Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
GRANT
S omeone is watching Kit and this isn’t news. Not by a long shot but the photos in my hand confirms they’re here to pin Jane’s disappearance on Kit. The photos are of Kit and they’re from last night and today. The first is from the last hour, Kit and Alana are in the shot. Kit is sprawled out on the couch beside her friend with a book in her hands but she isn’t looking at the book. She’s looking out the window. The photograph gives a clear shot of Kit’s face. Whoever took it was close to her, staring right back at her while Kit didn’t even know it. And I almost took her out to the lodge to give them a clearer shot at her.
You would think this photo is the concerning one but it isn’t. The second photo is the one that has me seeing red. It’s from last night and it’s taken from the bedroom, specifically the top of the bedroom.
The sonofabitch took the photo from above us. The shot is panned out to show us in bed, asleep and tangled together. It’s a close up photo and whoever took it from the ceiling used a great lens to have zoomed in the way they did in such low light. I can see every curve of Kit perfectly, count the eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks, she’s there—we are there—in perfect high definition. A photo of this would normally be a prized possession for me, a look at what we are at rest, when the rest of the world truly does cease to exist because we aren’t there to witness it. I’ve thought about what the three of us look like together when we’re like this but seeing it now, it’s the last thing I want.
The move to Elysium was for nothing because they came with us. The members of the cast and crew picked have them in it. How else could they keep up with us? And they haven’t just been keeping up with us, have they? They’ve been one step ahead. When I woke up, Kit was gone. This photo is before that.
Maybe even before Jane went missing, too. There’s no way of knowing but jesus fucking christ. What the fuck am I doing? I’m slipping because I want to keep Kit happy. All the while I’m playing right into the game someone else already set in motion for us. I look at the closed door and a weight settles against my chest, weighing me down. I rub my fist against the heavy feeling and I settle into it.
I need this. I need to be calm, focused and sure of what to do next. I can’t give in to what Kit wants if I’m going to keep her safe. I flip the photo of us sleeping over and there scrawled on the back in black sharpie is a message.
“I see you. Do you see me?”
It’s a taunt. A dare.
Someone wants to throw it in our faces that they can go and be where they want without anyone seeing them. Without anyone noticing that they shouldn’t be there. It’s how Rafe and I carried out our murders. No one batted an eye at seeing us. Whoever is here has the same kind of power and that fucking pisses me off.
I’m at the top of the food chain. Fuck this cunt and their move to shake up the order of things. I’m going to rip their insides out, use it to choke them when I get my hands on the little fuck. I shove the photo into my back pocket and stride to the front door. When I open it, I almost hit Alana and Kit from where they are huddled up against the door.
“You lock this door. You don’t come out for any reason,” I tell them and point at the windows. “Pull the drapes on every window. Don’t go into the bedroom.”
“What? Why?” Kit looks scared. I hate that look on her face. My woman does not look that way ever, especially not when I’m around. I debate holding the truth from her, waiting until Rafe is back but Kit is too curious for her own good. Besides, right now she has a defiant streak I’ve never seen before. My good girl is going off the rails faster than I can read her and the truth is going to be the only way to keep hold of her.
“Someone is watching us,” I say and hold up the photos.
“Oh my fucking god,” Alana gasps and claps her hands over her mouth. Her reaction is normal. Horrified and worried. “Oh my god, are they here? Th-that fucking photo is of just now, they’re watching us now?” She stumbles to the side in a dash for the window the photo was taken from and pulls the curtains closed so hard that for a second I think she’s going to end up pulling the whole curtain rod down.
“Oh, fuck, I’ll go get the kitchen!” Alana runs off and it’s just Kit and I. Kit isn’t acting like Alana, she looks scared but there’s more there. She looks angry. Good. Anger I can take, it’s better than fear, but I hold up a hand when she opens her mouth to speak.
“You are not coming with me. You are staying right the fuck here.”
She crosses her arms but nods. “Fine.”
“You’re going to stay inside with Alana. I’m going to stay outside and anyone who so much as looks at the cabin is going on my list.”
“List? What list?” she asks. There’s a slam of the door and I know Alana is fucking around in our bedroom and I rub my temples. I told them to stay out of the room but nobody fucking listens to me.
