CHAPTER 14
“I wish I knew how to slit you.”
—Not Brokeback Mountain
The mezzanine level of Serendipity affords us a bird’s-eye view of the dance floor.
When I came here when the club was still Cravin’, the railings circling the open space allowed you a great vantage point to spot your prey.
Back then, the predators were fuckboys and older men ready to feed on inexperience and female politeness.
Now we’re dealing with a whole other breed of predator.
When we get up to the top level, we move to the booths that trail the wall along the front of the club.
It has the best view. There’s a bar to our left where the men were served during cocktail hour, more booths sit against a partition wall on our right, and on the other side of the open space—allowing us a full view of the lower level and the staircases leading down into the basement—is a wall punctuated by five corridors leading into the back of the building.
From what I can remember, the corridors are more complicated up here.
I know the hallway directly in front of the stairs—dark scary hallway number one—leads to some VIP rooms. The others I can’t be sure of.
From our spot, I can see dark scary hallway number two and dark scary hallway number five are roped off, and that just increases the mystery of what might lie within their gas lamp–lit depths. An exit, ideally.
“I know we’re not supposed to be focusing on this,” Jennifer says, perched on the top of a table in one of the booths. “But who do you think it is?”
John stands in the space between the barrier and the booth, and Laurie and I are shoulder to shoulder between Jennifer’s booth and the one next to it.
It grants the ability to run if the occasion calls for it, but it also has the clearest view of the dance floor.
I can dart my eyes between the two sets of stairs that feed into the belly of the building, hoping Wes and Billie come up at any moment with Dani and Colette in tow.
“The person doing this?” John asks, even though we all know who Jennifer’s referring to.
“It has to be one of the people who was on the dates.” Jennifer’s eyes are wide, the tears long dried up, and her enviably long and thick eyelashes bat nervously. “But why here? Why tonight? And what about those rose petals? Down near those bodies in the hallway? Where did they come from?”
She keeps going, but I don’t think she actually expects any of us to respond.
She’s full of questions none of us have the answers to.
Well, not concrete answers, anyway. Nobody else was there when Wes and I were drawing connections between the rose petals left near the bodies and the murders of the women that happened before tonight.
And I don’t know if I should tell them. I don’t know if it will make things worse, telling them a person who sat across from us tonight has probably been killing people—women—for months.
That he’s had a lot of practice, and maybe this is just a normal Tuesday night for him.
Maybe it’s the horror fan in me, but something in my gut is telling me tonight is not just an escalation of those murders. It’s not the next logical step in the path to getting full marks for psychopathy.
There has to be some reason why he’s flipped the script.
I just don’t know what it is.
“And also—”
A sound, like shoes scraping against carpet, filters out from the corridor on our left and cuts into Jennifer’s monologue. Laurie stiffens beside me, whispers, “Did you—”
I hold a finger to my lips—well, near them, since I’ve still got blood on my hands—as we all turn toward the dimly lit hall.
The sound of Jennifer sliding off the table is audible behind me as I squint through the darkness, trying to see if a figure appears in the corridor.
There’s nothing. Of course there’s nothing.
But then the sound, which is just as likely to be cautious shuffling as it is meticulous creeping, happens again.
This time it’s a little softer, and I don’t know if they’re moving farther away or they’re just being more careful as they sneak up on us.
Either way, it’s never a good idea to go toward the unknown sound.
There’s never a good surprise on the other end.
I hear a deep inhale behind me, like someone steeling themselves, but when I turn around, John is already moving past me, his hand gripped so tightly around the neck of his bottle his knuckles are ghostly white.
“Stay here,” he whispers, approaching the sound, moving away from the rest of us and any possibility of safety in numbers.
It’s the quickest I’ve seen him move all night.
Every other action, every other smile and nod and that fantastic lean has been slow and unhurried.
But now he’s at the edge of the corridor before I can even shape my mouth around his name.
Before I can convince him to stay with us and not go headfirst into danger, alone, again.
