Chapter 24 Nicola
“GREER?”
The knock on the door startles her upright. Her eyes frantically sweep the room, but when she notices me lying on the bed beside her, she relaxes. I’ve been awake for hours, now—too distressed by Zach’s betrayal to fall back asleep.
“Greer?” Another knock. “You in there?”
Connor.
“Yeah,” she shouts back, swiping her T-shirt from the floor and yanking it over her head. I do the same, in case he decides to enter, uninvited. “Just talking to Nic.”
“Are you coming downstairs?”
“In a few minutes.” She jumps off the bed and starts collecting her clothes.
“Do you want to talk to everyone now or have breakfast first?”
She drops to the floor and grabs her bralette, which has ended up wedged between the desk and the wall. “Talk about what?”
“About what we found last night.”
Her mouth screws up in confusion. It’s only then I remember that the others don’t know anything about the murder; they still believe Zach’s death was a tragic accident.
She appears to realize this as well because she slumps back on her bare heels.
“Yeah, no, let’s get it out of the way. I’ll be right down. ”
We listen as his footsteps pad onto the landing and down the stairs. Only then does she turn back to me. I want to tell her about the notebooks, but before I get the chance, she says, “About last night…”
What’s she going to say? That it was a mistake? That she regrets it? I force my expression into one of casual nonchalance. “It was a one-time thing,” I reassure her. “Don’t worry, we can forget it ever happened.”
She frowns. “Is that what you want? To forget it ever happened?”
No way am I about to admit the truth and risk rejection. I throw back, “Do you?”
“Fuck no, why would you even ask that? I’m desperate to do it all over again, but if you don’t feel the same, then that’s—”
“I do.”
Her eyes light up. “You do?”
“I do.”
She crawls onto the bed, pinning me in with the sharp angles of her elbows.
Even though she’s pressing me into the pillows, I can’t remember ever feeling more buoyant, like my body’s drifting on an endless ocean, buttressed by salt and air and hope.
“Good, because I—” She tugs down my collar, kisses the exposed skin of my shoulder.
“Plan on sticking around—” Higher, onto my neck now.
“For as long as you’ll let me.” My earlobe, my cheekbone, and then her lips are on mine.
The way she takes charge reminds me of Claire, but there’s a tenderness that’s foreign.
She pulls back, gazes at me like she can’t quite believe I’m here, underneath her.
A shout from downstairs, then a crash.
“Shit,” she says, rolling off the mattress. The two of us throw on the rest of our clothes, then hurry downstairs. By the time we reach the kitchen, Ros is mopping orange juice off the floor with a wad of paper towels. Shattered glass has been swept into a pile. “I’m so sorry.” Hannah sniffles.
“Please.” Ros tosses the soaked wad in the garbage can. “No one cares about a little spilled juice. You should see the mess my kids make every morning.”
“Everything okay?” Greer asks.
“Fine. Hannah just got a little spooked.”
Hannah stares at the now-clean floor.
“Spooked?”
“She thought she saw something in the woods. Probably an animal nibbling on our leftovers.”
Outside, the gaps between the trees are empty except for threads of morning mist. I wait, watching, but everything remains still.
Connor walks into the kitchen. “All the doors and windows are still locked.”
“We don’t need to do that, do we?” Imogen stands by the window, dressed for morning meditation. “I understand everyone’s on edge, but maybe it would be best if we talked about it. We could even go back to the lake—”
“We should talk about it,” Connor says. “Let’s stay in here, though.”
Imogen frowns and tries to catch his eye, but he’s already leading everyone into the den.
The lodge’s central living area is a hodgepodge of mismatched couches and armchairs, all clearly selected for comfort instead of style.
Quilted blankets have been draped over their backs; the club members are forced to toss throw pillows onto the floor before they can sit down.
“Zach’s death wasn’t an accident,” Connor begins as Ros is still stacking pillows onto a chest in the corner. She freezes, clutching a brown crocheted monstrosity.
“What do you mean?” Kemy asks. “He drowned in the lake.”
“He was thrown into the lake,” he clarifies, “after he was already dead.”
The den erupts into chatter. Greer has to raise her voice to be heard over everyone else. “Hey!” she calls. “Calm down and let us explain.”
No one calms down, but they do get quiet.