“The list of fuckers I’m going to kill.” I walk out of the cabin before Kit can respond but I pause long enough to tell her, “Lock this door. Don’t let anyone in unless it’s me. Use the peephole. Have me say it’s me.”
“O-okay.”
I slam the door and wait a second until I hear the lock slide home before I start scanning the porch for clues our visitor might have been stupid enough to leave behind. There’s nothing. but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing around the sides of the cabin. I walk the perimeter of it and drop to my knees to make sure the foundation is solid and not a crawlspace. There’s nothing there but cement so at least I know the asshole isn’t going to come up from the floorboards.
I stop long enough in my search of the perimeter of the cabin to shoot Rafe a text. ‘Get to the cabin. We have to get the fuck out of here.’
Rafe should be on his way back from filming by now, and as stupid as he is, two heads are better than one when there’s a psychotic fuck on the loose and after our girlfriend. I take the photo out of my pocket again and stare at it. There’s something that I’m missing, but what?
There’s always a trail. Always something to notice.
Raindrops fall on the photo and trace the curve of Kit’s arm she has thrown over me. My eyes drink in the sight of Kit touching me, even now with where this photo came from I want to devour it. Moonlight slants across our faces, perfect lighting for the fucker that took it. But the longer I stare at it my eyes finally zero in on the soft blue light on my hand. The picture shows me on my back with an arm thrown above my head so my hand hangs off the edge of the bed just inches away from that blue light. I turn the photo to get a better look and realization hits me when I realize what the fuck I’m looking at.
The alarm clock.
The angle of the photo wasn’t meant to capture the alarm clock, not with how it’s partly out of the frame but whoever took the photo was so intent on capturing every little inch of us that they unintentionally included it to get my entire arm and hand. I squint and look at the numbers on the screen. They aren’t hard to make out with how clear the photo is, even if the angle is off.
The time on the clock reads 3:40 am. Just twenty minutes before I woke up. Kit vanished after this photo.
“It’s something,” I mutter. Now we know when the photo was taken, that gives me a true point of reference for last night.
I’m walking the length of the cabin again when I see a woman hurrying down the trail. Her head is down against the falling rain and she’s speed-walking so fast that she’s practically running. When she sees me she goes still and that makes me pay attention. She hesitates like she isn’t sure what to do but after a second shifting back and forth she raises a hand in greeting and comes straight for me.
“Grant, hey,” she calls out and I recognize her as the stylist that Kit’s friendly with. Alexia.
“Alexia, you okay?”
She gives me a tight smile and then nods. “Yeah, I just, well, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Sure,” I say, even though I don’t know what she could have to say to me. Because I know I should say it, I do. “I’m sorry about…you know, Jane and everything. I know it can’t be easy.” I don’t give a shit if she found Jane’s severed head in her bed so long as she stays away from Kit but a normal person would say they were sorry, so I play along.
Alexia clasps her hands together. “Thank you. I-I still can’t believe she’s gone, you know?”
“What do you mean gone? She’s just missing. We’ll find her.”
Alexia’s eyes cut up to me and her smile wobbles. “You really think that?”
I don’t think that. Not one fucking bit but I don’t let on. Interesting that Alexia has already landed on the fact that Jane is dead but she was the one to find the room. She knows how much blood was there.
“I try to be optimistic about these things. You never know how it’ll go.”
“I guess that’s true. Kit’s lucky to have a man like you in her corner.” We both look towards the cabin and I tense. Alexia reads the movement and holds up her hands. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know that Holly kind of flew off the handle last night at Kit when they found her in the woods but I know that Kit wouldn’t do something like that. And even if she could, she couldn’t have done what I saw in our room.”
Now she has me interested. I step away from the cabin a few steps, keeping my body loose so it looks like I’m just strolling but now I can see the front door and the side closest to the woods. Nobody is getting the jump on me while I’m talking to Alexia.
“What do you mean? What did you see?”
She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. “I-well, there was so much blood. It was all over the walls, like someone had just-just poured her out and smeared it there. It was on the ceiling , Grant.”
“Poured her out?”
“I mean, if it was Jane’s blood. I don’t even…when they questioned me I said it was because what else could it be but now I don’t know. It smelled funny.”
“Funny how?” I press. The jug we found in the woods dances through my mind and I already know what Alexia is going to say it smelled like. “Sugary sweet?” I ask her and she looks at me with wide, surprised eyes.
