Chapter 73
“I KNOW,” HOPE SAYS. “I’m the worst friend ever.
Do you think I’m a narcissist?” She coughs, and Ash and Caro lean closer.
They are in one ambulance with her, Page in another with Dan and Henry, Ty in a third on his own.
“Give me some space,” Hope says. “I’m not pulling a Beth from Little Women.
I’m not going to die right here.” She’s on a gurney, and the others are sitting near her, crowding the EMTs.
We are horrible patients, Caro thinks. The very worst.
Hope coughs again, but it sounds clearer, and the other two relax slightly. “Now that’s a role I never wanted to play,” Hope says. “Give me Jo every damn time.”
“You’re not a narcissist,” Ash says. “You were looking out for us. We all agreed on this. We all wanted to lure the lurker.”
“If I were really looking out for you, I never would have come up with this disaster of a plan in the first place,” Hope says.
“We would never have forgiven you if you’d tried to do this all alone,” Caro says. “Which you did actually attempt.”
“Not alone,” Hope says. “I had Page. Which was another horrible choice. I should never have brought her into any part of this.” Her green eyes are wide, clear as sea glass in the overhead lights of the ambulance. “I wanted to fix everything because I wanted you guys to keep loving me.”
“We do love you,” Ash and Caro say at the same time.
“I know,” Hope says. “But this whole time, ever since we met, I’ve wanted you both to love love me.
Like, people are always coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I love you!’ because of my movies, but they don’t know me.
I didn’t want you to like me because of that.
That’s why I didn’t show you my face at first. And then I did, and things kept going so well!
And then I realized someone was stalking me. ”
“He might have been following me,” Caro says. “We didn’t know for sure yet.”
“Or me,” Ash adds. “You’re the one who pointed that out.”
Hope shakes her head. “I know I said that, but—” The movement cracks the cut on her throat and blood seeps from it again.
Caro tears into a sterile gauze pad, and the EMT gives her a murderous glare but doesn’t stop her from pressing it very softly against Hope’s wound to stop the bleeding.
Caro’s hands have been wrapped until a doctor at the hospital can stitch them up.
Her white bandages are bright against Hope’s face.
“I know I said that,” Hope says. “But the night before we went into the Underground, the expert I’d consulted—Jane—sent me a message.
She’d figured out that it was me that he was stalking, and it’s been going on for years.
Ever since I came here as an extra for The Last Portal.
” She shifts, and Caro pulls away the gauze.
The bleeding has stopped. Hope swallows.
“We’d already made all the plans to disappear to draw out the lurker.
We’d sent the messages on our regular phones, we left a trail online for him to follow.
And I knew I had to see it through. I had to draw him after me and take care of it. ”
“It would have been nice if you’d kept us in the loop,” Ash says.
“I couldn’t tell you both everything, or you’d insist on coming with me, or calling the police, and that wasn’t going to work.” Hope presses her hand to her throat. “They never do anything in cases like this. They never do enough, anyway. Not in my experience.”
They’re quiet. The siren outside is screaming.
“But I put you in danger. I’ll never forgive myself for that,” Hope says. “In my mind, at the time, it made sense. I knew whoever it was would follow me. I knew it was the only way to get rid of him for good.”
“Hope.” Caro’s eyes are wide. “Were you planning to kill him?”
“I don’t think so,” Hope says. “I was hoping to take care of it another way.”
“You don’t think so?” Ash’s voice is shrill. “Were you going to make us accomplices? Were you going to accomplice us?”
“No,” Hope says. “That’s another reason I didn’t tell the two of you what I was doing.”
“We would have still been accomplices!” Ash can’t believe what she’s hearing. She could have lost her girls! She could have lost everything.
“They say not to meet your heroes,” Hope says.
Caro breaks out in a laugh. “I don’t know that you’re our hero, Hope,” she says drily.
And then they’re all laughing, in a slightly unhinged way not unlike some of their late nights online. They glance over at the EMTs, who have slightly horrified looks on their faces, and that makes them laugh harder. What the hell were we thinking, with any of this?
“Did you know it was Ty?” Caro asks when they’ve calmed down. “Because if you did, it would have been really great if you told us.”
“No.” Hope’s voice has gone raspy again. “I thought it was for sure one of the guys in the canyon. Spencer or one of his friends.”
“Holy crap,” Ash says, horrified. “Tony’s dead.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Hope says, putting her hand over her heart. She holds Ash’s gaze. “I swear. I never even saw him after the flooding began.”
“Didn’t you?” Caro’s voice is steady. “Hope, I saw you coming out of their camp the morning of the flash flood.”
