Chapter 52 Sierra
Sierra
Though the painting was small, Sierra felt it could be her best work.
It depicted a woman kneeling and handcuffed amid a landscape of moss-covered headstones, while fireworks exploded overhead.
The vibrant colors bled into a starry sky, where the skeleton of a girl watched from the heavens.
Her skull and clavicle were adorned with red roses and black lilies. She was dead, but she was smiling.
Sierra gripped the canvas in both hands as she stared down at her sister’s headstone.
“I love you,” she whispered to the empty cemetery. Strange how awkward the words felt on her tongue. It had been a long, long time since she’d said them. She and Alicia had fought so much. Had disagreed on everything. They had resented each other, screamed at each other—
But in Alicia’s final note, the coded message she’d left for Sierra to find, she’d written those words. I love you.
Sometimes the simplest things were the hardest to say.
Beck would have laughed at her for thinking that. He would have kept pestering, with his incessant optimism, until she was forced to admit that telling people you care about them isn’t hard after all. At least, it shouldn’t be.
But Beck was still in an induced coma. No indication from the doctors when he would wake up.
Jesus, she missed her team. Carter’s nervous giggle and fierce loyalty. Adi’s sharp wit and the way he was always hiding behind a book. Beck’s infallible smile, his boundless enthusiasm.
It had been a week since she’d given both her statement and the shark tooth to the police.
With nowhere else to go, she’d come back home—an apartment filled with half-finished sketches and drying tubes of paint.
She needed to start figuring things out.
Putting her life back together. Stop living in the past.
She needed to move on. From her sister’s death. From The Escape Game.
She had fought the monster and won.
What was she supposed to do now?
As she propped the canvas against the stone, she felt eyes on her. She glanced around. It was only her and a flock of crows in the cemetery, but there was a vehicle outside the far gate. Some fancy black town car with deeply tinted windows.
The engine started, breaking through the silence, and the car slowly pulled away.
A chill ran down Sierra’s spine.
It wasn’t until she was leaving the cemetery that she saw the black envelope hanging from the gate’s iron bars, swinging from a gold velvet ribbon.