Chapter 1. Wait, Is This Already the Inciting Incident?
Wait, Is This Already the Inciting Incident?
“What do you mean, it’s a suicide?” I ask, my voice rising to a pitch I hope conveys precisely how incredulous I am.
“Why would someone kill themselves in our villa? And how can you know so quickly that it’s a suicide?”
Officer Rolle exchanges a glance with the hotel’s manager, a man in his mid-twenties who looks too young to be managing a hotel.
He’s got a thick thatch of strawberry blond hair and what looks to be a permanent sunburn across his nose.
His last name is Knowles, which is the fourth most popular last name in the Bahamas, for those who are counting.
Me, I mean. I’m counting.
You should be, too.
“I can’t answer that now, madam,” Officer Rolle says. He has a traditional Bahamian accent—half British, half island lilt. “But I assure you it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about? Seriously?”
“He means that it has nothing to do with you,” Mr. Knowles says in a flat accent that almost sounds American, though I feel odd calling someone younger than me “mister.”
He looks like a “Mark.”
I’ll be calling him that from now on until I learn differently.
“How can a dead body in my room have nothing to do with me?” I ask, though I know the answer. It’s the difference between causation and correlation. The body might be connected to me by proximity, but that doesn’t mean I’m the cause of it being here.
But who are we kidding?
This is the beginning of a murder mystery. This body’s connected to me somehow.
“Is this part of the conference?” Harper asks. She’s pulled herself together and is a bit less pale than she was a few minutes ago, but her voice is still shaky. “Like to get us in the mood?”
“The mood?” Officer Rolle asks.
“For murder,” I say. “Like an interactive thing, maybe?”
We’re both grasping at straws. Because even though we—unfortunately—have experience with this type of thing, it’s not something either of us wants to repeat. So maybe, just maybe, this body isn’t a real body and this is all part of some elaborate introduction to the conference and—
“This is not a game.”
“Right, of course not, only…”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.” I glance at Oliver, who’s been shaking his head for the last five minutes.
Maybe I mentioned it before, but he didn’t want to come to this conference. He believes in learning from experience, which is not something I’m good at. But I told him I was going, knowing he’d follow along once he understood I was determined to attend.
Better to have me in his sights than to be worrying about me back in California.
Ditto for Harper. Only I’m her employer, so she had less choice in the matter.
So here we are.
Me, Oliver, Harper, and the body.
And I can’t help but wonder—is this going to be a three-body problem? Because bad things come in threes, right, like celebrity deaths? Plus, that’s what happened last time.13 And the time before that, too.14 Three bodies had to drop before I figured out what was going on.
And that’s definitely one of the threes I was talking about in the prologue.
“Well, if you’re sure this isn’t connected to the conference—to us—then I guess that’s that,” I say, not believing a word of it, but there’s this thing about speaking things into existence?
Like how Travis Kelce said he wanted to give Taylor his phone number on a friendship bracelet, and now they’re together?
Does that work on dead bodies? Doubt it.
Anyway.
“We will remove the body shortly,” Officer Rolle says. “We’re waiting for the technicians to arrive to do our in situ assessment.”
“Could we get another room in the meantime?” I ask Mark.
He turns toward me slowly. He has one of those blank stares I associate with deep trauma, but I’m not meeting him in the best of circumstances, and neither are you. “I’m sorry, but the entire resort is booked solid for the conference.”
“So we have to stay here?” Harper says, gesturing vaguely to the room.
“We’ll clean everything thoroughly.”
“The room cannot be cleaned until all of the evidence has been collected and our investigation has been concluded,” Officer Rolle contradicts.
“Is there any way to speed the process up?” Mark makes a rolling motion with his index finger like he’s trying to move a meeting along.
“The investigation will take as long as it takes.”
“Right, yes, but given that it’s a suicide, as you just said, perhaps it could be expedited?”
Officer Rolle stares at Mark, blinking slowly, as I watch this exchange like a tennis match.
It has the same tension as a long exchange of baseline shots. You know someone will make a mistake eventually. Just not when. I don’t have the patience to do that, though. When I play tennis, I rush the net, trying to end the point as soon as possible.
Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be.
“I assume the answer to that question is no,” I say. “There must be somewhere you can put us. We can pay, if it requires an upgrade.”
