The Thriller Writers
THE DOOR SWINGS OPEN WITH A WEARY sigh.
A sound unique to places long neglected, and secrets waiting to be brought to light.
“Ah,” says Malcolm, surveying the bedroom. “This’ll do.”
It’s smaller than he would have liked, but there was a mad dash for the rooms, Millie and Jaxon running around like kids at a sleepover, trying to grab the best one, while Kenzo struck out in search of the one with the least amount of light, and Priscilla looked for the biggest bed.
Malcolm’s just glad that none of the rooms had two beds, since Sisi probably would have insisted on taking that one.
And then the others would have noticed. Not that it will be a problem anymore.
With so much on the line, Sienna will surely understand—they have to work together.
Which means, they have to stay together.
The rooms are split between the house’s two wings, and by the time it all shook out, Cate, Kenzo, and Priscilla had claimed the East Wing, while Millie, Jaxon, and Malcolm and Sienna filled the West.
The rooms themselves are rather quirky.
Each seems to have been designed around a color.
Which he supposes isn’t that strange on its own.
What is strange is the sheer dedication to employing that color, from the walls to the curtains, the tartan spread on the bed, the decorative cushions on the chair.
That’s the other thing. Each room has also been given an old-fashioned typewriter, and the paper for it matches the rest of the room.
It seems like an awful lot of work, matching the paper to the decor, having colored paper at all, for that matter, but according to Eleanor that will be the only way to differentiate them, since this whole affair is being judged blind.
That too strikes him as faintly ridiculous—surely they’ll be able to tell the difference between a seasoned thriller writer and a novice, and don’t even get him started on the romance author.
Priscilla will probably wrap up Petrarch’s story in a neat little bow, give her that formulaic happily-ever-after, sealed with a kiss.
Kenzo’s ending will undoubtedly be blood-soaked.
Jaxon is probably not stupid enough to add extraterrestrials to the world’s most successful crime series, but he wouldn’t bet on it.
Poor Millie’s will be overwrought, and Cate—well, she hasn’t even cut her teeth yet.
No, the rest of them are woefully outmatched.
Malcolm takes up a sheet of butter-yellow paper.
The room itself is more egg yolk, a shade that reminds him of the gorse that painted the hills around Edinburgh every spring.
He tries to dig up the name for the yellow tartan on the bed.
“Sinclair,” he thinks aloud. He’s almost certain.
But it doesn’t really matter. For once, Sienna can’t pull up the answer on her phone to prove him wrong.
On the desk beside the typewriter is a bottle of Wite-Out and a printed copy of Arthur’s final manuscript.
Minus the ending, of course.
Terrible business, he thinks.
If Sienna died, god forbid, he’d be able to muscle through, write an ending worthy of them both. But if he went first—no, it doesn’t even bear thinking about.
Behind him, Sisi is heaving her suitcase up onto the bed. She begins unpacking, sorting clothes into cupboards and arranging her meds on the bedside table as if she’s moving in. She always does that, even when they’re only staying for one night.
Malcolm leaves her to it and drifts to the window. He hoists it open, letting cool air spill into the room, the sound of the sea crashing against the cliffs below.
He inhales deeply, still trying to process the magnitude of the news about Arthur.
If he’s being honest, he didn’t know the man that well.
He’s looked up to him for years—hell, he’s the reason Malcolm started writing—and he always hoped that Penn Stonely’s eventual success would bring them closer, that Arthur would come to see him as a colleague and a friend.
This weekend was meant to be the foundation on which he built that dream.
Malcolm and Arthur, together in the drawing room, a bottle of Scotch and a roaring fire.
Trading war stories from the narrative trenches.
That dream’s gone up in smoke.
And he’s devastated, he really is.
But two million dollars.
Well, that’s quite a silver lining.
With a prize like that, Malcolm could afford to make new dreams.
Something catches his eye below. It’s Rufus, strolling down the path away from the house.
Decent chap. And that accent, with its crisp consonants and posh vowels, screams old money.
Malcolm makes a mental note to ask about his schooling before remembering Eleanor Vandenberg’s words as they left Fletch’s study.
“Arthur’s editor will stay with you over the weekend, but he’ll be sequestered in the guest cottage across the drive. You will deliver your endings as you finish them, through the mail slot in the cottage door. Other than that, I must insist you have no contact with him whatsoever.”
