The string that was woven into place inside my chest when we first met feels like it’s being sawn through with a blunt knife, but I push away the hurt and ask what everyone has avoided saying outright.“Did you know we were all in danger?”
I need to know for sure.Wes has proven so far that he’s not stupid.Hotheaded and impulsive, yes, but he’s shown how capable he is with the bare minimum.If he started the night with suspicions that this could happen, that whoever is doing this is the same person responsible for the murders he’s investigating, there’s no way he’d come in unarmed.
His face turns ashen, and that’s answer enough until he adds an emphatic “No.”
He shifts toward me, and it takes everything in me not to flinch.Still, he stops short.“Jamie…No.None of the women attended speed dates.They met at Italian cooking classes and painting nights and fucking lock-and-key events.This isn’t his MO.He finds someone and takes them home.One person—one woman.He doesn’t slaughter a bunch of people while wearing a mask.He’s escalated.And the fact I’m here—the facthe’shere—any of us are… All of this is just by chance.”
Chance.A twist of fate.That kind of thing should be reservedfor meeting the love of your life, not…this.
I think back to when we were down in the basement bar.When I crawled out from under the table and saw Wes across the room he was scared, angry, but most of all he was shocked.We all were.But now I think his shock was for a different reason.It was because his role-play materialized and then multiplied in horrifying, unimaginable ways like some critter from an eighties creature feature.
“You have to believe that I—”
“We don’t have to believe shit,” Stu spits before Wes can start a new appeal, emphasizing his final word with a thrust of his knife into the space between us.The air is so thick with tension I’m surprised it doesn’t bleed.
“I’m pretty sure being a cop in this scenario doesn’t make you trustworthy, Wes.It doesn’t automatically make you the good guy.If anything, it puts you at the top of the fucking list of suspects.”
There’s a moment where Wes seems like he’s going to argue, where he seems like he’s going to shoot Stu down like he has before, but then I witness the moment he realizes he can’t.
Stu is right yet again.I hate to admit it, but he is.
Maybe in the past it would’ve been something that would instill hope, but relying on the assumption that being a police officer makes someone safe by default is the kind of thinking that can get you good and dead.Not just in a horror movie.Not just in any movie.Taking on the role of a “safe” person is the way that true evil can conceal itself.
It’s as much of a mask as the one Heart Eyes has been wearing tonight.
“I know,” Wes finally says, his voice hoarse and tight even when he tries to clear his throat.“I know.So don’t trust me because of that.Don’t trust me at all, if that’s what you want, but the alarm system is a chance for us to get out of here.This is a chance for us to end this.”
And that’s the carrot dangling in front of us.His idea is one that could get us out.Yeah, he lied, but he was standing right next to mewhen John was killed.I know he’s not Heart Eyes.Even though he’s hurt my feelings, that doesn’t make him a villain… it just puts him in good company with a lot of other guys I’ve dated.
“What do you need us to do?”
I can’t bring much inflection back into my voice.Wes picks up on it and I think sourly that it must be those well-honed investigative skills, but then that soft look is back on his face, now with an added layer of apology, and I’m unable to hold his gaze.I turn my face to the partition as if I’m keeping watch.Out of my periphery, I see him turn back to the others.
“The control panel is usually located at the main entrance, but we would’ve seen it when we were there… You said the roped-off areas are employee sections?”
Stu nods.
“Then we’ll probably find it in a utility room down one of those halls.We can send the signal from there, but if not, we’ll need to set off the alarms through the smoke detectors.Does anyone have a lighter?”
Everyone shakes their head, and I’ve never been more disappointed that smoking rates have declined among my generation.If we were in a nineties rom-com, at least half of the people in this room would be chain smokers.
“I have a vape?It’s flat, though,” Dani says quietly, and she pulls a pretty pink vape bar from inside the fold of her blue dress.A deeply primal part of me has a spark of envy that her dress has pockets, but it’s quickly tamped down when Wes fashions the grim line of his mouth into a tight conciliatory smile, shaking his head at her offer.
“We should also go back to the janitor’s closet, then,” he says.“Get something flammable, a lighter or some matches.”
“So we should split up.”
I can’t stop my eyes from rolling.Stu really is a one-trick pony.
“That didn’t work out so great last time,” I remind him.
“We’re alive, aren’t we?”
I’m about to point out three other people from our original group no longer have that luxury when he uses his knife to point between me and Wes.
“You two can stick together.I think the three of us would rather stay away from thewomanthis is all happening for and the guy who’s been lying the whole night.”
That lands about as well as can be expected, and if glares were daggers, mine would pierce right through Stu’s skull.
