Checkout #6
Cass whispered, “He’s copying the files.”
“Let him.”
“He could send them anywhere.”
“Let him.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I would rather be humiliated than watch you die.”
Cass’s mouth opened.
A fire alarm began ringing.
Metal doors slammed throughout the hotel.
The loading entrance closed between Avery and the others.
Avery jumped back as the steel panel struck the floor.
Through its wired-glass window, she saw Cass and Nina on the opposite side.
The alarm strobed red across their faces.
“Avery!” Jude shouted from outside.
She pulled the handle.
Locked.
The group had been divided.
Avery, Tessa and Maya stood inside the kitchen.
Jude, Malik, Nina and Cass remained outside.
Maya found the emergency release.
The handle had been removed.
“Break the window,” Tessa said.
Avery struck the wired glass with the drill.
It cracked but did not open.
On the other side, Malik hit it with the tire iron.
The embedded mesh held.
A camera flashed in the corridor behind Avery.
Cass saw it through the window.
Her expression changed.
“No,” Nina said.
Cass ran around the corner of the building toward the front entrance.
Nina followed.
“Cass!”
Jude started after them.
Malik grabbed him.
“We stay together.”
“She is alone.”
“Nina is behind her.”
Avery hit the glass again.
“Go around to the front. We’ll meet in the ballroom.”
Jude hesitated.
“Go.”
They disappeared from the window.
Avery, Tessa and Maya moved through the kitchen.
The ballroom was empty.
Felix still hung from the ceiling.
His keys no longer hung from his wound.
The front doors stood open.
Jude and Malik ran in.
“Nina?” Avery asked.
“Upstairs.”
The camera flashed above them.
Fourth floor.
Room 413.
They took the main stairs.
Jude reached the third-floor landing first.
Avery’s lungs burned behind him.
The fourth-floor corridor had not been part of their setup.
Water damage bowed the ceiling. Several doors had collapsed inward. Black mold spread across the wallpaper in hand-shaped stains.
At the far end, Room 413 stood open.
A flash filled it.
Nina reached the doorway seconds before them.
She stopped so abruptly that Jude struck her back.
Cass sat at a vanity facing a tall mirror.
Her camera had been mounted behind her on a tripod.
The automatic shutter fired every three seconds.
Flash.
Cass’s head hung forward.
Flash.
Blood covered the white hotel robe someone had dressed her in.
Flash.
The archive case lay open across the bed.
Hard drives had been arranged beside printed photographs.
Avery recognized herself in several.
Jude naked in her old apartment.
Tessa kneeling between Felix’s legs at Cass’s party.
Maya unconscious on the Red Room bathroom floor.
Nina asleep beside Cass with one breast exposed above the blanket.
Nina saw the photograph.
Her face emptied.
Cass moved.
A small breath escaped her.
Nina ran to her.
A clear plastic bag covered the lower half of Cass’s face. Black tape sealed it around her neck. Blood and condensation clouded the plastic.
Nina tore at it.
Cass’s hands had been nailed to the vanity.
Brass room spikes passed through both palms into the wood.
She tried to raise them.
The flesh stretched around the metal.
Maya entered and stopped beside the bed.
“What did he put in her mouth?”
Avery saw the shape beneath the plastic.
Cass’s mouth had been forced open.
One of the archive drives was wedged between her teeth.
Its metal casing had split her lips.
Nina cut the bag away with Felix’s knife.
Cass inhaled sharply.
Blood poured from her mouth around the drive.
Nina gripped it.
Cass made a frantic sound and shook her head.
“It has to come out.”
Avery moved closer.
Thin wires extended from the back of the drive into Cass’s mouth.
“Don’t pull.”
Nina froze.
Jude went behind the vanity.
The wires ran down Cass’s throat.
Another disappeared beneath the robe.
Avery opened the fabric.
A small electronic trigger had been taped over Cass’s sternum.
Its screen displayed a countdown.
00:31.
Tessa backed toward the door.
“What happens at zero?”
No one answered.
The camera flashed.
00:28.
Malik lifted the vanity.
“We break the wood around her hands.”
Jude wedged the tire iron beneath one nail.
He pulled.
The vanity cracked.
Cass screamed around the drive.
The countdown jumped.
00:19.
“Stop,” Avery said.
“It heard the impact.”
“Then what do we do?”
Avery followed the wires.
One ran beneath the robe to a pressure switch between Cass’s shoulder blades.
Another entered the camera.
The shutter fired.
The countdown dropped by three seconds.
00:16.
“The flash is controlling it.”
Jude moved toward the tripod.
“Don’t touch the camera.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
00:13.
Cass looked at Nina.
Her eyes filled.
Nina placed both hands around her face.
“I’m here.”
Cass tried to speak.
The drive made it impossible.
00:10.
Avery reached toward the camera wire.
Tessa caught her wrist.
“It could trigger.”
“It is triggering.”
00:07.
Nina pressed her forehead against Cass’s.
