CHAPTER 36
“What I really want to do with my life—what I want to do for a living—is I want to murder your daughter. I’m good at it.”
—Not Say Anything
I don’t look back.
John calls after me. His confusion and concern are palpable in the echo of my name, but it just propels me down the corridor.
My muscles scream out in protest, every inhale is sharp and piercing, but I push past it and just run.
A body splices into sight again when I pass the hallway where I first spotted John in that mask.
It’s become a permanent fixture, a landmark to determine my location, and I start to head for the janitor’s closet.
It’s the only room I know of that has a lock and I might just be fine with living out the rest of my hours there.
When I sprint past the open air above the dance floor, I catch a glimpse of a slumped figure near the corner of the railing before it’s replaced by red walls and a deeper feeling of regret.
Jennifer.
She liked John, too. So I guess I can’t kick myself too much for buying into his nice-guy routine.
She had all the necessary qualities to be both a Leading Lady and a Final Girl, but he’d already made his choice based on a few seconds of long-distance, partially obstructed, badly lit observation. And clearly he made the wrong choice.
I know I should switch back into Final Girl mode and try to find a weapon rather than a hiding spot.
I should wear my pain and trauma like a Harry Winston necklace at a “Frost Yourself” gala and place myself on the middle of the dance floor for a final showdown.
But I’m all out of Leading Lady optimism and resilience.
Everything hurts, and everything sucks, and if tonight were a film I’d give it zero stars.
I’m so done with this drawn-out narrative, the exhausted escape options, the ridiculous stakes that have been set, and the reveal that doesn’t have the same kind of entertainment value when it’s someone you know. Someone you once thought you could—
I almost run past the closet as I try to avoid spiraling down that dangerous, shame-ridden path.
I have to reach back for the handle of the door like it’s a hand reaching out of the water and I promised I’d never let go.
It turns easily, but when the shadows at the end of the hallway start to shift I release my grip.
Not out of fear. The shadows extend and bend in reaction to a light source, and when the shards of darkness turn gray, lighten, and a clear beam of light splays across the carpet, I run down the hallway toward it.
My muscles still throb. My breath still feels serrated in my throat, but the promise of what—who—is holding that flashlight pulls in my chest and overshadows it all when I turn the corner and see him. See Wes.
We both freeze. He blinks. I blink. The sound of my relieved sigh blends perfectly with his, and then I collide with his chest, forgetting about his injured ribs and his fresh cuts until he grunts in pain.
Wes doesn’t let me go, though. He wraps his arms around me, pulls me in tighter, and it’s my turn to hiss from the ache that resonates through my body, but there’s no way in hell I’m moving away.
Not when the feel of his cheek pressing to my temple and the pressure of his knife’s handle at my back is the safest I’ve felt since coming face-to-face with John.
Wes starts pulling me back the way he came before I can even think of the right words to convey how sorry I am for thinking he was Heart Eyes.
I ran away from him when he was injured, innocent, and if I thought word vomiting about murder in the final minutes of our date was bad, that was much, much worse.
“I found them,” he says before I can apologize, heading for the darkness we’ve been doing everything to avoid.
“Found who?”
“The others. There’s six of them.”
The other names on the match cards. The people unaccounted for and presumed dead based on the trend of the evening.
“Alive?”
Because, given how the night has played out, I have to clarify.
“Alive. Remember how Stu said he couldn’t get into one of the rooms?”
We pass the broken sconces, and he tips the flashlight down to the ground to aid our steps through the minefield of glass. I still catch the lift of his shoulder, the grimace when the action pulls at his ribs, before he says, “I had a hunch.”
That’s not even the most impressive thing.
“And they let you in?”
I turn my focus back to the carpet and tiptoe around the shards. My feet are so numb now it’s not like I can feel if I get cut anyway. I used to think my feet looked like a massacre at the end of a long night of dancing at Cravin’. Now I know I wasn’t even close.
“I can be persuasive.”
I can’t argue with that. Ten minutes alone in a closet and I threw everything I’d ever learned from horror movies out the window.
“The control panel was in there,” he says. “But it’s been tampered with. One of the guys—you remember Lee?”
Yes, I do. I was gonna wingman for him with Nia, the woman who gave a mini plant tutorial at cocktail hour.
I was looking forward to it before all of this.
Knowing that Lee and Nia have been stuck in a room together this whole time is a promising development.
That kind of forced proximity can really help you bond.
“Lee tried to set off the control panel hours ago and it didn’t work,” Wes says. “Not all of the video cameras were damaged, either. The one above the dance floor is still there.”
So Wes found survivors, a hiding spot John hadn’t discovered the whole night, and he decided to go for a stroll along the corridors. Has he learned nothing from our time together?
“Wes… what are you doing out here then? Why didn’t you stay there?”
That makes him stop short, and he shoots me a look like it’s obvious.
He shakes his head, eyes locked on mine, and already I’m stepping into him.
Because as soon as I realized he wasn’t responsible for killing half the people we met tonight, that thread in my chest snapped right back into being a steel hook.
“I was looking for you. I needed to make sure you were o—”
I cut him off with a swift pull of his head down to mine and cover his mouth with my own, trying not to cry from relief when he slots his arm at the back of my neck, pulls me in, and kisses me back.
It’s quick, though, the best reconciliation we can hope for given the circumstances.
When we part, it’s habit to look around to make sure no one can sneak up and stab one of us.
