Chapter 67 Taylor
Taylor
Taylor stares at her laptop screen, the words of the Facebook student nurse group chat blurring as her mind trips over what they mean.
The Knox is holding Vivian captive. And they’ve hired Tara to help take care of her.
The clues were there: The amantadine Taylor found in the trash. The Med-Ox medical van circling in the neighborhood. The rent for Vivian’s antiques store paid in advance by a “well-dressed” man. The warning note with the Knox symbol in Vivian’s apartment.
The piercing scream.
All along, Vivian has been at the Knox, in one of their many upstairs rooms.
Who is in on it? And what is it that they are trying to do with her?
Shadowy, undefined thoughts circulating in Taylor’s head morph into terrible shapes. Perhaps Vivian’s death is only a matter of time. She’s a potential heir, a threat to the Knox. In the group chat, Tara Doyle had posted: I’ll only be helping her for a few more days.
Taylor lifts her water glass with trembling hands. What has her life come to, that she has these thoughts? That this is the scenario before her?
Maybe she should go back to being a nurse, like that note said. Like Jerry had said.
Suddenly, she remembers something else he said: I had a little chat with your nurse manager, Jan. A little “accidental” run-in at the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Taylor was still working at the hospital in March. She hadn’t yet quit. Nor yet applied for the Knox. So why were they asking around about Taylor in March?
There’s only one explanation: because she was Vivian’s nurse. Taylor’s employment is not random.
Did they hire her to be another private-duty nurse for Vivian? Or is it because Taylor was the last person Vivian spoke to before she lost consciousness? What was it she’d said, again? Something about not clinking champagne glasses?
A knock at the door startles Taylor, and the glass slips from her hand, shattering on the floor.
“Taylor!”
It’s Sam. Taylor sidesteps the shards to open the door. “Careful,” she says, pointing at the ground.
“Whoa,” he says. He looks awful: His black button-down shirt is wrinkled, a light stubble covers his lower face, and his hair is uncharacteristically mussed. Sam’s a hairstylist; his hair never looks out of place.
“Where are you coming from?”
He leans against the door, briefly closing his eyes. “I was at the casino. I’m so glad I caught you. Are you on your way to the Knox?”
“On my way to? No—I already worked there today. Do you know what time it is?”
He shakes his head. “My phone died.”
“It’s five o’clock. In the evening. Tuesday evening.”
He rubs his eyes. “My phone died,” he repeats. “I wanted to call you because I found some stuff…” His voice trails off, and Taylor realizes that all is not right with him.
Join the club, she thinks.
“Sam, are you okay?”
“No. Yeah. I mean, I’m okay. Tired as fuck obviously…. You know that guy I met on Raya?”
She frowns. “Miami Guy? The one who was over just last night?”
Sam rubs his face. “Was that only last night? It feels like a week ago. Yeah. Yeah, so he knows a few people in Boston. We were hanging out here—as you know—and then one of his friends invited us out to this gay bar in the South End. So we went, and then we kept partying, back at his place. One of those nights, you know,” he says sheepishly.
“And then I don’t know what time it was—like maybe four or five in the morning?
This morning, I guess? Well, then, Oliver”—he looks at Taylor intently—“as in Oliver from the Knox, showed up at the guy’s apartment. ”
Taylor grimaces. “How do you know who Oliver is?”
“I didn’t. Not at first. We were all hanging out; he had a bunch of friends with him.
We were drinking, and some of the guys, including Oliver, were all high on something.
Then he invited our group to go to Encore.
So he takes out his phone and calls this person.
He says, ‘Rose, I need a van for ten people right now to go to Encore.’ And I’m thinking, Who is Rose, and who is this guy—that he could just make a call and poof, like ten minutes later, there’s a fucking party van waiting for us outside to take us to the casino?
And then we get there, and he’s greeted like a celebrity, even though it’s like maybe eight o’clock in the morning.
People are saying, ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ and he’s at the high-roller tables, and then someone makes a dumb knock-knock joke to him…
. Then it hits me. Holy shit. This guy must be from the Knox. Like, one of them.”
“Whoa,” Taylor says. “That’s a crazy coincidence.
” She wants to tell Sam that Oliver is more than just “one” of them, he’s about to be in charge, but she’s not sure now is the right time, given his state of mind—and hers.
She is only halfway in this conversation.
The dark circles beneath his eyes are like small caves; he looks how she feels.
She puts her hand on his arm. It’s cold.
Or perhaps it’s her hand that is ice. She’s all out of sorts.
“You should take some Tylenol and eat some greasy food.”
He grins. “I knew you were still a nurse, underneath all this.”
She gives a thin smile. “I don’t know what I am anymore.” A wave of exhaustion rolls over her. She wants to just collapse, lie down on the shards of glass. She might welcome the pain, the chance for her mind and body to be occupied with something other than her current situation.
“Hey, is there some sort of big Knox event coming up?”
“Yeah…the initiation. Why? And how do you know that?”
“Well, listen to this.” He grasps Taylor’s shoulders, surprising her. “I’ve got some unbelievable gossip.” His breath comes at her like the last call at a bar, and she recoils slightly. “Oliver has a gambling problem.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“No, but like a serious one. Like he was in deep before his father died. One of his buddies told me, after he’d had too many. He said it was a good thing the old man passed.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, this place is weird, Taylor. We may need to get you another job. Are you there for the initiation? Like, do they have you working it?”
“No.”
“Okay, good.” He relaxes his grip. “Because Oliver said something about it. He was pretty fucked-up by that point. He said something about three nights leading up to the grand finale, and then…” Sam laughs. “Then he said that there’s some sort of sacrifice that will be made.”
Taylor swallows. “A sacrifice? Are you sure?”
He whistles and then nods. “These weird rich dudes. It’s like a movie. You can’t make this shit up.”
Once Sam leaves, Taylor promptly crumples onto her barstool. He has no idea of the seriousness of the tea he just spilled. There’s a sickening thought that’s taken hold of her, one too horrible to voice.
There has to be a reason the Knox is keeping Vivian captive, instead of just killing her—if her inheritance is that much of a threat.
I’ll only be helping her for a few more days, Tara had written.
Taylor knows that tonight begins the three nights of preparation, followed by the initiation—the “sacrifice” Oliver mentioned.
The timeline matches, though she wishes more than anything in the world it did not.
Nausea trickles up her throat as she turns to her laptop. Her fingers shake as she types into the search bar two phrases: “secret societies” and “sacrifice.” To her horror, result after result pops up, flooding her screen.
Human sacrifice, it seems, has been used by secret societies throughout time.