Kill Your Darlings
Murder. I contemplate it for a moment. A very, very long moment. If you’re going to commit a felony, go big or go home, right?
Proving she’s the one who orchestrated this, Hartley nods triumphantly at Cooper-Brad and slips out of the room.
A chorus of “Sofie’s” and “Not Vance” and “She’s lying” mix with the sound of pages turning, the entire room desperate to
learn the truth.
I spring from my chair, barreling through the confused and sobbing readers, ignoring Clarice’s high-pitched, “But Ms. Wilde,”
my body in motion with a singular mission of destroying Hartley West.
An acidic taste burns at the back of my throat. I power through the pain in my foot, moving, moving, moving like a shark.
My feet hit the gold carpet, and I see her halfway down the corridor. I’m on fire like I’ve swallowed molten lava, and she
must sense the heat radiating off me. She turns, sees me, and bolts. Pure rage fuels my short legs and my gait catches up
with hers.
My phone beeps and flashes like a radio control tower, and I can picture Lacey and Blaire fuming as their Google alerts ping them with what’s just happened.
The hallway is empty, with attendees and authors at their events. I’m grateful for no witnesses. I lunge forward. Hartley
whirls around. The ends of her long silver hair tickle my arm. The smooth fabric of her flowered dress slips through my fingers,
but the shock stops her just long enough for me to seize her wrist.
The door to our right marked “storage” opens, and out comes a hotel employee pushing a cleaning cart. I tighten my grip on
Hartley, and we’re over the threshold before the door shuts behind us.
It’s pitch-black. My heavy breathing betrays me as it finds a rhythm with hers. I finally release her wrist, setting off the
motion sensors and engaging the automatic lights.
She’s smirking, still. For the first time in my life, I wish I knew how to throw a punch. It’s true that anyone can develop
a penchant for violence. Just takes the right buttons to be pressed. Hartley has not just pressed, she’s pummeled mine. Again
and again, but this is the worst. She couldn’t hurt me anymore if she tried. She was, though, trying—wasn’t she?
Here’s the thing: I don’t virtually gush over other authors’ releases or artfully taken bookstagram posts. I do not squeal
and tackle-hug when we meet at events. I am not part of the author “in crowd.” And still I know there’s a code. A line one
doesn’t cross. Hartley West set that line on fire.
“Why?” I say.
Shoulders sheathed in silk white peonies rise. Her blue eyes have those hints of silver. Even with that hook at the end of
her nose, she’s pretty, prettier than I realized. There’s no rule that a devil can’t be attractive.
“That’s it?” I mimic and exaggerate her shrug. “Ten years. More than that. Fifteen—twenty really, if you count all the time spent learning how to do this. It’s not blood, sweat, and tears, it’s headaches and carpal tunnel and back spasms and saying no to two-for-one margarita girls’ nights, and your mom’s sixty-fifth birthday party, and goddamn pickleball leagues.” (Roxanne. Texts me twice a week.) “This is my entire life. I don’t need the trappings others do. These books are my children, my sales numbers are what keep me company, appearances on bestseller lists are my comfort food. Records have been broken. Numbers topped. All to get to this very place. This is the moment designed to make me a legend. And a fuck-ton of money. You just annihilated my life’s work. My life. And all you can do is...” I ram my shoulders against my ears so hard it hurts.
Hartley gently sets her hand on my shoulder, slides it down my forearm, her cool skin a contrast to the fever of mine. She
trails until she ends at my hand. She winds her fingers through mine, a surprising if sweet gesture. “Oh, honey, that’s just
so... pathetic.”
She drops my hand.
And that’s it. My fist lands in her face.
Okay, so more like her ear lobe. The right one. If it matters. Which, turns out, it does. As she defensively jerks her body
back, her left shoulder smacks into the pole of a mop, flipping the bucket it’s standing in. Dirty, foamy liquid pools under
her feet. She backs away from me. And slips.
Her arms flail. Her legs do the cancan. She’s going down. I’m elated and then—
Thwack!
Her head smacks into an industrial-sized can of liquid soap. The sound reverberates through my bones. I still. I wait. She
doesn’t move.
“Hartley?” I say.
No response.
Her light hair blends in with the long strands of yarn from the mop. I bend over and gently sweep a wet clump off her forehead.
“Hartley?” I nudge her shoulder, and the strap of her small purse slips off.
Oh, god—is she dead? She can’t be dead. (Though what a way to script a solution to my problem.)
I shake away the thought and try to think. Think, think, think! But the only thought I have is to google how to get away with murder. (And that’s how set in my ways I am, because the better
bet would be to ask AI to write me a way out of this.)
