Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
“I’m gonna cozy up to Ronnie,” said Carla hours later, when they were sitting in the lobby downing greasy slices of pizza from the shop down the street. “See if he can tell me what’s up with Enzo.”
“When?” asked Boris, twisting the straw in his paper cup.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“That means somebody else is gonna die.”
Carla huffed out a breath and set her crust onto a paper plate. “Yeah, well, that’s outside of my control.”
“You can’t cozy up to him tonight?”
“He’s working,” Carla snapped, arms crossed, eyebrows downturned in disapproval.
“Working on what? What the hell do these mafia guys do all day?”
“I don’t fucking know! I’m ‘not supposed’ to know,” Carla grumbled.
“Shady business dealings,” suggested Jack, just this side of playful. Then he remembered her warning from yesterday and abruptly lost his appetite.
“Probably some murders,” added Boris, taking another bite.
“Yeah, probably all those things and some other bullshit, too,” said Carla. “Alright, fine, you’re right. I’ll try to visit him tonight. See if I can get some answers.”
At 10 p.m., Jack waited on the street corner and smoked a cigarette, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible while he waited for Carla to open the side door and beckon him inside.
People cast him suspicious glances as they passed, but no one said anything, so he ignored them the same way he ignored his shaking hands.
The gun in his pocket felt like a brick; he’d had to tighten his belt to keep his pants from sliding down with every other step. The leather cut into his hips, reminded him that his life might very well be in danger.
Too much time had passed. People were surely watching him now. When Carla signaled him, they would be intercepted almost immediately. There was no way—
The door clicked open. Carla’s face peered out. She gestured frantically and Jack couldn’t help himself—he went to her like a man possessed.
He wasn’t possessed, Jack told himself sternly. Just very loyal, very worried, and very tired. If this plan failed, his life wasn’t the only one in danger. Every day, someone new disappeared. The more information they had, the more likely they could stop it from happening again.
But that was futile, he thought, looking at Carla’s pinched face.
Who was he to try to solve a time loop? His understanding of time was on par with a middle schooler’s.
If not for popular culture, he wouldn’t even have a name for what his life had become.
Even Carla and Boris were only marginally more informed.
How the fuck were they supposed to end a time loop? Was it even possible?
“Come on, Jack,” Carla hissed, and he followed her right through the door, praying that this was the right thing to do. That he wasn’t about to meet his end by Enzo’s bullet—or worse.
Inside, she dragged him past the back entrance to the kitchen, down a long, dimly lit hallway to a utility closet, and pulled him in behind her.
The sounds of frying food and shouting chefs vanished.
In the total darkness, she whispered, “I can’t find Ronnie.
I think he’s downstairs. I’m gonna go find him.
Wait here in case anything goes wrong, alright? ”
Jack swallowed around the ball of lead in his throat. “Got it.”
He didn’t know how to tell her that he wouldn’t be coming to her rescue. That as nervous as he was, his feet would probably just carry him out the door and right down the street at the first sign of trouble.
“You’re gonna be fine,” Carla hissed, as if she could read his thoughts. A hand ran up and down his arm in a gesture that was probably meant to be comforting. Through the fabric of his suit, it was like being scrubbed with sandpaper.
“Good luck,” he said, and kissed her on the mouth.
“I don’t need it,” she scoffed, but he could hear the smile in her voice.
“Yeah, but you should take it anyway.” He grinned crookedly.
Her hand squeezed his. Then she was gone, out into the dimly lit corridor, the sounds of her footfalls fading.
The wait was no less agonizing than he’d expected. Minutes welled like blood in a shallow wound, sluggish and lazy. In the silence, his heartbeat and racing thoughts were deafening.
This must be what it feels like to go mad, he thought. The tension ate at him like acid.
A door slammed. Someone giggled, high and loud. Footsteps hurried past Jack’s closet and vanished.
This must be what it was like to live in a haunted house. Surrounded by darkness, listening to the eerie sounds of something unseen and unknowable. Hidden away like this, it was easy to believe that a gun would do no more damage to the monsters outside than it would to a ghost.
Then came Carla’s laugh, bright and bold. “Aww, Ronnie, come on!”
A low male voice. “Not as easy as you think, cupcake.”
Cupcake? Cupcake?! Jack forced air through his nostrils, tried to keep a wave of jealousy from rising up and crushing him. Of all the unoriginal, childish nicknames…
But it was no better or worse than sweetheart, he realized, deflating.
