Chapter 9
I jolt out of the anxious, needling sleep that’s been mocking me the past few hours, slip out of bed, and slink silently toward
the door.
Somewhere along the way I’ve unconsciously picked up a little table mirror and now hold it in front of me like a weapon, poised.
Oh, good grief.
I should’ve read Crystal’s article.
I’m holding my breath, I realize.
A part of me has been holding my breath since Mr. Carragan left with that eerie message hours ago. I mean, what sort of person
tells a young lady with roughly zero self-defense skills that a killer may be lurking outside the door, but “don’t worry,
rest well, and just do your best to keep the bolt locked”?
A bolt is a two-inch-long piece of metal.
Do I look like a person who has the ability to stay calm and trust a two-inch piece of metal?
Somebody raps a second time, this time louder.
My stomach starts punching me internally and urgently, urging me to get down.
I hesitate, then peek through the peephole.
Well, that cinches it.
I really and truly am the kind of girl who would walk toward the sound in the basement and get herself killed.
“Pip.” Nash’s voice comes through the door. “I can hear you breathing. Like one of my old asthmatic horses, I might add. Open
up.”
I pop my hand over my mouth, frown, then quickly unbolt the door.
A little smile lights up his face when he sees me standing in my pajamas, one hand over my mouth, the other with a hand mirror
pressed tight to my chest.
“What are you planning to do with that?” he says, nodding to the mirror.
“Self-defense,” I say. “And what are you doing here?”
“Giving actual defense to the girl with a plastic mirror. Mind if I come in?”
I feel a sudden surge of adrenaline rise from my stomach to my throat and quickly tamp it down.
Because.
Well.
Isn’t that nice, though?
There’s something . . . well . . . rather nice in the way he’s come to think of me, lady in distress and all. And then, of
course, adrenaline in the fact that the deepest part of me is saying, Yes! PLEASE come help me. I’m absolutely a child at heart and don’t want to deal with this situation with a brave face.
I swing the door open wide.
He steps inside.
Walks down the length of the hotel room as if assessing something.
Tells me he’ll be back. Goes the several doors down to his room. Returns with a pillow, some sheets and a blanket, and his
computer.
“What are you doing?” I say, standing over him as he begins setting up a little bed on the floor.
“You only have one bed. And I wanted sheets.”
“And a pillow?”
“My neck still has a crick in it from the rock I slept on three weeks ago. So I’m softer than the readers are led to believe.
Sue me.”
“And your computer?”
“For writing. Obviously.”
I fling a hand out. “So . . . you’re just planning to sleep here then?”
He drops the pillow at the head of his makeshift floor bed, leans back on the heels of his boots, and stands. “Yes. Well,
you didn’t answer your phone.”
“You messaged?” I begin, reaching for my phone on the nightstand.
“And I figure if I’m going to get any sleep, I’m just going to have to be in here myself.”
He puts his hands on his hips and looks from the floor bed to me.
Well, well, well.
The cowboy rescue genes are strong in him.
“What about Crystal?” I say. Or Neena, for that matter. Or Jackie.
“Crystal’s terrifying. She can hold her own.”
So I can’t hold my own then.
Fair.
I cross my arms over my chest. “And what exactly makes you believe that I am up for this?” I say, gesturing to the bed on the floor.
I am totally up for this.
I am exhausted and adrenaline hungover and already feel my limbs starting to sloop toward the bed up for this.
“You could be a murderer,” I point out.
He laughs as if it’s the wittiest joke he’s ever heard. “So could you. So that makes us even. Excuse me, I’ll just . . .”
And then he goes off and drops his toothbrush in the little bathroom.
“You know, I was given strict orders not to open the door for anyone.”
“More the reason it’s clear I need to be here. You like to keep this on? It’s like a Walmart in July in here,” he says, standing
by the lamp switch. I realize I’ve moved myself back to my bed. I’m sitting on the edge of it, my shoulders leaning backward,
begging me to draw toward the pillows.
