As Good As Dead (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #3)

by Holly Jackson

Her dad sighed. ‘Ah, that fuckboy in the Porsche has taken my spot again.’ Fuckboy: another term Pip immediately regretted teaching him.

Oh, poor little serial rapist, Pip thought, speaking the words with her eyes.

‘Here’s the thing about you suing me, Max.’ She spat out his name, unable to bear it on her tongue. ‘I have the ultimate defence: the truth. So, go on then, file the lawsuit, I dare you. I’ll see you in court. And you know how that goes, don’t you? It will have to prove whether my statement was true, which means we get to re-do your rape trial. All the same witnesses, the victim testimonies, the evidence. There won’t be any criminal charges but at least everyone will know what you are, forever. Rapist.’

‘Thank you for your unbiased advice, Mr Epps,’ she said. ‘But it appears you have underestimated me. I would be willing to lose everything, destroy myself, if it also meant destroying your client. That seems a fair trade. Now you have a good day, Mr Epps.’

How could both positions be both wrong and right at the very same time? An impossible contradiction that she would never settle. It was her undoing, her fatal flaw, the hill she would die and decay on.

‘Connor Reynolds, I swear to god if you order one of those iced pumpkin macchiatos today, I will murder you dead.’ ‘Cara,’ Jackie called cheerily from behind the counter. ‘Remember lesson number one: we don’t threaten to kill customers.’

People you could count on your fingers who cared about you as much as you cared about them. The people who would look for you if you disappeared.

Could she bottle this feeling, live off it for a while? Fill herself with something good and ignore the slick of blood on her hands, not think about the gun in the sound of that mug hitting the table or those dead eyes waiting for her in the darkness of a blink? Oh, too late.

Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? PS. Remember to always kill two birds with one stone.

Is it normal for one person to have this many enemies? I’m the problem, aren’t I? How did it get so late already? I understand why they all hate me. I might hate me too.