When there’s no movement at either end of the hall, I move my hands from his neck to his chest. The bulk of the bandage underneath brings a hard lump into my throat.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Wes. I was—”
“Hey.” He uses the arm around my neck to pull me into his side and starts walking, dropping a kiss against my temple. “It’s gonna take a lot more than that to get rid of me, Jamie.”
That makes me scoff.
“Really?”
“You’d probably be able to convince me to go back into that closet even if you were the killer.”
And that changes the whole tone of the conversation because the killer is still a nameless, faceless, unknown suspect to him.
“It’s John.”
Wes stops, a few feet away from the pile of furniture he barreled into last time, and even with the flashlight directed on the floor, I can see the look of confusion on his face.
“But he…” There’s a second of doubt, and then he catches up. “He wasn’t actually hurt, was he?”
I’d like to think it’s because my tutelage has led him to expect the unexpected, but it’s probably more to do with his occupation, his experience with how you can’t underestimate people who would do something as heinous as taking a life in the name of love.
“He was just playing the part…”
His body tenses next to mine when he realizes there’s only one way I can know for sure, there’s only one thing that would bring that much conviction into my voice.
“Jamie—”
“We ran into each other.”
“Fuck… Are you okay?” He shifts the flashlight over my body like I’ve just told him I’ve got three stab wounds in my back. All his efforts achieve is a nice view of my tits.
No, I’m not okay. Not really. “Yeah.”
“Jamie, I’m—I’m sorry.” He goes to brush his hand through his hair, almost scalping himself before he realizes he’s still holding the knife and jerks it away, drops it to his side. After a second of silent reflection, his gaze meets mine and he just looks… sympathetic.
“I know you—He—I know you and him—”
He can’t say it, but we both know if the first part of the night was a reality TV show, he and John would’ve been standing side by side while I decided whom to give my rose to.
“Wes?”
I reach out and curl my fingers around his wrist, trail my thumb down his skin, and hope he also knows—
He had me at Miss Congeniality.
“We should probably go back to where the others are hiding. I bet you’re not his favorite person right now.”
John will be getting ready for the next grand gesture, and he won’t appreciate that I’m here reconciling with his competition.
Not after he’s been doing the serial killer version of shouting his love for me from the rooftops.
The image of a pink woolen head reciting poetry on the roof of this godforsaken building is a weird image to conjure up, but it’s quickly pushed out when a foggy memory intrudes and turns the red walls around us back to Cravin’ black.
My head jerks toward the mountain of wrecked furniture ahead of us because I remember this hallway. I remember what is up here.
For the first time, hope isn’t dragged away as quickly as the other times we thought we found a way to escape. It holds on. Digs its nails in. It’s not just We could get out of here. The modality has ramped up. Now it’s We can get out of here.
In the movies, dark and scary means death, not salvation. That’s why the lights were smashed, furniture was scattered, and the walls were marked. John and Billie were trying to make it look like the kind of place where you’d meet your end, not the kind of place where you’d find your escape.
They used the rules against us.
“Wes?” I pull him over to the structure, make him raise the flashlight until I can see the top of the furniture pile. He directs the light between some curved chaise legs, and shadows flare out behind it, which means there’s space behind it.
“Remember how we thought somebody had tried to barricade the hallway? What if they were trying to hide a door instead?”
The night I made out with vape guy, we went up to the smoking section on the roof.
I ended up leaving him there when he started trying to sell me cryptocurrency, but still.
There was a door, a staircase, one that led to fresh air and the night sky, and a fire escape that always had security stationed near the access point to stop someone from drunkenly attempting to scale the building.
And we ran past it earlier tonight. Wes ran into it.
The impact is painted in black and blue across his ribs.
I shift my gaze back down from the top of the barricade and find Wes staring at me, his eyes alight with understanding and his chest heaving in anticipation.
“Where does it lead to?”
“The roof.”
“And there’s a—”
“Fire escape. Yeah.”
His face splits into a grin and it’s just as stunning as the first time I saw it in the basement bar a few hours ago. Just like when we were down there, I can’t help but grin back.
“I could kiss you right now.”
He could, and I would let him, but there are more important things we need to be concentrating on. Like getting out of here so he can kiss me without fear of having a meat cleaver lodged in his face.
“Hold that thought. We’re gonna need some help.”
We don’t know how long Billie and John worked on this blockade, and the two of us deconstructing it without causing an avalanche is going to be hard in itself, let alone with Wes’s injuries.
Even though I know he’d still try to clear out the space and cause even more damage to himself in the process, there’s strength and safety in numbers.
So we head back to the survivors’ hideout, scanning the hall and speaking in hushed, rushed murmurs as we figure out a plan to finally draw the curtain on this night.
“Once we get on the roof, we search for the fire escape on the side of the building,” Wes says, and I’m already thinking about what happens after that.
I hope it’ll play out the way I want. I hope, when we make it up onto the roof, the sky is awash with alternating flashes of red and blue, and when I look down to the street a willowy, waifish figure wrapped in a foil blanket will be waiting to give me a handshake in lieu of a hug.
“Laurie should’ve gotten out through the air vents by now, so—”
“Wait.” Wes’s head whips around to stare at me as we hurry down the hall, and the only way I can describe the look on his face is… delighted comprehension. I don’t care that I’ve only known him for a few hours—I might actually have to marry this man.
“She McClane’d her way out?”