The filthy liquid from the mop begins to seep into the fabric of her dress, turning it slightly see-through. Even she doesn’t
deserve to have her breasts outlined in the photos the police will take of her dead body. I grab a bath towel from the shelf
beside me to cover her. As I do, her chest inflates.
Bodies twitch postmortem. They do not breathe. This any self-respecting author has researched. I haven’t been this relieved
since my fifth book hit the list (proving that the one before it wasn’t a fluke).
I sit back on my heels and tuck her purse into my lap, continuing to stare at her boobs until I’m (1) sure of what I saw and
(2) mildly uncomfortable. My phone dings in my pocket. I pull it out to see texts from Lacey, a missed call from Blaire, and
an email from my editor. I’m surprised to see a text from Grace until I remember that Rosie made us all exchange numbers.
Grace texted me from the store, asking me to call her, smart enough to at least not put anything in writing. I don’t want
to respond to any of them. The only person I want to contact doesn’t have a phone.
So instead, I call Rosie and ask her to find him.
Two minutes later, a knock on the door. “Housekeeping,” he says, like it’s a good time to be joking. And then I wonder if
maybe I’m wrong, that it’s not him, that it truly is housekeeping, but why would housekeeping knock and announce itself to
the storage closet?
I’m losing it.
I open the door.
Cooper-Brad stands before me with one of those gigantic orange crates.
“We’re not,” I say.
“Oh, but we are.” He taps his chest. “Snatching this volunteer shirt was truly one of my more brilliant ideas.”
He steps closer, and my nose crinkles. “If only you stole two.”
“I didn’t expect to wear it for two days straight.”
“Right, you just expected to take me down in a single day and fly back home with your manatees fully represented by Max Donner.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Hartley paid for my room for the full three days. She does respect you. She assumed it would take the entire convention
to truly tear you down.”
“Do I want to know what else she had planned?”
“I would say no except...” He gestures to the crate. “It’d certainly make you feel better about this.”
Cooper-Brad did actually steal two red volunteer shirts. I unwind my aquamarine scarf and tug the red shirt over my button-down. He’s also brought me a hat that’s going to completely destroy my two-hundred-dollar blow-out. Read or Bleed, the hat says, which I find disturbing. Still, I put on this disguise that wouldn’t fool a toddler.
Hartley hasn’t moved, hasn’t made a sound.
“What if she’s hurt?” I ask.
Cooper-Brad raises an eyebrow. “If?”
“I mean like really hurt. Like hospital-doctor hurt.”
He crouches beside her and feels for a pulse.
“Strong?” I ask.
“Sure, let’s go with that.” He hovers his palm over her nose and mouth.
“Normal? Not ragged or shallow? Because that could indicate a collapsed lung.”
“She didn’t fall on a spike.”
“Are you sure?”
“Reasonably. Seeing as we are in a hotel in Chicago in the twenty-first century and not Camelot or Harrenhal.”
Those short eyelashes of his don’t take away (much) from his dark eyes, which are looking at me as if we’re back in that mod-glam
lounge, this time sipping Manhattans. He’s working me. He sees a middle-aged woman with pancake breasts and gray pubic hairs
(well, not literally on that last part), and he’s working me.
I clear my throat. “Yes, well, no spikes, then.”
“Highly improbable,” Cooper-Brad says.
Still, he lifts her torso and feels under her back. As he does, she releases a soft gurgle. He freezes, but she doesn’t open
her eyes. He tells me to check her head for blood, and I press a towel against her skull first, then shine the light from
my phone.
Her silver hair makes it easier to see the absence of blood. “All clear,” I say.
“Then just a nasty bruise awaits.”
“Says the glacial manatee scientist?”
“Do you want to call a doctor?”
I twist the towel in my hands. We could do just that: call a doctor, leave this as an unfortunate accident, trust Max Donner to get my keynote back. Say I’ll only sign with him if he gets Hartley to stand down. For good. Two birds, one very guilty stone. No need for this felony or any others. But that means leaving Blaire.
“No,” I say with hesitation.
“Thought not,” he says. “Time to move.”
“Room key?”
“Uh, negative, Apollo Creed.”
“What do you mean? We made a deal. You promised to help.”
He points to the orange crate. “I am. But I didn’t sign up for this. I’m not holding an injured public figure hostage in a
hotel room that’s in my name.”
“She’s not a public figure.”
“This comes out, she will be.”
“So what, then?”
“We could pull the plug,” Cooper-Brad says. “Head back down to the bar for a Manhattan?”
I both like and do not like his apparent ability to know what I’m thinking. “It’s ten thirty in the morning.”
“Right, so with scrambled eggs on the side, then.”
A small laugh breaks through, but the talk of Manhattans gives me an idea. “I need to make a call.”