After one more shared look, he holds up an index finger to start the count.
One.
Two.
Three.
He pulls the cord, and the curtain draws back as sharply as an inhale.
She doesn’t scream.She just lets out one of those chest-shattering gasps until she sees there’s four equally terrified people staring back at her.Once she realizes we have no intention of killing her, sheglances down at the broken bottle I’ve held up between us and just looks… unimpressed.Resting bitch face fully activated and name tag still in place.
Billie.
After the stink-eye episode at cocktail hour, I couldn’t figure out if she was Kat Stratford standoffish or Jo Stockton shy.Dressed in all black, with her silky brown hair fastened into a low, effortless chignon, and her lips a matte shade of merlot, she looks chic and unattainable.Like she’s walked in off the street by mistake and stuck around on the off chance things might get interesting.I wonder if this is what she had in mind.
I drop my bottle down to my side—maybe that’s why she looks so defensive—and ask, “Are you okay?”
Because even though we’re in the middle of a horror movie, it’s the polite thing to ask.
Her thick, perfectly shaped eyebrows smack together in two concave swoops, and her voice has a derisive quality when she replies, “No.I’m fucking hiding from a murderer.What is wrong with you?”
Well, fuck me for being concerned.Kat Stratford it is.
Her gaze flits between the four of us, her lips pursed and her almost black eyes wary as she says, “I barely got out of there.Everyone went apeshit after what happened to”—she looks back at me—“yourdate.”
“Do you know where anyone else is?”Wes asks, and after a drawn-out apathetic stare in his direction, she shakes her head.
“As soon as we got up the stairs and the doors wouldn’t open, everyone just scattered.It was like turning on a light in a kitchen infested with roaches.I ran this way and hid… Then I heard the scream.”
I see Laurie wince in my periphery.I bet the sound is as easy for her to conjure up as it is for me.
“Did you see who did it?”Laurie asks.
Her eyes snap to Laurie and narrow.
“Did I see whodidit?I was a little busyrunning for my life.”Her tone is acidic, and it’s a small comfort to know she talks to everyone like that.She looks between us again.“What are you guys doing?”
“Looking for a way out.”
“Good.”Billie pushes the curtain to the side and steps out from the hiding spot.A few tendrils of chestnut hair fall loose around her face, and when she reaches up to bat them away, I spy blood across the top of her sweater.It’s the same kind of blood spray Colette had.I didn’t think it was possible, but her expression hardens even further when she notices me looking.
“I got hit when I was at the door,” she says, even though I didn’t ask.“How many… fatalities were there?”
Wes answers.“Four downstairs.One on this level.”
She lets out a deep, extended sigh, her eyes falling to my dress, nostrils flaring like she’s caught a whiff of a bad smell.I get the feeling Billie is not a girl’s girl, but then her gaze flicks up to stare hard at the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and I think this is the moment she cries.This is the moment we might see a small crack in the armor, a little humanity within the ice.
Instead, she just shrugs.
“The night is still young, I guess.”
CHAPTER 10
“I’m scared of walking out of this room and never killing the rest of my whole life the way I kill when I’m with you.”
—NotDirty Dancing
Brunette blowout Jennifer is hiding two booths down from where we found Billie, and she’s much happier to see us.She reveals herself when we’re a few steps from her hiding spot.Turns out it’s near impossible to completely soften the sound of five people moving through an echoey corridor, and she figured it was more likely a group of survivors rather than a group of killers.