“Yeah, how did you-it smelled like old pop.”
“Did Holly see it?” I ask.
“Yeah, sh-she was the one that called the cops.”
I let out a sigh and nod. “That’s interesting.” The blood used in movies is mostly corn syrup, sometimes they mix it with blackcurrant juice and jam to give it a stickier, darker look. When I had to use it, it always made my teeth ache and it smelled exactly like Alexia says, old pop. The scent is so sickly sweet that it made me sick, but it’s the only substitute in the business that works as a believable dupe for blood. Whoever took Jane had to be in the film business to have nailed it enough that even Holly was tricked.
Alexia toes the ground at her feet. “You don’t think it’s blood, do you?”
“I don’t, but neither do you, right?”
“Right.”
We stand in silence for a minute, the only sounds are the wind in the trees and the gentle tap of the rain on the ground and the cabin roof. Somewhere in the forest a bird caws, the sound of it acts like a starter pistol.
“I think it’s Holly.”
A split second later, I speak. “Holly is at the top of my list.” The funny thing is that Holly isn’t at the top of my list. I don’t have a fucking list but I know that’s where Alexia’s mind went. Holly is a big fish to her, someone with power and authority to throw around. Alexia would assume she’s the person behind what happened to Jane. If she thinks I agree with her, then we’re on the same team. She’ll trust me more and that trust is what’s going to help me keep Kit safe. The woman is like anyone else, she’s too keyed up about sharing her secret to notice that I was a half second behind her. If the cops interview Alexia, all it will take is her pointing in Holly’s direction to get me what I want, so I smile encouragingly at her.
“It’s okay. I know you feel crazy but you’re not. I think you’re right.”
Alexia claps her hands over her mouth and falls back a step. “Oh fuck. Oh god, I knew it was her and I didn’t know who to tell and now Kit’s getting the blame. You should hear how people are talking about her. I know it’s not true. She couldn’t have done it. Not with the last time I saw Jane. There wasn’t enough time for her to do something like that.”
If I let her tell me what people are saying about Kit, I won’t stay focused. I hold up a hand to stop her from talking. I hone in on the time she’s talking about and start doing the mental math it takes to come up with the timeline of what the fuck happened last night.
When we had Kit, it was just after nine. When I was in the kitchen with Rafe it was midnight. I can see the stove clock in my mind, there’s no doubt about the time. We were only awake for another hour or so. At least Kit was, from the way she was putting the champagne back. I didn’t fall asleep with Kit and Rafe, I never do. I don’t need much sleep, I never have. So at two I was up and walking the cabin to triple check the windows and doors. Then, like clockwork, at four my alarm woke me up.
“When did you see her?”
“I saw Jane…w-we were at the bar in the lodge but when it closed we all went to an after party. Some of the guys made a bonfire, you know out at the firepit in front of the lodge?” I remember the fire that was still burning, how it felt like a party had been shut down unexpectedly. Everything starts to make sense the more Alexia talks. The pieces to the timeline form and slide into place. “Well, we were out there until I don’t know…almost four in the morning. Jane left just after 3:30. When she left she reminded me that I was going to get less than two hours of sleep if I stayed much longer. I was there with a friend and we were having so much fun that I wasn’t really paying attention, none of us were. This place is like paradise,” Alexia’s voice trails off and she clears it before starting up again, “You know what it can be like on location. Nothing is comfortable, not really. But this place is luxury down to its foundation. We had to party. We had to enjoy it while we could but then, oh god, Jane. ”
Three fucking thirty in the morning. That’s the last time Jane was seen alive. Ten minutes, that’s the time between Jane leaving the bonfire and the photo burning a hole in my pocket. Rafe and I are Kit’s alibi for the timeframe because we were all asleep. Whoever took that photo couldn’t have been waiting for Jane in her room at 3:30 am if they were taking the photo of us at the same time.
There’s more than one person involved in this bullshit.
There’s two.
God fucking dammit. One killer is too many and now there are two. I don’t have the patience for this bullshit.
“Listen, you need to get back to your room. Where were you going? Go there now.”
“I was going to a friends.” Alexia tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and there’s a pink blush across the tops of her cheeks when she starts to speak again. “It’s just, no one knows we’re dating. He’s in cabin 7.” She jerks a thumb in the direction of the cabin and clears her throat. “Please don’t say anything.”
