Chapter 51
Evie
The Prop Run
“I don’t know how you plan to do this. We can’t go anywhere without a fucking camera trailing us,” Sebastian muttered when I suggested we go to Charles Hodder’s house and try to find out what we could about his relationship with my mother.
“So, we lose them.” I waved my hand dismissively, despite the growing knot in my belly.
Ever since the PR team leaked word of what happened on set, we’d become the shiniest, newest, most exciting toy for the people who got paid to take photos and make up stories about us.
I couldn’t go anywhere without having someone with a camera take photos or ask me questions.
Sebastian, after being cleared from the rape accusations—started by who knows who—and both of us agreeing that no legal action would be taken, had to start escorting me home, driving behind me every night and then going to his place twenty minutes in the other direction.
It was exhausting, hiding from the paparazzi while also trying to plan murders.
Tonight, I’d gone to his house. We were going to watch the IT TV mini-series that starred Tim Curry.
“You really think we can take a few fast turns and they won’t find us?
That’s the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard, and living in Hollywood, I’ve heard some doozies.
” Sebastian pushed the dogs off him and walked over to where I’d been pacing, twirling my knives like batons through my fingers.
I still hadn’t had a chance to use them.
It felt like such a waste after all the trouble my mom went through to get them to me.
Even Skye got to use them before I did, and that didn’t sit right with me.
I needed to stab someone.
Sebastian caught my wrists mid-twirl and pulled them to my sides. “Evie, I’m not opposed to this idea, but we’ve gotta be smart about it. Come sit, and let’s think.”
I pouted slightly as he took my knives, setting them on the coffee table.
He dragged me to the couch and onto his lap as he plopped down.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and snuggled into his chest. I knew the position was intimate, far too intimate for a casual hookup relationship, but it was comfortable.
While I’d fought it for so long, I couldn’t deny there was comfort in our history.
That night in the Psycho house changed things. It wasn’t just a silly deal anymore, where he got sex in exchange for a little murder. He’d made it clear from the start that he wanted more, and then somewhere along the way, I’d started to consider it.
But it wasn’t fair to lead him on and make him think we could have a future after this.
It wasn’t for lack of interest in the future, but lack of a future at all.
I would die to make sure I got my revenge, but…
he didn’t need to witness it. I’d tried to have that conversation with him, but every time I started, it ended in an argument.
He couldn’t even consider how real the chances of me dying were.
Sebastian pushed a strand of hair back behind my ear, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Let’s see... Maybe if we plan this around a bigger event, something that will take attention off us, we could sneak over.” He pulled out his phone, wrangling it so that he could keep a hand around my waist while scrolling. “There’s a movie premiere next week. It’s the studio’s summer blockbuster.”
“Which one?”
“Mind to Bend,” he read from the screen. “Let’s plan for that night. But if I think someone’s following us, it’s off.”
I snuggled deeper into him and focused on the TV. Pennywise the Clown was straddling a banister and making a crude joke to the adult Losers Club below. “Let’s see who can quote this movie the most, and we’ll figure out how to get into Charles’s house tomorrow.”
A WEEK LATER, I dressed in all black, and Sebastian wore his normal clothes to drive over to Charles’s now abandoned mansion.
He’d been stupid enough to give out his real address to Skye on their date, so we had her drive by it a few times to make sure it was empty.
We’d been on alert all week, watching for paparazzi.
Seeing exactly which ones were dedicated to catching us, and which were simply bored.
Sebastian was close to calling off the mission entirely, especially once he picked me up and saw my outfit, but I insisted the coast was clear.
“You’re dressed like a burglar from The Sims.” He shook his head as I climbed into his car.
“I want to be hidden in the dark,” I argued. “They’ll see you from a mile away.”
“Yeah, and I’ll be able to play it off like I was at a friend’s house or taking a walk. How are you going to explain why you’re in the area, dressed like the Hamburgler?”
I stopped talking, seeing his point. I looked down at my hoodie.
Well, shit.
“It’s fine. Just take off the hat, and you should be fine. We can make it work,” he said, and I did as suggested.
Charles had lived in Bel-Air. For a real estate tycoon, I’d expected nothing less.
“There’s gonna be a code for the gate,” Sebastian said as we drove into the estate. It was easily twice the size of the house my mother left behind. Which, I’d discovered while digging through her things, he’d been her real estate agent for the purchase.