“What?” Ash’s eyes widen. “Why?”
“I was looking around for something that might help me link them to the lurker,” Hope says. “Like I said, I thought it had to be one of them. But I wanted to try and find actual evidence.”
“You went in their tents?”
“No,” Hope says. “They’d left a bunch of their gear out, and I was going through it. I was so focused that I didn’t even pay much attention to what was happening with the water. It came on so fast.”
“It’s hard to believe it until you’ve been there,” Caro says. “I’ve seen videos of flash floods. Actually being in one is completely different.”
“I still can’t believe it even though we have been through it now.
” Ash bites her lip. “You guys, we came so close. Especially you, Hope. The fact that you hit the water instead of the rocks, the fact that you didn’t die and that you climbed out of that canyon and made it here is a freaking miracle. ”
“I won’t argue with you there.” Hope is somber. “I thought I was directing this whole situation. I was sure I had it all planned out, and it was an unmitigated disaster.” She looks at them, her audience of two, and both Ash and Caro feel the pull of Hope, her sincerity.
“I did do my research, though,” Hope says, after a moment.
“Page told me about Mystery Canyon. I came a few days early, and she and I made sure I could find it and climb it. Page got my phones for me from the lockbox. Once I made it out after the flood, she picked me up and drove me to the ghost town. I stayed there while Jane and I tried to figure out who it was. That’s when I started sending messages from the burner.
I also brought Page the movies for the Hope Hanover Film Festival to show as another way to get to him if we needed it. ”
“Why send us up Seraph’s Perch?” Ash asks.
“I wanted you to be away from here while I confronted Ty,” Hope says.
“Right when I got out of the canyon, Jane figured out the IP address belonged to someone at Sonnet. But she hadn’t been able to track it further.
Once I knew the lurker was there, I wanted you guys away from the resort as much as possible.
” She sighs. “But then nothing worked. Everything started backfiring so badly. Page wasn’t ever supposed to come back to the ghost town after she dropped me off.
It was too dangerous. But she got worried about me and came out to make sure I was okay.
Ty followed her without her knowing. She wasn’t supposed to be there.
” Now Hope is crying. “Do you think she’ll be okay? I should never have involved her.”
“Physically, yes,” Caro says. “Emotionally, she’s pretty tough, too.”
“I told her not to come,” Hope says. “And I sent you up to the Perch because I thought you’d stay up there. But Ty found me after I sent the text. He took the phone and drove over to Seraph’s Perch. He did the hike as fast as he could and came back here where he’d left me tied up.”
“So the @findhopehanover account? And the photo of us at the top?” Caro says. “And the pin, and the last message?”
“All from him,” Hope says. “He used the burner and sent them. He started the @findhopehanover account to mess with us. He missed being able to watch us.” She shudders, and Caro puts a hand on her shoulder to steady her.
“The texts sounded like me, didn’t they?
He’s been watching me long enough that he knows what I’ll say.
How I’ll say it.” Hope closes her eyes, opens them.
“He texted Page to bring food. And she thought he was me, too. I meant to keep all of you away. I’m so sorry.
” She wipes her eyes furiously with the heels of both hands.
“I thought I could keep everyone safe and catch him,” she says.
“Put an end to this. I thought I could take him down, and I couldn’t. ”
“How, exactly, were you going to catch him?” Caro asks. “With your bare hands?”
“I had a Taser,” Hope says. “And a phone to record him with.”
“Hope.” Ash is angry. “This wasn’t—isn’t—none of this is a movie. These are our lives.”
“I know,” Hope says quietly. “It was complete hubris to think I could catch him. And I’m never, ever, going to forgive myself for any of this.”
Ash reaches out and gently takes one of Caro’s bandaged hands in hers. She threads the fingers of her other hand through Hope’s. “That’s where you and Ty were both wrong,” she says.
“There is strength in numbers.” Caro’s voice is firm. “We did what we came here to do.”
“But from now on, you tell us everything,” Ash says.
“I will.” Hope squeezes both of their hands.
“I was wrong not to. It’s just—I was the one who brought the lurker upon us.
It was because of me that you were being watched all that time.
I felt like the only way to get you to love me again was to fix it, and the only way to fix it was to go off on my own. ”
“We didn’t stop loving you,” Caro says.
“I know.” Hope sounds like she can’t believe it, like it’s too good to be true. “I’m so sorry. I’ll say that for the rest of my life. I’ll be that for the rest of my life.”
“It’s okay,” Ash says.
“We didn’t die,” Caro says practically, and they all laugh. And then they remember Eve, and they go quiet.