“I’m sorry.”
Cass closed her eyes.
00:04.
The camera flashed.
The trigger detonated.
The blast was small and contained.
Cass’s chest jumped beneath the robe.
For an instant, nothing else happened.
Then the wires inside her pulled tight.
The archive drive vanished deeper into her mouth.
Cass’s head snapped backward.
Blood burst from her nose.
A cable erupted through the skin beneath her jaw, dragging torn tissue and the drive’s metal edge with it.
The wire had been looped through her throat.
Her body convulsed against the nails.
Nina held her as blood poured across them both.
The camera flashed again.
Cass’s movements slowed.
Her eyes remained on Nina until they stopped focusing.
The shutter clicked.
A photograph slid from a small printer beneath the tripod.
Avery picked it up.
The image showed all of them gathered around Cass.
In the mirror behind the vanity, the Night Clerk stood in the doorway.
Avery turned.
The corridor was empty.
Words had appeared across the mirror in Cass’s blood.
No hand had written them.
The letters had been hidden beneath the reflective coating, revealed by the heat of the alarm lights.
SHE KEPT EVERYTHING.
Beneath that, another line emerged.
ASK WHAT HAPPENED TO OWEN.
* * *
Nina read the name twice.
Then she turned and hit Tessa.
The slap snapped Tessa’s face toward the wall.
Jude caught Nina before she swung again.
“Let go of me.”
“Nina.”
“You knew.”
Tessa touched her split lip.
“I thought he was dead.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Maya stood beside Cass’s body.
“Who is Owen?”
No one answered.
Malik looked around the room.
“You have got to be fucking kidding.”
Avery kept seeing the name across the mirror.
OWEN.
Long fingers stained with printer ink.
A motel office crowded with liquor bottles.
Four rooms glowing on four small monitors.
The smell of burned plastic.
A voice behind wired glass saying, You don’t get to erase me.
Jude released Nina slowly.
She did not hit Tessa again.
Instead she returned to Cass and wedged the tire iron beneath one of the brass nails.
“What are you doing?” Avery asked.
“Taking her down.”
“We need to move.”
“I am not leaving her like this.”
The vanity cracked.
Cass’s hand came free with the nail still through it.
Nina lowered the arm carefully.
Malik remained in the doorway.
“Somebody needs to tell me who Owen is before he writes another name on a wall.”
“He was there before Maya,” Avery said.
Maya looked at her.
“I was there freshman year.”
“First semester.”
Felix had introduced Owen like he was a useful building rather than a person.
This is Owen. He has keys.
He worked nights at the Bellwether Motor Lodge near the highway. His aunt managed it badly, his mother owned part of it, and half the rooms remained empty through winter.
At first they drank quietly in vacant rooms and left before housekeeping arrived.
Then Felix brought speakers.
Tessa started charging for cups.
Cass brought a camera.
OFF CAMPUS began in a motel laundry room because Owen knew how to disable the smoke alarms without creating a record at the desk.
“He helped start it,” Avery said.
Tessa looked sharply at her.
“He gave us rooms.”
“He made the first flyers.”
“Cass made the flyers.”
“After him.”
Nina removed the second nail.
Cass’s other arm dropped into her lap.
Maya said, “Why has no one ever mentioned him?”
Malik answered.
“Because they did something.”
Jude moved toward him.
“You don’t know what happened.”
“I know somebody wearing a mask killed Felix and Cass, and now his name is written in blood.”
Tessa sat on the vanity bench.
“Owen filmed people.”
Cass’s covered body shifted as Nina moved it.
Maya looked from Tessa to Avery.
“Filmed what?”
“Guests,” Avery said. “Sex. Fights. Anything private.”
“Why?”
“He said it was security,” Tessa replied.
“He watched the recordings.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Yes, we do.”
The words left Avery before she could stop them.
Jude turned toward her.
“You never told me.”
“It was before us.”
“That was not my question.”
Avery remembered entering the Bellwether office and seeing four rooms open on the monitors.
Jude asleep beside a girl from his residence hall.
Felix showering with two people Avery barely knew.
Tessa sitting alone on a bed, reading messages from someone else’s phone.
Avery naked from the waist down, face turned into a motel pillow.
Owen had stood behind her in that room less than an hour earlier.
He had not been watching the footage when she entered the office.
He had been exporting it.
“What room were you in?” Jude asked.
Avery looked at him.
He understood.
“You slept with him.”
“Once.”
Tessa laughed softly.
“Of course.”
Avery turned toward her.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You acted like he was obsessed with me.”
“He was.”
“He was obsessed with all of us.”
“No. He wanted to own all of us. You were the one who kept rewarding him.”
Tessa stood.
“I slept with Owen because every time he felt excluded, he threatened to close the motel.”
“You slept with him because he could give you rooms.”
“And you slept with him because?”
Avery said nothing.
Because she had been lonely.
Because Jude only noticed her when someone else did.