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reason she even watched them was her brother; Marcus was a big Quentin Tarantino over-the-top-violent film fan. He kept telling her if she watched enough of them, she would “toughen up.” She still awaited that occurrence.
    If Marcus actually took the time to read some of her articles, he’d see she was tough enough to write real horror—terrible heartbreaking articles. She’d covered everything from teen suicide to a baby boy killed by a drunk driver plowing through his bedroom wall. True life terror.
    When it came to deliberate violence against others, she drew the line. Accidents she could handle, but it seemed too much like a slippery slope, flooding her mind with memories of ten years ago and her mom. Every time she thought about that night, her heart hardened against allowing herself to feel for anyone the love she felt for her mom. She felt empathy for people, but she didn’t desire closeness. She didn’t want to love someone and suffer having them torn away. She began to think about that night; she could smell the night air, hear the sounds in the darkness, feel the fear, the despair; her heart quickened.
    No, she wouldn’t think about it now. Maybe one day, if the right person came along, she might trust herself to feel something again. Allow herself to feel something again. Right now she had bills to pay and a job to do.
    Most of her work was puff pieces. Marcus was right about that. She wondered if his occasional nagging about them was his way of testing her, see if she had grown stronger without having to come right out and ask the question.
    What was wrong with writing about banal things like how to get your start in business; ten things airline hostesses don’t want you to know; and interviews with best-selling novelists and comedy film stars? People enjoyed reading them or she wouldn’t keep winning the commissions. These articles were magazines’ bread and butter, and they always seemed to be the ones she was working on when Marcus asked what she was doing. The Pulitzer Prize-winning articles were never given to freelancers like her. She was fine with that, too. From the first few articles she wrote twelve years ago for Seventeen , Family Fun , and Entertainment Weekly , her career had pretty much travelled down the fluff-piece path.
    Kendall opened up a fresh browser and Googled Toby Benson. He was on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a website called ListenFM (the last being just someone with the same name as his).
    When she clicked through to his Facebook account, she found he had 232 “friends.” Over the past twenty-four hours, dozens of posts had been left on his page. Most were from real friends, sharing an outpouring of shock and horror, all messages of condolence, the presiding sentiment being there must be some mistake, that Toby Benson was no killer.
     
    “Good buddy, tell me this is a mistake. This can’t be true.”
    “Toby, you will be loved and missed.”
    “God bless you and condolences to the Benson family.”
     
    Toby’s account settings must have allowed anyone to post to his page. Comments from people who clearly weren’t his friends shared the feed.
     
    “You fu*&!@# lunatic. Shooting was too good for you.”
    “You should have been hacked to pieces or hung.”
    “Hope hell is hell!”
     
    Many more continued in that vein. Arguments had sprung up between his friends and these posters. His friends continued to defend the impossibility they knew someone who’d become a cold-blooded killer. Twitter had a similar mix of sentiment among Toby’s 332 followers. When Kendall read back over Toby’s comments and tweets of the previous few days, there did appear no indication he harbored any thoughts of randomly venturing out hell-bent on murder. In fact, he seemed very normal, sharing snippets of weekend activities: a party, a lunch, and an evening watching Netflix. Just like everyone else, he was gorge-viewing Breaking Bad .
    Somewhere, at this moment, a freelancer was