I rattled off the four digits, 0510, without missing a beat.
We reached the tall wrought-iron gate, and he rolled the window down to punch in the code. It beeped in acceptance, and the metal gates opened.
“How did you know that?” He glanced over, raising an eyebrow.
I pulled Charles’s journal out of my hoodie pocket and waved it. “His anniversary with my mother. He talks about it being his secret lucky number.”
I’d learned a lot about the man who could possibly be my father through the journal I’d taken before dumping him into the lake.
He was clearly neurodivergent, although possibly undiagnosed.
At the time he wrote it, I don’t think he had gotten help for his obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
He never mentioned them outright, but it was clear on the page he was neurospicy of some flavor.
With his paranoia and extensive record-keeping of…
everything, I was curious to see his home and any further evidence of his eccentricities.
“I hope he didn’t have any pets,” Sebastian muttered as we drove around the back of his house.
“I doubt that,” I said. “He didn’t like animals.”
“He must have put a lot in that notebook,” he commented as we used the same code to unlock the back door and waltz right inside. Sebastian used the flashlight on his phone to reveal a bright-blue kitchen.
“He filled every page, front and back,” I said as we walked single file through the house, using his flashlight to guide us.
Everything was various shades of blue—the floors, the ceiling, the furniture, all blue.
I wondered if he had guests often, and if it gave them the same unsettling feeling it was giving me.
It was all decorated stylishly, so it didn’t look unnatural, but having read his innermost thoughts, I knew it wasn’t just a design choice.
He needed the blue.
Just like my mother had needed the pink.
My mother had hidden behind the color pink.
She’d made it part of her personality, something everyone who knew her used to identify her.
She’d told me once that she’d grown up in a poor household, where they didn’t have luxury items. But on her fifteenth birthday, her father, unable to afford a full, traditional quinceanera party, had a dress made and gifted it to her.
It was pink, and despite having nowhere to wear it, she wore it in her room every day, dreaming of the day she’d have a closet full of dresses and a million places to wear them.
That soft shade of pink was what she surrounded herself with to protect herself from the harsh reality of life.
I wondered if that was why Charles chose blue, because it was the opposite of my mother’s house.
“Why is everything blue?” Sebastian asked as we started up the stairs. “You notice that?”
“I did.”
“Must be his favorite color.”
Actually, I was pretty sure it was pink. After the breakup with my mother, though...
We reached a room where another code was needed. When 0510 didn’t work, I tried it backwards, and it unlocked.
Sebastian went first and froze. “Holy shit.”
“What?” Flicking a light on, despite the risk of being seen, I peered past him. And then I saw why he’d frozen.
This was the only room we’d seen that wasn’t blue. It was pink.
“This is...”
“An exact replica of the room I sleep in?” I stepped inside, looking around in a mix of surprise and unease. The bedding, the walls, the furniture—all of it was a double of my mother’s room.
“This is creepy. Maybe he was psycho.”
“No, I don’t think so.” I shook my head and went to the closet, mildly surprised to find his clothes inside and not hers. “I think he was neurodivergent of some kind and his friends took advantage of it. He was smart and talented, obviously. Just...”
“Fascinating,” Sebastian muttered, pulling open drawers on the vanity table. “Are these her makeup and creams too?”
I joined him on the other side of the room and scanned the table. They were all the same ones sitting on the table at home. It was like he never left that relationship.
“How did he explain this when he brought partners home?” Sebastian shook his head.
“I doubt he did. This was a shrine to my mom.” I shuddered. “He wouldn’t dare let anyone in here.”
As we explored the room, I began to have doubts. If he was this obsessed with her, could he have been a willing participant in her rape and murder? Or was there more to the story that we didn’t know?
“Evie, I think I found something,” Sebastian called from the closet.
I hurried over and found him crouched on the floor, pulling out a cardboard box from the back.
“What is it?” I asked, squatting down beside him.
He opened the top, and my heart dropped. There were stacks and stacks of notebooks, just like the one I had left in the car.
“Holy shit,” I said under my breath.
A loud crash that sounded like splintering wood came from downstairs. We froze and looked at each other with wide eyes.
What the fuck was that?
Heavy footsteps and angry voices carried up the stairs, and terror slid up my spine.
We weren’t the only intruders tonight.