“Nothing’s too hard for you,” Carla teased.
Jack fought the urge to climb straight out of his own skin.
“I would certainly disagree,” said Ronnie, low and amused. “But the rules don’t apply to you.”
Jack chewed the inside of his cheek and reminded himself that supply closets didn’t scream.
“Oh, baby, I know it,” said Carla, practically purring. “Just come to the kitchen with me for a minute, OK?”
He wanted to think that the affection in her voice was fake. But was it?
Stupid, thought Jack, feeling small and anxious now. Stupid to fall for a woman already in a relationship and think that he would emerge from the aftermath intact. It didn’t matter whether or not she loved Ronnie. He’d never forget the sound of them together, laughing as they passed his closet.
Carla knew he was in here. Knew he’d heard every word. Did she want him to? Or was she just acting?
“Focus,” Jack muttered under his breath. The command grounded him, stopped the floor beneath his feet from spinning.
For an untold length of time, he waited. His knees shook, then grew sore. He spiraled between panic and anger, wished Boris were here to keep him company. Wished he had a drink in his hand, a cigarette in his pocket, anything to keep him occupied.
Voices carried, then faded into smoke.
He would make a terrible private eye. Only an hour or so of hiding, and already madness ate at him.
Then came footsteps, quick and sure.
The door creaked open.
“Come on, come on,” Carla whispered, beckoning him. “Club’s free, let’s go!”
Jack blinked at her, blinded by the hallway's dying lightbulb.
She grabbed him by the hand, pulled him free. He followed, disoriented, feet crashing against the floor like a drunkard’s.
The stairwell wasn’t far off, just through a steel door at the end of the corridor. Carla pressed a finger to her lips and clutched his hand tight as she guided him up the stairs. Their feet clanged against the metal steps.
“We gotta be quick, come on,” she said, tugging on his hand.
“I thought I was just backup,” protested Jack.
“Yeah, you are. You’re the cleaning guy, remember? We just hired you, and you needed a little help figuring out where to go.”
“Is anyone going to believe that?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Carla with a wicked grin. “We’re not gonna get caught. They’re all leaving.”
They stumbled into a large room equipped with a single pool table, a dartboard, a ragged rug, and faded movie posters. Jack did a double take at the ordinariness of it all. No blood on the ceiling, no wall of knives. Just a typical billiards club.
The bar was well-stocked, but Jack had come to expect nothing less from Ronnie. Bitterly, he thought to snatch up the finest bottle of wine or whisky that he could find and bring it back to share with Boris, but that wasn’t why they were here.
“Could you have rubbed it in any harder?” Jack groused, crossing the room, searching for anything unusual, determined not to let his jealousy ruin a perfectly good opportunity to dig up dirt on Ronnie, to find some way to justify his rapidly growing hatred.
Before, he’d been more afraid of Ronnie than anything else. Now, Jack fought the urge to put his fist through that stupid, long nose.
The crunch would be incredibly satisfying.
“I didn’t want him to suspect anything!” Carla hissed.
“If that’s what it took to keep him from being suspicious, you must like him more than you say you do.”
“Not right now, Jack,” Carla sneered, hands on her hips. “Not right fucking now.”
She was right, but her words drove into him like needles. “Yeah, OK,” he said, trying to focus. Right, look for anything weird. He could do that.
There were no symbols on the walls. No strange artifacts on the wet bar. No ominous books bound in human skin. Jack heaved a sigh and caught his foot on the rug.
He went down like a sack of potatoes and only narrowly avoided smashing his forehead against the leg of a pool table.
“Are you OK?” called Carla from the other side of the room.
“Yeah,” he grunted. When he went to sit up, he found her standing before him, staring wide-eyed at his shoe.
Not his shoe, Jack realized, eyes landing on the blurry chalk outline beneath the twisted rug.
“Shit,” Carla whispered.
Together, they pulled up the edge of the rug.
Jack didn’t recognize the symbols there, but it didn’t matter. This was no child’s doodle, no strange sense of decorum. Just a glance left him thrumming with strange energy. It burrowed into him with the ease of a dagger, throbbed there like a splinter beneath his skin.
“Boris was right,” he whispered. “This looks… kind of bad.”
“Yeah,” said Carla, breathless. “Shit.”
“We’d better go,” Jack mumbled.
They rearranged the rug and fled.