“No.” I pause. “Not anymore.”
Nash flicks the switch, then quietly moves around the room, turning off each of the others.
I let him. “Thanks, Nash,” I murmur in the dark, my eyes already closed.
There’s silence.
“Anytime.”
An hour later, I hear it.
I’m just leaving the bathroom as silently as I can (thank you, nerves) when I hear in the utter silence something just, well,
less silent.
It’s wings flapping on a bird high overhead in a forest level silent.
Never would I have heard this sound in the middle of the day, under normal circumstances.
But now?
On high alert?
When I was already so quietly stepping around Nash and careful not to wake him?
I stop abruptly just beside the door.
In the darkness, I check through the peephole.
Pull back.
Close up again.
Who is that? What is that?
The mash of gray and sheer purple pulls away and I see Neena standing in the hallway, one massive purple-satin arm resting
on what appears to be the jamb of the door, the other hand pulling her slipper on.
I can’t hear what she’s whispering, but there are definite whispers as she looks forward in the blurry, extreme close-up of
her robe and talks to somebody else outside of range. Some short words, a whisper like, “I’m coming,” or better yet, knowing Neena, “Hold your horses.”
And then she’s gone, the peephole suddenly clear again and showing nothing but the wallpaper opposite and the textured hallway
carpet.
I bite my lip.
Swivel round.
Look at Nash’s sleeping body beneath the bundle of sheets on the floor. The good soul, who has gone through days of exhaustion
and was still thinking of me.
Should I wake him?
What is Neena doing up right now?
It may be too late to wake him and then catch whatever clue I need to see.
My hand is on the handle, hesitating.
But who knows? Perhaps somebody is waiting just outside right now.
Perhaps this was some kind of ploy.
I was told on no account to open the door.
And yet.
Quiet as possible, I slowly inch the handle down, down, down until there is the faintest of clicks.
Even that click, however, is enough to stir Nash, because he pulls up instantly on his elbows.
“What are you doing?” Nash says in the darkness.
I put a finger to my lips, and without need for further prompting, he quietly stands. Alert. Ready.
I feel his breath tickle the back of my neck as I turn the knob further. His head is directly above mine as I pull the door
open millimeter by millimeter, and we look out.
Nothing.
I pull the door open farther.
Nothing still.
Once the door is open by a foot, we look out to the right. Then left.
Nobody, and still nothing.
The hallway is just one long stretch of muted light, a dozen dimmed sconces to the very end.
“What was it?” Nash whispers above me.
Carefully I shut the door.
I pull away from it before I begin speaking. I’m starting to get paranoid myself here.
“Nothing. Maybe. But Neena. She was in her robe and she was in the hall. And she wasn’t alone.”
Both of us wordlessly look at the clock on the nightstand: 3:35 a.m.
And I’m positive we’re both thinking, Why is Neena—the person who passed out when Ricky tried to hand her a biscuit at dinner—doing the very thing Carragan told her not to do and loitering out in the hall, in the middle of the night, with somebody else? And more specifically, with whom?
I’m living the classic chapter 8 of Hugh’s November in Red. Chapter 12 in his Four Endless Days. I’m Terry Frost in the middle of Hugh’s most celebrated work, Peril’s Last Case.
I’m the character who goes against all logic and blindly follows the shadow in the hallway.
I’m the character who either gets killed or solves the case.
“What are you doing?” Nash whispers in a tone of have you gone mad?
“What does it look like? I want to find out what’s going on,” I say, pulling on my flats. “Are you coming or not?”
Please come.
And I guess that’s two things I’ve discovered about myself overnight.
The first is that yes, I am the scared girl who would walk herself into a basement when she hears danger. I’m the terrified
girl. I’m no stranger to fear.
But the other is that in the case of fight or flight, I am not the kind of person who can just let things go and slink off
in the distance. I’m brave and afraid.
I need to know what’s going on, for better or worse.
And I entirely intend to find out.