Chapter 2
Ethan
“It’ll be fun,” he’d said, Ethan thought grimly. Ryder, my debt is paid and you owe me now. He’d think of something.
Ethan was waiting to check in to the famous Olympus Manor Hotel on the Olympic Peninsula.
His trip that day had consisted of two ferry rides from Piedras Island and an hour’s drive after the final boat had docked.
Until early that morning, he’d held out hope that just this once there’d be a real forensic emergency.
But no, here he was, cooling his heels in a garish lobby drowning in lush red velvet.
Maybe there’d been a close-out sale on the bloodred fabric, he thought dryly.
Through an archway to his left, Ethan spied what would have been the bar if it were a normal hotel. Instead, a brass placard fixed to the wall read Speakeasy. Good, he was going to need a martini, very dry. Maybe a double.
He pulled up the hotel website on his phone and scanned the About Us page.
From the mid-1920s to the early 1960s, Olympus Manor operated as an artist’s commune. The thirty-room mansion stood empty for a decade or so after the owner-slash-artist abruptly passed away, patiently waiting to learn its fate.
The contested will was taken to court, and when it finally made its way through probate, the property had been sold at auction by Olympic Peninsula locals Con and Mark Stuart.
Sadly, time was not kind to Olympus Manor while the structure sat empty.
The historic site needed someone who could put in the elbow grease and had the resources to do things right.
Con and Mark have run the hotel since the 1990s. Before re-opening the doors, they spent almost three years lovingly restoring the mansion and grounds to their original grandeur.
“The Olympus Manor project has been one of the highlights of our married life.”
Why did people use phrases like “lovingly restored”? Everyone knew that remodels were a marriage killer. He’d bet a dollar there were fights and one was about the velvet schlock covering the walls.
“Welcome to Olympus Manor, how may I help you?”
Ethan stepped forward, managing to swallow the snarky comment on the tip of his tongue.
“Ethan Moore, subbing in for Ryder Mann and Shay Delacombe.”
“Oh, right! Thank you for waiting. Ah, here you are, Mr. Moore, you’re on the third floor,” the stately middle-aged woman behind the front desk informed him.
“My name is Moira. If you need anything during your stay, please don’t hesitate to let me or anyone at the desk know.
You can’t miss the stairs, although there’s an elevator to the right of the potted ficus if you need a lift.
” She coughed. Ethan refused to acknowledge her pun.
Next she held out a keyring with a leather tag hanging off it.
“314 is to the left once you get off the elevator and then down the hall. The room has a nice view of the gardens. Let’s see.
” She looked at her computer screen. “Dinner is served promptly at seven p.m. The pre-murder briefing will begin in the speakeasy at five. All of your questions will be answered there, and you’ll get to meet the rest of your investigative team. ”
“How many guests are here?” he asked, curious if the event was sold out.
One of Moira’s eyes closed awkwardly before opening again. Was she winking at him or having a stroke? The brow-like squiggles artistically drawn above her eyes gave him no hints.
What was the stroke acronym again? BEFAST, that was it: Balance, eyes, face, arms, speech, time.
A wink. No need to call for medical assistance.
“Ah, now that would be cheating! Questions at five p.m.”
For fuck’s sake, what had Ryder gotten him into? And, again, why had he agreed?
Because he hadn’t been looking forward to another long, empty weekend, dammit. And the experience was free. But he would have been good owing the favor for longer. There’d been no need to rush paying it off.
Two nights. Three days. He could do this.
At five-oh-five p.m. Ethan was watching the minute hand of the garish grandfather clock, impatiently waiting for it to tick over to five-oh-six.
If Ryder had been within strangling distance, Ethan would’ve had his fingers wrapped around the younger man’s neck.
Instead, he clutched a dirty dry gin martini—with pickled onions instead of green olives—and was plotting how to escape from this madness. Sooner rather than later.
Surely, he could come up with a legitimate reason to back out.
Across the room from where he stood, leaning languidly back against another wall, this one covered with crimson brocade wallpaper—jeezus fucking christ, the design looked like it had been inspired by a lab slide of parasite specimens—was Dr. Jordan Ferguson.
Dr. Jordan Fucking Ferguson.
Ethan did his best to look like he wasn’t side-eyeing the man, but his attention kept straying away from the speaker and over to him. It had been years, almost eighteen of them. Seventeen years and eight months, if you wanted to be particular, since the last time he’d laid eyes on the man.
