The Last Book Club
Prologue
Present Day, Halloween Night
BLINKING AWAKE WITH a dry mouth and my cheek pressed into the spine of an open paperback, I try to recall whose idea it had been to host a murder mystery-themed game on the night reserved for book club.
Maybe if I can remember, I will be able to figure out why I am here.
Because instead of sitting on one of my friends’ couches, sipping a perfectly chilled pinot grigio and discussing some fiction (briefly) before launching into local gossip (at length), I’m lying gagged, bound, and blindfolded on someone’s cold basement floor.
Not a finished basement, like the one my neighbor just remodeled into a wellness spa and meditation room. No, I’m talking about a dark, below-grade cellar with poured concrete floors and the hint of mustiness that says there’s been water damage here.
“Mmph!” I grunt-shout through the duct tape on my face, my situation feeling more and more dire as I try to clear the brain fog that’s preventing me from recalling how I got into this position in the first place. Too much wine?
I have a splitting headache. The back of my skull throbs.
Worse, I have no memory of how I got here, and my head is too heavy to move.
Only my feet and wrists are bound, but I don’t think I can even roll onto my side if I want to because my whole body feels like there’s an elephant sitting on me.
I had to have been drugged. Our group read a book once where something like this happened to a college-aged girl.
Someone spiked her drink at a frat party, and she ended up assaulted with no memory of what happened.
Fear curdles in my belly. I’m still dressed in the same clothes I’d worn to the murder mystery party, so I didn’t think anyone had touched me like that.
Forcing myself to stop and think, to really concentrate, I can definitely remember arriving at Sophie’s house on our book club night.
I’d been a little miffed that I’d had to come in costume for the mystery game, since my character’s backstory was a snooze, and I didn’t have much leeway with the outfit.
I had brought a bottle of wine, as usual.
Also my favorite murder mystery novel, since I felt a moral obligation to elevate the literary talk among the group even on our theme nights when reading is usually optional.
So I remember I rang the front doorbell at Sophie’s place with a worn copy of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose in my hand when someone who wasn’t Sophie answered.
Her extremely hot husband, Luke. I’d been a little surprised since the spouses normally take off on our book club nights, but I never minded running into Luke.
The man was a specimen. Tall, fit, and ridiculously wealthy. It didn’t hurt to look.
The next thing I remember was drinking a glass of wine.
Or maybe a cocktail of some sort? I couldn’t recall who’d handed it to me because everyone from book club was dressed up for the murder mystery game.
No one looked quite like themselves. There’d been the hotel tycoon and the glamorous actress.
A Vegas showgirl and a doctor in surgical scrubs passing out Jell-O shots in syringes. Everyone had a part to play.
Had Luke drugged me? Or Sophie? I’d had my run-ins with both of them in the past, but we’re all friends now. I’d been in the book club with Sophie ever since I’d moved into a chichi neighborhood in Saratoga Springs. As for the rest of the book club members, I considered them all friends.
Well, I considered them friend-ly at very least. No doubt they talked about me behind my back for things like the Eco book and who knew what else.
Who doesn’t have at least a little baggage with the members of their social circle?
And, let’s face it, this particular book club has more baggage than most considering just the quiet backstabbing and public betrayals that I know about among my friends.
I’m not even in the inner circle, so I’ve always suspected there is a lot more at play beneath the surface.
Not to mention there was that hit-and-run a year ago when one of the members had been struck and killed on the way home from a meeting.
Something that seemed accidental then, but in light of my current bound status, I wonder. Is our club turning deadly?
Our themed murder mystery game might hit a little too close to home.
A wave of queasiness grips me, and I worry I’m going to hurl behind the barrier of the tape.
Wouldn’t that kill me? I’d choke to death.
Strangely, that thought prods me the rest of the way out of my drug-induced stupor.
My heart rate kicks into high gear, a rapid-fire beat making me breathe too fast as the full recognition of my predicament settles into my brain.
I hadn’t been tied up and thrown into someone’s cold basement as part of any murder mystery game.
Somebody had deliberately hit me on the back of the head, and I was pretty sure I felt a trickle of blood sliding through the roots of my hair.
There would be no pinot grigios and bookish discussion with friends this evening.
Something is very, very wrong tonight, and I am in real danger.
Panic grips me. I need to move, but I can’t.
I might have upchucked then, the swirl of nausea making me dizzy. But at the very moment the bile begins to burn a path up the back of my throat, a scream from upstairs chills me all the way to my duct-taped toes.