything else that tied me to that identity. Grace Evans was dead. Same with that poor old schmuck. They both didn’t exist anymore. I wasn’t worried about fingerprints or DNA or anything like that. Avery Adams wasn’t in the system. She was a saint, an upstanding citizen. Grace Evans was here, but Avery Adams had never been to a place like Dubois, Wyoming.
I took my eyes off the rearview mirror and focused on the winding road in front of me. My work here was complete. You might be wondering how or why. Who would do a thing like that? Let me reintroduce myself. My name is Avery Adams. I’m your next-door neighbor. The woman at the café. The girl who jogs in the park every day. Says hello to strangers. Holds the door open. Gives up her seat for the elderly. A volunteer for an animal shelter. I’m the girl at a bar on a Friday night and the woman in church on a Sunday morning. I’m every girl you’ve ever known and every girl you have yet to meet. My name is Avery Adams. I love meeting new people—and I love killing them too.
Day Eleven
53.
Avery I slid the key across the counter at an Enterprise Rent-A-Car location. “Hi, I’m here to return my rental.”
The robust man collected it. He placed his thick fingers on the keyboard in front of him and asked for my name.
I smiled. “Avery Adams.”
He pecked at the keys, typing my name. “As long as there’s no damage, you’ll get your deposit back,” he said matter of factly. A piece of paper shot out from a printer. He slid it across the counter and asked me to sign at the bottom.
I nodded and signed. “Perfect. Have a nice day.” Turning on my heel, I pulled my luggage behind me. As I exited, I held the door for a middle-aged man with a weak chin. He smiled and thanked me.
“Of course.”
The Uber app notified me that my driver, Joseph, was approaching. Calvin’s truck was somewhere in Nebraska. I swapped it out for my rental car. The Mazda I had driven to the ranch was purchased privately for five hundred in cash from a shady guy who couldn’t say more than a few words. The VIN had been scraped off, so I knew it was stolen. Even better.
My driver pulled up in a Prius and swiftly got out of the vehicle to help me load my bags into the trunk.
“Want that in the back?” He gestured to my messenger bag.
“No, that stays with me.” It had my prized possession in it, a token of my travels, the knife I had snagged from Calvin’s collection.
He closed the trunk and got into the driver’s seat. “Lincoln mall?”
“Yes.”
We arrived twenty-five minutes later. Once there, I walked to a parking ramp and got into my Audi A5, setting the navigation to Chicago, Illinois. I would be home in just under eight hours, right in time for dinner.
Everything had gone according to plan—mostly. This wasn’t my first rodeo. This was what I needed to do. It kept my life in balance. It kept me in equilibrium. Have you ever had an itch in the middle of your back, just out of reach? I have, and I’ve learned how to scratch it. From a young age, I knew I was different. I wasn’t like the other kids. Nothing bad ever happened to me. My parents didn’t abuse or abandon me. I was never sexually assaulted. I was just different. My brain was wired like the handy work of an electrician in the middle of an apprenticeship—not right by normal standards, but it still worked, just a bit different.
Some people kill because they enjoy it. And I know that’s frustrating to hear. There is no why. There’s no rhyme or reason. I just enjoy it. Call it a hobby if you will. You like to read. I like to watch the life drain from a person. To see the light behind their eyes flicker out. To watch their face go lax. To watch the future they had envisioned for themselves disappear. Like a magic trick. Poof, it’s all gone. Call me a magician, why don’t you? Serial killer has a nice ring to it. But I actually prefer just Avery. You can call me Avery.
I pulled into the driveway of my two-story house just outside of Chicago in the suburbs. It was white with red shutters and big bay windows—a normal home where mostly normal people lived. Before exiting the vehicle, I opened up the Airbnb application on my phone and deleted my Grace Evans account. Calvin’s body surely must have been discovered by now. Typically, it took a few days because of my isolation process, separating my target from their friends and loved ones. But the missing woman kind of screwed that up. Charlotte was easy to push away because she was obsessed with Calvin, and her presence threatened the “blooming” relationship between us. Joe was even easier. I just acted as though he had said or done something wrong at the bar, going as far as slapping him to solidify how inappropriate he was. I had no idea how screwed up their sibling relationship was though. Honestly, I probably didn’t need to do anything at all. It would have gone off the rails regardless. Betty wasn’t even an obstacle. She was off her meds, and no one took her seriously. And Albert—well, Calvin took care of him in a way. I considered killing Bri or leaving her tied up, but that wasn’t a part of my process. Just the host. No one else. Calvin being a psychopath himself was a nice surprise. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on him. He was like me—well, not exactly. I’m not that sick, and I was born this way. Calvin was molded into it. The whole nature versus nurture argument. I saw it in him, but he didn’t see it in me. Survival of the fittest, as they say.
I unlocked the front door of my home and entered the lit-up house. Directly in front of me was a large carpeted staircase jutting up to the second floor. The formal dining room sat off to the right and the living room to the left.