CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I’m convinced that if any crime novels have ever depicted the protagonists sleeping peacefully on the eve of the big showdown, they were lying.
Grant and I have spent all night brainstorming and strategizing, agonizing over every tiny detail and moment of the past two weeks, and it still doesn’t feel like enough.
We’ve turned his room into a museum of Post-its, suspects and tropes and clues and red herrings adhered to every available surface.
Now I’m staring at a wall of theories, too worn out to think anymore but too on edge to sleep.
Grant comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my shoulders.
“What if we’re wrong?” I ask him, tucking my hands over his forearms.
“Then I guess Anna will have written us into a corner and she’ll have to invent some miracle to get us out,” he says.
“No pressure.”
“Right. No pressure.”
I lean back against him, closing my eyes, and his chin drops to rest on my head. After a moment, he lifts it and takes a breath.
“I just have to say something,” he says. “It’s possible that I don’t make it to the end of the book.”
I turn to face him, feeling like someone has traced an icy finger up my spine. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth,” he says. “Protagonists usually make it out alive. Love interests … not always.”
“Yes, always. A romance novel promises a happy ending.”
“This isn’t strictly a romance, though,” he says. “In a mash-up like this, we may not be able to count on genre conventions. For all we know, she could kill me off as the setup for a revenge-fueled sequel.”
“That’s not happening. I won’t do this without you.”
He gives me a look like he’s trying to memorize me. I feel it in every cell of my body. “What I’m trying to say, while I have the chance, is … no matter how this ends, it was worth it to me. I just want you to know that.”
A sick feeling passes through me, prickling my skin. I want him to take it back, to promise to stay with me until the end. But I can’t fight him, because I feel the same way. It was worth it. Whatever happens.
So for once, I don’t fight. I don’t run away, and I don’t panic. I just sit with him in the quiet—my hand in his, even as heartbreak looms. I just stay, while I still can.
· · ·
THE SEASON FINALE of a competition show calls for all-out drama: confetti-strewn stages, flame-lit studios, windswept private islands that the losers have to be helicoptered away from in tears. I’d have preferred any of those to the abandoned Tube station Mr. Page has chosen, but to each their own.
I also would have loved more time to prepare—mentally and emotionally, if not logistically—but we’re doing this the Lesley and Anna Matthews way: with eighteen hours of planning, and nothing but zip ties and phones in our pockets. It will be enough, because it has to be.
Lissa leads Grant and me to the former Moseley Green station like a very foreboding tour guide, rehashing the details for the fifth time. I try to at least pretend I’m listening. My brain feels whiplashed and waterlogged, and that’s to say nothing of the paper shredder my heart has been through.
“Remember: keep your phone on speaker so I can hear everything,” Lissa says. “Just keep him talking. I won’t be far—the police station is just a few blocks away. Once they hear, they’ll have no choice but to send in the big guns. They’ll finally know Lesley was right.”
His name sends a pickax of grief through me. This was supposed to be his big I told you so moment. He should be here.
Lissa stops at a street corner. “We’re here,” she says, pulling out her phone. “Let’s start the call. Grant?”
“I’ve got it,” I say, then dial her number. She answers and mutes herself, and I stash my phone.
“Now,” she says, pivoting to face us earnestly. “I won’t say goodbye, because I will see you again soon. Got it?”
I nod, my throat like sandpaper.
She throws her arms around us in an abrupt group hug, then pulls back, her ring-spangled hands on our shoulders. “It’s times like these I wish we’d established a team name and a rallying cry secret handshake,” she sighs.
“You can just wish us luck,” says Grant.
“The very best of it,” she says, blowing us kisses before we part ways.
The nondescript door across the street has been subtly propped open with a book—The Three Musketeers. It’s like the serial killer’s version of the birthday balloon tied to the mailbox, telling you you’ve found the party.
We pause once we step inside, letting our eyes adjust. The dim light is that very specific postapocalyptic shade of yellow, the walls drippy and peeling. It looks more like we’re in a zombie story than a regular murder one.
“You’re sure about this?” I ask Grant.
He takes a breath and nods. “Yeah. Pretty sure.”
“Oh, pretty sure. Well, that’s—”
His silencing kiss takes me by surprise, the softest stop talking I have ever received.
He holds my face in his hands, his fingers threading into my hair.
There’s an urgency to it, the way his lips catch mine—but beneath that, there’s something tragic.
By the time he pulls away, my throat is tight with emotion.
“Don’t do that,” I say. “Don’t kiss me like it’s the last time.”
“Remember what I said,” he says, his thumbs smoothing over my cheeks. “It was worth it.”
His hand trails down my arm before finding my hand.
A flash of pain strikes my chest like chain lightning as we continue toward the meeting place. Sequels, I try to tell myself. Book after book. An entire series of us. But I know with gut-wrenching clarity that this could be all we have left. The final adventure of Roxie and Grant.
The station is a maze of hallways and tunnels that echo from every broken tile, leading to a dusty staircase spiraling into the earth, followed by more tunnels. And then we’re there.
The subterranean platform looks like something from the wreck of the Titanic, cast in a ghostly greenish light by a single flickering bulb. Each end of the train tunnel fades to an eerie blackness so deep it feels solid, boxing us in like stone walls.
We wait in silence, barely breathing. A rat scurries across the floor. We both tense when a train whizzes by the forgotten platform, then disappears into the void.
And then footsteps. Quiet at first but growing louder. The purposeful stride of one marching to kill, headed unmistakably in our direction.
I take a steadying breath.
“See you in the next chapter, Hoffman,” I whisper.
“See you there, Mitchell.”
As the final disembodied steps ring through the tunnel, I stand tall to face the long-awaited Mr. Page.
From around the corner steps Lissa.