I don’t give a fuck where she’s going.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Your secret is safe with me. Go there now. Stay there. It’s not safe.”
“You think Holly would do something to us?”
“Look at what happened to Jane is all I’m saying.”
Alexia looks in the direction of the cabin. “You’re right, I-I know she probably did it but what the fuck am I supposed to do? We’re in the middle of filming and I don’t have a single day off because I’m scheduled every fucking day. How am I supposed to look her in the face knowing what I know?”
“It’s going to be tough but you get in touch with the cops and give them a statement. Have you done that yet?”
“No, I was in shock before. They said they would be in touch. I know they’re coming back for questioning. They’ve been out at the clearing where Kit was today.”
“How do you know that?” My voice sounds sharper than I mean it to but Alexia doesn’t notice.
“Everyone that’s been on set knows. It’s all anyone is talking about, well that and Jasmine.”
“Jasmine?” That surprises me. The little wannabe has been laying low over the past couple of days. I’d almost forgotten about her with everything that’s happening. “Did she go missing?” If the killer is grabbing random women from set then whatever timeline we’re on is accelerating. I know the signs well enough to identify the game they’re playing. The more people that end up dead, the faster they’re coming for Kit.
“What? No, it’s nothing like that. She kind of lost it on set today.”
“Lost it how?” I keep my face carefully schooled for concern, my voice pitched to communicate that I’m just as upset about whatever she’s talking about as she is. I’m the perfect mirror image of Alexia. Everything she’s feeling, so am I.
Her eyes dart up the path in the direction of the lodge and I look that way too. “Lost it how?” I ask again.
“She attacked Rafe. I’m surprised you don’t know already.”
“When we’re working it’s not like that,” I tell her and that’s true. When we’re on set, we aren’t keeping tabs on one another. Luckily our schedules have overlapped enough there’s no real need to keep an eye on the phone and where we go, so does Kit. She’s always been the most important part of us.
If Kit is safe there is no need to worry. Rafe and I can take care of ourselves well enough and until now we’ve never had a threat feel real. Whoever is doing all of this has changed that.
“Attacked Rafe how ?” I ask and that gets Alexia talking.
“She lost it. I’m talking completely fucking insane, yelling about how she loved him.”
“Loved Rafe?”
“No, someone else…at least, I think so. She went psycho and threw herself at him, tried scratching his eyes out too before security pulled her off of him.”
The thought of Jasmine drawing blood from Rafe has me feeling a mix of emotions. First, joy enters my heart knowing she fucked his face up because he’s a dipshit thorn in my side. The second emotion is anger, because nobody but me touches my boyfriend. If she so much as ruined Rafe’s hair I’m going to finish what Kit started when I get Jasmine’s ass alone.
“Where is she now?” I ask and I know I got the tone wrong as Alexia takes a step away from me and gives me a nervous look.
“I-I don’t know. She just, they took her away.”
“She didn’t fucking scratch my eyes out,” Rafe says as he seemingly steps out of thin air. Alexia jumps and I scowl at him.
“Can you not pop out of nowhere? We have a fucking killer on the loose.”
“What else is new?” he asks and gives me a once over that lets me know the killer he’s talking about is us.
“Cute but read the fucking room.”
“Hi Rafe. Are you okay?” Alexia twists her hands in front of her and bites her lip. “I didn’t know if you would be okay after what happened today.”
“Today was just some nerves, that’s all.”
Alexia narrows her eyes. “That didn’t look like nerves. She slapped that bottle out of your hand and was screaming.”
“See, that actually did happen. And like I said, it was just nerves.”
“But-”
Rafe nods his head down the trail. “And I think I’m tired, so it’s time for you to head out, Alexia. It’s starting to come down now. You wouldn't want to get caught in a storm.”
I’m not surprised that Rafe knows her name, even if I’ve never seen him talk to her. “I-ah, yeah, I should get going.” She pulls her jacket closer and then gives me a quick smile. “Thanks for listening to me, Grant. It means a lot.”
I give her the smile I only bring out for red carpets. “Always. You can tell me anything.”
Alexia’s breath catches and I know the smile landed the way I wanted. She stumbles away into the rain starry-eyed and thinking we’re the best of friends.