What Went Wrong After I Killed Him

Chapter Three: Wrong place, Right Time

Ava's POV

I didn't open it until I was inside my apartment, door bolted, chain slid across.

My hands were still shaking from the scene at Maya, from the blood and from the sound her body made against the wall. It was all still fresh. I hadn't even changed out of the black hoodie yet, I just stood in the middle of my living room, my phone buzzing.

I took of my gloves and pulled my phone out. It was an unknown number, I'd already gotten one message from this number tonight. I'd shoved it to the back of my mind because there hadn't been room for anything else, not with Maya's cold hand still fresh in my memory.

I sat down on the edge of my bed and opened it, it was an eleven second long video.

My thumb hovered over it for a long moment before I pressed play.

The footage was dark, shot from somewhere low, maybe a car, parked across the street. But it was clear enough. It was clear enough to see a figure in a black shirt sprinting out of the Coles' side entrance, cutting across the lawn, vaulting the low hedge like she'd done it a hundred times in her head before she ever did it for real.

It was clearly me in the video.

The video ended and looped back to the first frame, my face, half-turned toward the camera for just a fraction of a second before I disappeared into the dark.

Under it, was a text.

“You know what this is worth to Mr. Cole. $50,000. You have three days. I'll be in touch.”

There was no name, no explanation, just a threat wrapped in a price tag.

I read it four times before it actually landed, someone had seen me leaving Ethan's apartment. It wasn't the police, or Maya, whatever she'd claimed on TV, she genuinely hadn't been there, I was sure of that now, sure enough that it made her death feel even more senseless, even more like something that shouldn't have happened.

Someone else had watched me run from that house, had stood there with a phone out instead of calling for help, and had decided I was worth more to them alive and afraid than reported to the police.

I didn't sleep that night. I sat with my back against the door, phone in my lap, waiting for it to buzz again.

It did, two days later, but this time it wasn't a demand.

It was another video.

This one was shorter and darker, but I recognized the building instantly, the narrow stairwell, the dim hallway light outside Maya's door. It showed me slipping inside with a bobby pin, and then, it cut too where out Maya's door taking the other way out. My hands were already shaking, the video already pictured me as a murderer. Sneaking into her apartment dressed in black.

Whoever this was hadn't just seen me leave Ethan's house.

They'd followed me, or they'd been watching Maya's building too, for reasons of their own I couldn't begin to guess at.

“Guess the price just went up. $150,000. Two murders now, not one. I'd hurry if I were you.”

I read that message standing in my kitchen with a glass of water halfway to my mouth, and I very calmly set the glass down before my hand could shatter it against the counter.

$150,000.

I didn't have anywhere near that, not liquid, not fast, not without raising questions I couldn't afford anyone asking.

Then I spent six hours doing the math on the money that would require all my savings, I'll still have to see some of my things to gather the entire amount.

A part of me wanted to just surrender to the police, but the other part was against it. If I went to the police, they won't understand that both murders was an incident, the first was self defense.

By the third day, I'd scraped together One sixty thousand. But what guarantee do I have that this person won't ask for more, this was all my savings, I really needed to figure out who exactly was holding a rope around my neck.

The final message came that evening.

“Rest stop off the Palisades Parkway. Mile marker 4. Tonight, 11pm. Come alone or Mr. Cole gets everything I have.”

I stared at those words until they stopped looking like letters.

At ten, I packed the money into a gym bag, pulled my hood up, and left to go find out exactly whose face I'd be looking at when I finally learned who'd been watching me all along.

The rest stop was nearly empty, a single vending machine humming under a flickering light, a trucker asleep in his cab two spots down, the Palisades stretched out dark and silent beyond the guardrail.

I parked at the far end, away from the light, and sat there with the gym bag on my lap until 11:03, when a black sedan pulled in and killed its headlights.

I recognized him before he even got out of the car. It was Derek, Ethan's driver. I'd seen him a hundred times, holding the door open for Ethan outside restaurants, waiting in the circular drive with the engine running, nodding politely at me anytime we met. I'd never once looked at him twice, I never had a reason to.

He walked over with his hands in his jacket pockets, like this was just another late pickup.

"You look surprised," he said, stopping a few feet away.

"You were supposed to be gone that night, you always leave after dropping Ethan off." My voice came out steadier than I felt.

"I forgot to drop the spare key." He shrugged, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. “Wrong place, wrong time. Or right place, right time, depending how you look at it."

"You could've called the police." I just couldn't trust him.

"I could've." He glanced past me toward the dark water beyond the trees. "But then I got to thinking, a girl like you, running from a house like that, in a family like the Cole's... that's not police money, but real money."

"You're disgusting." I said bitterly.

"Maybe." He didn't seem bothered by that. "You bring what I asked for?"

I held the bag out. He took it, unzipped it right there in the open, and thumbed through the stacks without counting them properly — just enough to see it wasn't a stall.

"Hundred" I said before he could ask. "It's what I could get fast. I'll have the rest —"

"Hundred." He looked up at me, and for the first time something sharpened in his expression. "I asked for one-fifty."

"I know what you asked for." I kept my hands from shaking through sheer will. "I don't have that. Not yet. I need time."

He zipped the bag slowly, thinking, or pretending to think.

"You know what I keep coming back to," he said. "That maid. Maya." He watched my face when he said her name, and whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him. "I didn't even have to follow you that night. Lucky, really. Wrong place, right time again."

"Don't," I said quietly.

"Two bodies now." He slung the bag over his shoulder like it weighed nothing. "That's not a Hundred-thousand-dollar secret, Ava. That's not even close."

"I told you, I need time—"

"You've got a week." He was already turning back toward his car. "Same amount as this. And next time, don't make me come all the way out here to be disappointed."

"Derek." I don't know why I said his name — maybe to remind him I knew it now, that he wasn't invisible to me anymore either. He paused. "Why are you doing this?"

For a second, just a second, something almost human crossed his face. Then it was gone.

"Because I can," he said, and got in the car.

I watched his taillights disappear down the parkway before I let myself sit back down on the curb, the cold concrete seeping through my jeans, and put my head in my hands.

I had a week, fifty thousand dollars, I had the money but I couldn't risk giving it to him, I needed more time to think, more time to come up with a plan, but this man knew exactly how far I'd go to protect the secret he was holding.

Two days passed, I was standing in front of my closet at six-thirty in the morning, half-dressed, trying to decide between two blouses, which was good enough for, when my phone buzzed on the dresser.

I already knew before I picked it up. I'd started recognizing the rhythm of it, the particular way dread settled into my chest half a second before I even saw the screen.

“Change of plans, I need it sooner. In Three days, not seven.”

I stood there in my half-buttoned blouse, staring at the message, doing math I already knew wouldn't work out in time.

I really don't know how long I can hang on.