Then, when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, he says over his shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”
“Shit,” I whisper. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
It’s been ten minutes since John strode into the darkness before any of us could stop him. Even without a watch, I know it’s been that long because I’ve counted every second since he left.
When I was going through the rules, I should’ve led with number eight: don’t say “I’ll be right back.
” If I had, then maybe John wouldn’t have made the empty promise and walked down that corridor.
If he hadn’t been surrounded by men who have more bravado than sense (Stu), then he probably wouldn’t have felt the need to display some fearlessness by investigating a sound that could be a psychotic killer.
If. If. If.
The word stabs into my brain like the shower scene in Psycho. “What do we do?” Jennifer asks.
She started pacing along the booth as soon as John disappeared, and if I wasn’t preoccupied with that same question, I’d be really concerned about whether the marks she’s digging into her arms are going to be permanent.
There haven’t been any more shuffling noises coming from the hall.
There haven’t been any screams, either, so that’s promising.
But I don’t like to wait around for men to text me back, let alone wait for one to return from a dark, dangerous search party.
This is why you don’t say those stupid words.
The second John walked down the hallway I knew what would happen next.
Just like when Wes and Billie went downstairs.
The splitting of the group is part of how the plot progresses.
It’s like in a rom-com where the romantic leads are forced into close proximity or get caught in the rain or share one bed.
You need something to move the story forward.
And how do we do that so it works in our favor?
“I’ll go look down the corridor.” It’s the only answer I have for Jennifer, and I’m not fully committed to the decision. Laurie opens her mouth to protest, but I power through. “I’ll be gone for a maximum of five minutes. I promise.”
“Not on your fucking life,” she growls, and if there wasn’t so much acid in her voice, I’d be touched by her concern.
But the first act is done. The main players have been introduced, the conflict is clear, and now—I hate to say it—if we want to get closer to an ending, we’re going to have to move onto act 2.
Fucking act 2. It’s not called the confrontation for nothing.
My hand’s been forced now that we’ve reached this point.
Jennifer tries a different approach from Laurie to get me to stay. “Jamie, we told Wes and Billie we would wait here—”
“And you two should,” I say, “while I check the corridor. There are only three of us, so one of us inevitably has to be on their own. Better for that person to be me.”
“No fucking way.” Laurie shakes her head, her straight brown hair flaring until I grab her shoulders and halt her full-body refusal.
“Baby girl—”
The endearment makes her recoil, but she doesn’t try to get out of my grip.
“I’m not going to disappear. I will be five minutes. Less than.” When she starts to puff up in agitation, I say, “You know I know all the ways this could play out. I’m not doing this to whip out my dick”—Stu—“or to prove anything”—damn it, John. “I’m going to look and come back.”
She’s been with me through the in-depth analysis of countless slashers.
Yeah, she covered her eyes a lot or left the room, but she knows I know my shit, and that’s why I say, “I just need to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes every other blonde who’s ever walked down a dark path toward an unseen danger has made. ”
I manage to get enough confidence into the statement that Laurie doesn’t reach for me when I take a step back and turn toward the dark corridor.
“And if you don’t come back?” Jennifer murmurs.
“I will.” It’s a promise, a loophole in rule eight because I don’t actually say the taboo statement.
“If—” Laurie says, and the hitch that follows the word tempts me to look back at her.
It doesn’t matter what comes after the “if,” because anything other than me coming back in five minutes will be unacceptable to my best friend.
So she doesn’t finish the statement. Her face just gets tight, and she pins me with a warning look.
“I’m going to be so fucking mad at you.”
I nod as I turn back to the hallway, fully determined to avoid her wrath.
“Five minutes,” I say again. A promise not just to them but to myself.
I move toward the hallway that swallowed John, slowing my steps when the path turns into an L once I pass the bar.
Laurie and I sketched this side of the building onto the map and then covered it with question marks because we couldn’t remember what lay in the hallways behind the bar.
The dramatic irony doesn’t escape me. It does nothing to stop the skin of my arms breaking out into goose bumps.