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

by Holly Jackson

Pip couldn’t escape death, even on this bright late-July morning in an unguarded moment with her dad. It seemed to be all she lived for now.

“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.”

Ravi Singh was the opposite of dead-eyed. The antidote. Pip needed to remind herself of that sometimes. So she watched him, took him all in, left none of him behind.

“Oh.” Josh nodded, seeming to accept the explanation. “Like the guy who’s been watching our house?”

“Not a fan. Can we go back to just Sarge? I like Sarge.”

“You are the maximum amount of Pipness that any Pip could be. The Ultra-Pip. I’m going to introduce you to my family this weekend as Pippus Maximus.”

But my girlfriend’s probably going to need a good lawyer one day, so…” He winked at her. The very same

thing he’d said after she told him how the mediation went.

There, hidden below, were the burner phones. All six of them, arranged in a neat line. Six prepaid phones bought with cash, each from a different store, a cap pulled low over Pip’s face as she’d handed over the money.

If someone picked out her little brother and delivered him to a killer, to die the most horrific death

imaginable, would she spend two decades chasing justice, hunting them down to kill them? The answer was yes.

He’d helped her once before, opened her eyes about right and wrong and who decided what those words meant.

Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

There was only one way, and it was maddeningly simple: she needed a new case. And not just any case—a case built only from black and white.

Pip could solve this case, save Jane Doe, but the most important point was that Jane Doe would save her.

One more case would do it, put everything right. Just one more.

“Someone very old and wise once told me that I am entirely without pizzazz, so…” “I think you meant very wise and very handsome, actually.” “Did I?”

“Pip!” Nat made a beeline straight for her. She bent down and wrapped a long arm around Pip’s shoulders, hugging her from behind. She smelled like summer. “Didn’t know you’d be here. How are you?”

Could she bottle this feeling, live off it for a while?

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

DEAD GIRL WALKING

that she was seeing a pattern where there was none, her brain too fine-tuned to danger, because that would soon be fixed along with everything else.

Dont gas light yourself. Be fr

“You’re Pippa Fitz-Amobi”—he smiled, brushed the flyaway hairs from her eyes—“there’s nothing you can’t do. Even if it’s biting your tongue and asking Detective Hawkins for help.”

Hand in hand: the boy with a dimple in his chin, and the dead girl walking.

But she’d promised Ravi, and her promises still meant something to her. Especially with him.

A moment that bound them forever, hanging like a ghost at the corners of Eliza’s smile.

“I

didn’t make myself a public figure, Hawkins, that happened because I had to do your job for you. You would’ve been happy to let Sal Singh carry the guilt for killing Andie Bell forever. That’s why everything has happened the way it has.

“I was asking you for help. My mistake, I should have known better. It

wasn’t so long ago that we were standing in a room just like this and I asked you for help, to find Jamie Reynolds. You said no then too, and look where we all are now.”

Not Jane Doe, but this. One more case, the right one, and opportunity had handed

it right to her. The universe might have aligned, for once, in her favor.

“I will be however I am,” she spat, stuffing the papers back into her bag, the angry-wasp sound of her pulling up the zip. “And you”—she stopped to wipe her nose across her sleeve, the breath heavy in her chest—“I have you to thank for that too.”

“do me a favor. If I disappear, don’t look for me. Don’t even bother.”

I understand why they all hate me. I might hate me too.

Save herself to save herself.

That was it, what she wanted: to live those small, normal moments again.

“I see,” he said, “not even a glance back, or one of your scornful looks. Not a hug, not a kiss. Not an Oh, Ravi, darling, you look

devilishly handsome today and you smell like a spring dream. Oh, Pip, my dear, you are too kind to notice. It’s a new deodorant I’m trying.”

“It’s me and you, Trouble. Team Ravi and Pip. Someone left those birds for you, and the chalk; you don’t have to try to prove otherwise. Trust yourself.”

“We’re going out for a walk. Oh, what a fantastic idea, Ravi, you’re so smart and handsome. Oh, Pip, I know I am, but do try to keep it in your pants, your father is downstairs.”

“Oooh, sick burn, Sarge.” He clapped her on the backside as she stood up. “Let’s go.”

Thinking back on it now, maybe that’s the moment Pip knew. Had it been a tightening in her gut, or maybe that drunk feeling behind the eyes, or could it have been that glow below her skin? She hadn’t realized it at the time, hadn’t known what it was, but maybe some part of her had already decided she would love him.

He hated confrontation, hated it, and even so, Pip knew he would go to war for her if she ever asked.

You’re my person. My little one. My Sarge. And I’m supposed to protect you.”

He was her life raft, her cornerstone for what

good truly meant. Didn’t he know that?

This leads me to believe that our killer lives in a different nearby location, one that hasn’t yet come up in the investigation, his untouched buffer zone.

“As to his motive, I think what we have here is something that underpins a lot of serial killings: misogyny, essentially. This man has very strong feelings about women—he hates them.

Ravi dropped to his knees in front of her, holding one hand up to her face, thumb and little finger folded down.