Ferguson wore an Irish-style cable-knit sweater and worn Levis that fit him like a glove.
His arms were crossed over his chest, and he had one leg bent, his booted foot against the wall.
Oh, so casual. The sweater was Jordan’s bitch, emphasizing the width and breadth of his chest and overall jacked-ness of his biceps.
Ethan hated it. He hated Jordan.
This was just unfair, considering, according to Ryder’s research, the man spent his time birdwatching and fixing up vintage motorcycles when he wasn’t teaching Anthro 101.
Maybe it was the wide shoulders drawing Ethan’s attention, not the arms. It certainly wasn’t the smirk playing across the detestable man’s lips or the fact that the last time Ethan had seen him, Jordan had refused to meet his eyes.
Ethan’s skin crawled with disgust, and he forced himself not to sneer.
In spite of the long list of shortcomings, Ethan was forced to admit that Jordan Ferguson was still alright to look at. It was too bad he was an asshole, one who sucked up all the oxygen in any given room, including this one. Too bad he was the enemy.
It was definitely the sweater’s fault. Distracting. Could happen to anyone.
He was going to kill Ryder, and since he was a forensic scientist, he knew just how to get away with it. Maybe that should be the real plan for this murder weekend.
Knocking back the last of the martini, Ethan forced himself not to glance in Ferguson’s direction again.
At the front of the room and blocking his second trip to the bar, the woman from the front desk—the Mystery Maven, or whatever her title was—droned on about the mystery weekend’s rules.
Ethan tuned her out, instead tapping his phone’s screen to open the text app and typing You are dead to me. He hit send.
He reread the text. Shit. He’d sent You are dad to me.
“Motherfucker,” he muttered, hastily tapping his phone’s screen to edit the message.
Abruptly, the speaker fell silent. The entire room fell silent. Ethan glanced up from his phone. Everyone, including the Massive Mystery Bore, was watching him. Something a lot like amusement lit Ferguson’s piercing blue gaze.
“Ah—er, vital work communication. My apologies.” Ethan slid the phone into his back pocket.
Moira—he recalled her name now—the Mystery Maven lifted one artistic squiggle and continued where she’d left off. He tried to pay attention to what was being said, but Ryder’s responses were the only thing on his mind with the way his butt cheek vibrated every thirty seconds.
Focus, Ethan.
“Now, many of you requested to be on the same team. We have accommodated those we could, but with the numbers and an accidental over-booking, we had to do some finagling.” She looked down at the sheet of paper she held in her hand.
“Oh, no.” The words spilled out before Ethan could stop them. “No, no, no.”
Moira ignored his outburst. She just kept talking, steamrolling right over his objection.
But Ethan didn’t need to hear her words to know that somehow he’d requested to be on the same team as Jordan Ferguson.
Ryder Mann wasn’t just facing death, he was looking at be killed and buried in a peat bog, then covered with lye.
He vaguely heard the woman say, “Dinner is now being served.”
During the short walk from the speakeasy to the dining room, Ethan pulled out his phone again to read Ryder’s response.
Responses.
First was about thirty laugh/cry emojis. These were followed by, You’ll thank me. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
“Work text, huh?” A gravelly voice said from behind him.
Ethan spun around to face his… past, for lack of a better word.
“Technically, yes. Is there something you need?”
“What? No ‘Jordan what a surprise! So nice to see you again’?”
“Ah, no. Nope.” Ethan shook his head.
“Time doesn’t make the heart grow fonder?” Jordan cocked his head as if he were asking the question seriously.
“Neither time nor distance, Ferguson.”
Lies, all lies.
He hated that he still ached for Jordan like a missing limb. Which was ridiculous when you thought about it—they’d been so young. For chrissakes, it had been a lifetime ago.
After the first year or so, Ethan hadn’t thought that often about Jordan.
Except when he witnessed yet another friend’s wedding or commitment ceremony.
Or found himself once again the fifth wheel when friends went out.
Or lay in bed in the middle of the night during his too-frequent bouts of insomnia and the what-ifs piled on.
“Come on, we’re on the same team. We’ll have to work together to have a chance of solving this first.”
Jordan moved past him and peered into the dining room, where several long tables had been set with full place settings and little white cards perched at the top of each one. Everyone else seemed to have already taken their seat.
Two spots right next to each other sat empty. Ethan tried not to grimace, but he was not going to survive this.