Ride the Wreck (Stonewall Investigations Blue Creek 2)

As if a funky-looking wig cap was the most of my problems right now.

“I’m fine. I was just leaving. I didn’t know… I can’t even believe it. Can’t say it.”

Kyla and Jen moved over to a bench, where Jen tried her best to reassure an extremely frightened Kyla. The tremors were strong enough to make her shake like a bobblehead.

“Did you see anything? Is that why you were leaving?” Something flashed in his eyes.

Suspicion.

Fuuuccck.

“No, I didn’t see anything. Well, besides…” I rubbed a hand over my face, not having expected to talk about this tonight. My intention with leaving the club and deciding it was my last night in drag was to put everything behind me. The obsessive messages only appeared after my drag performances, like fucking clockwork, so quitting drag was a way to run far from this bullshit, put it all behind me.

But I had to talk about it. I needed to make sure there was zero doubt about my innocence in all this.

He must have sensed my hesitation. “My name’s Ryan. Ryan Diaz,” he said with a disarming smile, eyes still piercing through me, searching. It was a more subdued grin than the thousand-watt one he had been flashing in the bar, but still, he somehow managed to shine past the red and blues flashing through the night. “I’m a detective. Not with the cops, a private one. With Stonewall Investigations, and whatever’s going on here, I want to help.”

“That’s where I’ve seen you.”

“Huh?”

“I was trying to remember where I’ve seen you. I usually go to the bakery down the street for breakfast.”

“Doughy Dougy’s? I go there for the mocha cappuccinos.”

I nodded, deciding to set that little fact aside for now. Blue Creek was a small town; bumping into people was inevitable. My mom might have mentioned something about fate or destiny with a dreamy air and a flick of her bracelet-covered wrist, but after the way “fate” treated her, I decided to never think about that kind of bullshit again.

“Those are good, too.” I ran a hand through my flattened hair. “Anyways, what I saw, it… I’ve been dealing with it for a while. Weird messages. I have a stalker problem. At first, they’d be sent from anonymous online accounts, on pretty much every social media platform. I assumed it was just some crazy basement dweller trying to fill his time between violently jerking off and sleeping on a bed of Cheeto crumbs, but then the messages started popping up in person. I’d find notes in my bags, sometimes under my wigs. Today there was a message written in lipstick across the mirror backstage, and it was my last straw. I left and decided to leave everything back in the bar.” I shrugged. “Clearly, that plan didn’t work.”

Ryan had been absorbing my every word. I could see the inner workings of his mind whirring and buzzing behind the crystal-clear blue gaze.

A thought struck me like lightning, and the question fell from my lips. “Was I the killer’s target tonight?”

Ryan’s peaceful smile flickered before he spoke. “I’m not a hundred percent sure on the answer to that. My first instinct is to say no. The victim was found with a knife through the forehead, a carved horn on the hilt.”

“The Unicorn?” I asked, the temperature suddenly plummeting an entire twenty degrees. “So there is a serial killer loose in Blue Creek? And they were here? Inside the bar?”

Ryan nodded, his smile completely extinguished. “It looks that way. And since your messages started way before the killings did, I’m inclined to think they aren’t related. Still, I’ve got to do some digging before I can answer for sure.”

“Jesus… and Julius… I just saw him earlier today. He was telling me about the vacation he and his girlfriend were about to take. What the fuck. What the fuck…”

Maybe shock had been shielding me, but that shield was quickly disintegrating. I thought of Julius and his smiling face, about him teasing me over the color of my nails only a few hours before he was… he was… fuck. He must have been killed during one of the performances, only feet away from a celebratory crowd. He probably heard everyone cheering and laughing while he was being murdered…

I started to cry. The tears came from nowhere and everywhere, all at once, and I crumpled into myself and let it go.

Ryan didn’t miss a beat. He stepped forward, a gentle hand coming to rest on my shoulder. I didn’t push it off or move away. I did the opposite, falling into the chest of this man I’d just met and letting the river of tears soak through his shirt. I was never one to bottle emotions. Stifle them until they died, sure, but bottling them up so that they could explode later on? No, that wasn’t me.