“Nic found a pottery shard stuck in the back of his head. Someone must’ve attacked him from behind, then dumped him out there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ros scoffs. “He could be annoying, and he needed to learn to mind his own damned business, but no one would ever want to kill him. He was a good man—a little gullible, sure, but always good.”
Hannah hunches forward, like she’s trying to make herself as small as possible.
Connor, meanwhile, unlatches his messenger bag and pulls out the notebooks, stacking them on the coffee table.
I instinctively reach for my pocket, making sure the page I ripped from mine is still there.
“Earlier this morning, these notebooks were discovered in Zach’s room.
In them is personal information about all of you: the names of your family, friends, where you currently live—”
Ros snatches the notebook off the top of the stack and begins rifling through its pages. “What the actual fuck, Connor?” she spits. “What was he planning to do with these?”
Connor seems to brace himself for the inevitable fallout. “We believe he was writing a book about the club.”
“A book.”
“It appears he’d already signed a contract. We have the name of the acquiring editor, so we can contact them and make sure nothing—”
The little notebook whips through the air, hitting the wall behind him with an impotent smack. “How could you have missed this?” Ros shouts. “You have one job—one. Keep all our information secure.”
He looks ashamed. “All our systems were designed to search for digital devices.”
“So, what you’re saying is that anyone could outsmart you using a freakin’ pencil, the absolute height of technology.” She slow claps. “Well done, you.”
“Ros.” Greer shoots her a look, but she appears just as shaken. I regret not telling her about the notebooks earlier; she shouldn’t have been blindsided.
“It’s not like we weren’t aware of his problems,” Connor says. “We knew all about his financial issues, the fact that he’d been fired from his job, relapsed into addiction. We offered him money. A three-month stay at the rehab clinic of his choice.”
“And?” Imogen asks.
“He refused. Kept assuring us that he was getting clean and that he’d found work.”
“And by ‘found work,’ he meant selling out the rest of us.” Ros collapses back against the cushions, and it’s only then that I realize she’s started crying.
“Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him.” She kicks the coffee table with every reprise, its wooden legs scratching the floor as it shifts an inch each time.
Then she presses her face into her hands, shoulders hitching up and down with her muffled sobs.
Imogen rubs her back, muttering, “There, there.”
Kemy, meanwhile, has started thumbing through the notebooks. “If anyone knew about these, that could’ve been the reason he was murdered. You said they were discovered in his room this morning. Who found them? Where were they?”
“I did,” Connor says, a little too quickly, but no one appears to notice. “I was cleaning out his room and found them tucked under his mattress.”
Hannah’s still staring at the floor. Why lie about who found the notebooks? Is he trying to protect her from their questions?
“It couldn’t have been anyone here,” Imogen says, still rubbing circles onto Ros’s back. “I know all of you; we’ve done counseling together. It has to be someone else.”
Kemy flips to the next page, a scrap coming loose from the binding.
“You know, if they’d rushed publication, they could’ve cashed in on the success of To Catch a Killer.
” She catches my gaze over the top of the notebook.
“He’s almost filled Nicola’s. Looks like he intended to focus most of the chapters on her. ”
The weight of their attention settles on me.
I’ve been here before: pushing my shopping cart through the aisles of Costco, while my neighbors all watched, half-hidden behind the freezer chests and pastry displays, waiting until I’d rounded the corner before they started slandering me, hands cupped around their whispers.
But that can’t be happening here, not when everyone in the room’s just like me.
Greer steps forward, positions herself between me and them. “Nic’s identity is already common knowledge. A book wouldn’t change anything for her.”
“Maybe not, but he recorded all her private thoughts, with the aim of making them public. That would be enough to make anyone feel like they’d been violated, especially since some of what she disclosed isn’t the most complimentary.
” Kemy gestures to the current page. “She doesn’t, for instance, have many nice things to say about you. ”
Greer crosses the room and, before Kemy can argue, swipes the notebook out of her hands. For a moment, I’m afraid she’s going to start reading it for herself, but instead, she passes it back to Connor.
“That sounds like it’d make me more of a suspect than her.
Unless you think I want everyone gossiping about what an absolute cunt I am right before my dad’s hearing.
” She addresses the room: “The truth is, we all have reasons for not wanting this information out there. Which means we all had sufficient motive for committing this crime.”