Mark turns away from Officer Rolle and looks at me like he forgot I’m here. Or maybe that’s just his hotel-training face. I’m 100 percent sure hotel managers have to hide what they feel about their guests to keep their jobs.
“Let me see,” he says after a beat. “There may be another suite…”
“We’ll take anything,” Harper says.
He gives us a polite smile. “I understand. In the meantime, you could wait in the lounge? Or I believe your welcome lunch is starting soon? We’ll take care of moving your luggage.”
“Yes, yes.” Officer Rolle doesn’t care about these details. “I’ll need you to provide us with all of the camera footage, Knowles.”
“Of course. Our head of security will be here soon. He’s in charge of all of that.”
“Where’s the lunch taking place?” I ask.
“You can eat now?” Harper says.
“I’m supposed to be sitting at the head table. And I should talk to the organizers and let them know what happened so they can decide if they want to tell everyone.”
“No,” Officer Rolle says. “You will not be informing the other guests about this.”
“Aren’t they going to see when you take the body out?”
“We’ll use the back entrance, through the staff quarters. That’s how we arrived.”
Um, guys?
Why do they seem to have a protocol for removing dead bodies from this resort? That’s weird, right? Like it might’ve happened before. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Ha ha. No.
“Have you had to remove a dead body from this resort before?” I ask just to make sure.
Officer Rolle and Mark exchange a glance, which is all I need to know.
It has happened before.
What. The. Fuck?
Who planned this conference? Because I want to speak to the manager.
Not the hotel manager—he seems useless—but the dark force that seems to be managing my life right now.
As Taylor would say: Who do I have to speak to? Because this prophecy sucks.15, 16
I thought I took all the precautions I could before I came here. I even read the itinerary, which, if you know me, is something I hate doing. I thought I knew what was coming. But now it looks like I missed the boat. Because this conference was scheduled at a place where someone’s died.
And I’m here. Which is relevant because I tend to be the common denominator in bodies dropping. That’s a fact. I’m not a narcissist or anything.
Not more than some people, anyway.
“So the answer to my question is yes?” I say.
“There has been another death on the premises,” Mark says. “But it was many months ago, an older gentleman who died in his sleep. Nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about, yet you took his body out the back way?”
“So as not to upset the guests.”
“Right, sure. And this man, do you recognize him?”
Another exchange of glances. These two need to up their game.
“He used to work here,” Mark says.
“Used to? He’s still wearing the uniform.”
“He was let go yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
“That’s right.
“So you’re saying this is some kind of postal situation?”
“Pardon me?”
“You know, when someone comes into work after they’ve been fired and shoots the place up? It’s called going postal.”
“Whyever?”
“Because it happened at several post offices…”
“El,” Oliver warns.
“Sorry, but it’s—”
Mark holds up a hand to stop me. “Brian did not ‘shoot up the place,’ as you say. He was distraught, but I had no idea this was how he’d react.
I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, and as I said, we will do our best to find you another room.
In the meantime, let me accompany you to the lounge, where I’ll have a bottle of our finest Champagne brought out.
And then, of course, as I already mentioned, there is the welcome lunch. ”
I know a bribe when I hear one, and while Mark seems young and green, he’s done his homework, because a bottle of Champagne is exactly what I need right now.
But what are the others going to drink?
“All right. We’ll take you up on your offer.”
He smiles in relief. I’m already a pain in his ass, which is never my intention but often the result of my personality.
I’ve tried to work on that, but it’s hard to change who you are.
“Where’s the lounge?”
“I’ll take you there. Will you excuse me for a minute, Officer Rolle?”
“You should check on your head of security while you’re at it,” Officer Rolle says.
“I’m sure he’ll be here any—”
“Someone asked for me?” a man says as he comes through the door. He’s tall, has a thick neck, and he’s wearing a black T-shirt that’s straining against his muscles, and oh, shit—
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Oliver says.
You might not know this about him yet, but Oliver rarely swears. So when he does, it’s something of significance.
Like the head of security being Guy Charles. As in Connor Smith’s former business partner, who I immortalized in my books as Charles Guy.17
So, what the fuck is he doing here, indeed?
That’s a question for the next chapter.