“Bollocks,” he mutters under his breath.
It’s important to know what kind of man you’re working with.
Oh, he knows it’s not the PC thing to say, but the fact is, an author and his editor should be cut from the same cloth.
He’s glad that Fletch’s old editor got the boot—ever since he and Sienna got pawned off on River, he has to worry about pronouns as much as plot devices.
No, he’s convinced that if he did get to chat with Rufus, man to man, he’d have this in the bag.
The editor disappears around the corner, no doubt to hole up in his cottage. But the sight of him slipping away reminds Malcolm of the figure on the cliff. The one he’d assumed—erroneously—was Arthur Fletch.
“Who do you think it was?” he muses aloud.
“What?” asks Sienna, and before he even turns, he knows she’s giving him the look—he hates that look, which somehow conveys both disinterest and scorn, an impatient quirk of the brows, an unflattering set of the mouth. And there it is.
“The man we saw, on the approach. The one in the hat.”
Sienna shrugs, clearly more concerned with putting sweaters in the wardrobe. “It was probably the editor.”
Malcolm shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
Sienna blows a chunk of hair out of her face. “Maybe it was Arty’s ghost, come to welcome you because you’re such great friends.”
Malcolm frowns. “No need to be snarky.”
She shrugs again. “You’re the one who believes in ghosts.”
He grits his teeth. Just because one time at the Colosseum he felt the undeniable presence of something ancient and angry, and made mention of it to the guide.
Sienna looks past him to the window, and he can tell—
“You’re wondering about it, too.”
Sienna rolls her eyes and reaches for the manuscript. “Forgive me if I’m less interested in solving that mystery than this one.”
* * *
SIENNA LOOKS DOWN AT THE MANUSCRIPT IN her hands.
Does paper normally weigh this much? Or is it the pressure? The promise? This isn’t just a book, after all; it’s the book. And in order to win, not only do they have to devise an ending equal parts epic and unexpected, they’ll have to do it all while mimicking Fletch’s voice.
Which is the one thing she isn’t worried about. Back in college, she spent an entire semester turning in English papers written in the same style as the work she was critiquing, just for fun, and her professor remarked what a knack she had for imitation.
And he was right.
After all, she’s been mimicking Malcolm for years.
As if on cue, he crosses to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his stubbled chin on her shoulder, the way he has so many times. It used to make her feel safe, feel loved. Now, she just feels stifled. The weight of him, like a fucking albatross.
But she doesn’t pull away.
He seems genuinely shaken by the news of Arthur’s death—for all Malcolm’s bravado, he has always been sensitive.
Sienna pats him gently on the back. Drowning, she thinks, is a bad way to go.
She pulls up the details from another of her mental lists, this one titled Most Unpleasant Deaths, which has come in handy over the years.
Drowning entails the aspiration of water.
The lack of oxygen. The filling of pleural cavities.
The postmortem bloat. One of their earliest books together centered on a serial killer Malcolm had insisted on naming the Bathtub Bastard who snuck into sororities and drowned coeds in—you guessed it.
Back then, Sienna hadn’t tried to rein Malcolm in, but she’d still done most of the research, so she knew that despite what people sometimes said, it really wasn’t a good way to die.
“Can you believe it?” he murmurs, and she thinks he’s talking about Fletch until he says, “Two million dollars, Sisi.”
She stiffens, realizing he’s not grieving. He’s excited.
“I mean, a three-book deal.”
The floor feels like it’s tilting. Because she wants it, of course she wants it. She just doesn’t want it with him.
“This could be a game changer for us,” he says, and it’s that word, us, that makes her snap.
“Us?” she echoes, pulling free. “I’m sorry, did you forget something?” She fights to keep her voice low. The walls look like they’re made of stone, but in a house this big, noise always finds a way to carry. “There is no us anymore, Malcolm.”
He stiffens, as if struck by the news, which isn’t news at all. It’s been a month since she told him she was leaving—leaving Penn Stonely, leaving him.
A month, and the only reason she’s even here is because he asked—begged, really, got down on one knee in some sordid imitation of a proposal and said, “Please, Sisi. One last time, for me.”
One last time.
So much weight in that one phrase. Enough to drag a body down.