CHAPTER 27
“You’re not hard to gut at all. You’re hard to execute.”
—Not Set It Up
“You found Campbell?” I ask incredulously.
Ever since he ran away, I assumed he was either dead or hiding somewhere so obscure it would’ve become a joke among the horror of tonight.
Something rife with dramatic irony where he would’ve eventually developed the courage to venture back into the club and find some kind of redemption.
But then I see the way Dani and Jennifer wilt against the wall and remind myself this isn’t that kind of movie.
“Yeah.” Stu scoffs, and I don’t need him to clarify that he didn’t just get it from Campbell; he probably pulled it out of him.
That means another name on the match cards has been figuratively crossed off. I press my palm against the top of my dress and feel the cards crinkle beneath the material, resisting the urge to pull them out and see who is still left.
“He’s at the end of that first hallway. The one we ran down earlier,” Jennifer says, and I’m reminded of why we bypassed it when Wes and I ran up here.
Retracing your steps rarely leads to anything good.
“He had a whole collection of them, as well as another present for you.” Stu points the thin blade in my direction.
“What—”
“Flowers,” Dani blurts out, her eyes glazed and exhausted. She props a hand on her forehead as Jennifer fidgets against the wall and adds, “More roses.”
They share a look, and I know there’s more to the scene that they won’t or can’t explain.
Save for the crude scratching on the bathroom mirror, the romantic gestures have just been getting bigger and bolder.
This whole night has been about escalation.
Especially if Wes and I are right and Heart Eyes is the one responsible for those murders I saw on the news.
He just keeps stepping up his game… and I can’t even imagine what he has planned for the finale.
But on that note, the knowledge we’re closer to the end of this than the beginning when Stu first left the group has me asking, “How have you been avoiding Heart Eyes? It’s been hours since we split up.”
“Heart Eyes?” Stu spits, and even the others have a range of different reactions. Wes lets out a darkly humored exhale in understanding, Jennifer cringes, and Dani sucks in a short breath.
“His mask. It’s pink with hearts where the eyes should be.”
Stu mutters something that sounds like “Fucking, psycho, creep ass…” before his voice becomes a grumble and I can’t distinguish any more words. He points a finger across the room to the back wall, just above the chaise I thought would be an ideal place to grind my body on top of Wes.
“You know how some of the corridors are roped off? I figured it’s ’cause they’re employee sections.
” He moves the direction of his finger to point out the door.
“There’s another one on that side. I took a chance, looked down the last hallway, and found a janitor’s closet.
It has a lock, a sink, cleaning shit. But there was no phone or anything.
I was there for an hour and then figured I’d try to find an exit. ”
It sounds smart enough, reasonable enough even, but I’m not going to give him credit when at least three people have died while he was allegedly hanging out in a janitor’s closet.
He’s made it clear there’s no love lost (or gained) between us, but I’ve watched enough Shyamalan movies to know there’s always room for a twist. It’s highly unlikely Stu’s leaving these grotesque declarations of love while continuing to look at me like my very presence conjures up the smell of dog shit beneath his nose.
But a good Final Girl doesn’t take anyone off the suspect list until the killer is unveiled.
So I say, “We should keep moving. We’ve been here for a while.”
Aside from two jump scares and our group of two becoming five, there’s been no sign of Heart Eyes.
It’s easy to forget what happened downstairs or on the dance floor or down the hallway where Campbell must be when the adrenaline drops and you’ve gotten used to the tacky feeling of blood on your hands, but I trust the reprieve about as much as I trust a third-act breakup in a nineties rom-com.
It always turns around when you’ve gotten comfortable with the new norm.
“Should we go to the janitor’s closet?” Jennifer asks. “We could clean up, figure out a plan?”
It’s a good idea. One I’m about to agree with before Stu suggests we split up again.
“Hold on.”
Wes shifts next to me, and when I glance up at him, his eyes are fixed on the back wall.
Not quite where Stu was pointing, but higher, in the corner, on a protrusion from the ceiling that’s been painted over in the same color as the walls.
He strides over to it and takes a closer look.
It doesn’t resemble the security cameras that have been tampered with.
Those are perfect half-spheres—I can see one in the other corner of the room, covered in the same view-obstructing black paint as the others, but this shape looks more like a—
“This building would have a monitored fire alarm system,” Wes says as he walks back across the room.
I don’t know what that is exactly, but the way he says it is reverent, cautious, like he doesn’t want to get too excited about the prospect.
“I’d say most places have smoke detectors, asshole.”
Stu’s voice makes my shoulders flinch, and this time I make sure he sees my middle finger clearly from across the room.
“It’s different from a smoke detector, dumbass,” Wes retorts, letting the statement hang in the air before he explains.
“Monitored fire alarms send a signal to a central station when the smoke alarm is triggered. Emergency services get dispatched, and the building manager gets notified. There should be a manual call point somewhere, but if we can’t find it, we just need to set the detectors off. ”
For the first time since I watched Laurie’s ass shimmy through a metal tunnel, hope rears its beautiful head again.
If she’s still navigating her way through the building, if she’s out or—I don’t want to think about it, but there’s always the possibility—she’s hurt and needs us to save her, then what Wes is suggesting could help.
There’s another way to sound the alarm. Literally.
“If we set off the system, the fire department will be deployed. Since the building is supposed to be empty, they’ll send police, too.”
I did not know that was a thing. Granted my only experience with fire alarms is when Laurie and I accidentally set ours off by not turning on the exhaust fan over our oven, or in the films I watch, where the building is already a blazing inferno before the firefighters show up.
But this… this could get us out of here.
“Wes, are you sure?”
I can’t allow myself to get too excited at the prospect. As beautiful as hope is at first sight, its effect can fade just as quickly. The same feeling has been ripped away so many times tonight it’s hard not to be wary of getting burned.
He nods. “The signal is transmitted through internet and phone lines, and the NFPA—the National Fire Protection Association—requires all systems to have backup—”
“Wait.” Stu holds up his free palm, raising the other to point his knife across at Wes, directly at his chest. “How do you know all this?”
I feel like that shouldn’t really matter right now, but then I catch sight of the guarded looks on not just Stu’s face, but on Jennifer’s and Dani’s faces, too.
They haven’t moved from their spot a few feet from us, but their bodies lean back from where Wes and I are standing beneath the chandelier.
If they aren’t afraid—because who can tell the difference between any new kind of fear and the constant terror this evening has imprinted on our faces—then they’re wary.
That’s when I remember they didn’t see Heart Eyes while Wes was standing right next to them.
They didn’t see what we saw, what I saw.
Wes reads the room as easily as I do. His gaze flicks toward the knife in Stu’s hand and I watch the moment it dawns on him that if Stu doesn’t like whatever answer he gives, they’re evenly matched. He needs to convince them he isn’t a threat.
My instinct is to jump to his defense, especially since he’s trying to get us the hell out of here. But then there’s a fleeting moment where I think my own words—a good Final Girl doesn’t take anyone off the suspect list until the killer is unveiled—might come back and bite me in the ass.
It doesn’t stick around for long, though. I’m still 100 percent certain I would not eye fuck a killer.
“I know because—” His tongue darts out to wet his lips, and when he finally says it, admits it, the relief doesn’t set in like I thought it would, but some things start to make a lot more sense.
“ ’Cause I’m a cop.”