Chapter Kyla
KYLA
She, too, was on the floor of her room, curled into a ball, alone. It’ll pass, she tried to tell herself. It’s just another dream.
But of course it wasn’t. Kyla wasn’t asleep. The night wasn’t that kind.
Fernanda was dead. Again and again, Kyla heard that wet squelch as the fountain pen buried itself in Fernanda’s brain. It didn’t feel possible. It didn’t feel fair. Fernanda was too calm and poised to die. Too careful. She couldn’t be dead.
She couldn’t have left Kyla to handle this alone.
Kyla rose to her feet, barely thinking. She started for the front door, thinking that she should go find Ethan—he was the closest thing she had left to a friend here—but then she remembered that Ethan would be with Hunter, and Kyla had been right about that man from the start: Hunter was exactly the sort of specialist Frank O’Shea liked to hire.
Going to find Ethan would also involve going outside. When the lamp on Kyla’s nightstand flickered and a chorus of SHRIEKS echoed around the motel, Kyla knew that going outside was a very bad idea.
Think, Kyla. Think.
She took an inventory of her situation. She hadn’t thought to grab Fernanda’s gun off the woman’s corpse back in the office.
Like an idiot, she’d even dropped her own weapon in the scramble to escape the thing behind the walnut door.
Kyla was four foot nine, weighed barely a hundred pounds, and she was unarmed. She didn’t like her chances.
As she turned to look at the heavy lamp on her nightstand, her eyes passed over the room’s tall armoire. Stopped. Moved back. She approached the armoire, studied it from several angles, gave the soffit at the bottom a soft kick.
She might not have liked her chances, but maybe being small had its advantages.