I can tell our time away from each other hasn’t made the heart grow fonder, but Wes and I are too exhausted and injured to get offended.We’ve all spent enough time with Billie tonight to know what she’s like.
“Billie said she’s found an exit.”Jennifer turns back to us as Billie pushes off the rail and moves forward, her steps unhurried.
“You found anexit?”I ask, shifting my attention between her slow, nonchalant walk and Jennifer’s tense, adrenalized stillness.
“Uh-huh.”
I’m struck by the way she seems so unaffected by the prospect of an escape.She looks exactly like she did when she found out five people had died in the time it took her to hide behind a velvet curtain, and I feel like there should be some variation in her reaction to two starkly different scenarios.
“Why are you still here?”I blurt out.She said herself she wasn’t going to get slaughtered for anyone.Staying behind and putting herself in danger of coming face-to-face with Heart Eyes seems like a real contradiction to that.
“Because we’re in this together, right?”
The sentence is so…notBillie.I’m shocked.
“Where is it, then?”Wes asks, more focused on the prospect of getting out than Billie apparently having a lobotomy in the time she broke away from the group.“How do we get out?”
“I’ll show you,” she says lightly.“There’s only one way to get out of here.”
How does she know that?
“We should still set off the detector, right?”Jennifer says to no one in particular.“To get the police here faster?”
The promise of escape has made her fidgety, and she swings the first aid kit in front of her like it’s a cute purse she wants someone to comment on.
“I don’t think we want to do that,” Billie says as she keeps strolling forward.My eyes are drawn down to where her hand is shoved awkwardly into her pocket, clenched in a fist, and… it doesn’t look right.
“Why not?”Jennifer asks, her brow quirking up in an exasperated swoop as Billie steps up to her shoulder.
“Because this isn’t over yet.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up like someone’s gotten too close and breathed on my skin when her hand darts out of her pocket.There’s a second when I know what she’s going to do.A second when my breath gets caught in my throat as I try to sound the first syllable of Jennifer’s name.But it’s a second too late when Billie swipes her fist across Jennifer’s neck.There’s a glint of silver, a red line that appears on Jennifer’s throat, and then every nerve in my body ignites in terror as I watch her bleed.
It’s so quick.It’s so skilled.Jennifer only has the chance to take one soundless breath before the wound gushes and she collapses to the ground.It brings me right back down to the basement, to Curtis and the matching arc on his neck before he bled out all over the table.Back to the kill that started it all.I’ve been trying to block it out of my mind the whole night, but now it’s right in front of me again.Like a classic flashback.
Wes swears, and all I can do is gape at the woman standing at ease in a slowly growing pool of blood, a switchblade in one hand as the other reaches behind her and pulls a wad of pink material—the woolen mask I’ve become too familiar with—out of her back pocketand into view.
Billie tilts her head to the side, letting the mask unfurl until those heart-shaped holes are staring straight at me, and for the first time since we met I watch a slow smile spread across her face.
“Is the movie playing out like you thought it would, Jamie?”
CHAPTER 33
“You don’t murder someone you can live with, you murder the person you cannot live without.”
—NotP.S.I Love You
I should’ve known this was going to happen.It’s when you think you’re safe that the twist comes.
And what a twist.
Billie.Billie.“The night is still young,” “It’s always the quiet ones” Billie.
Wes shifts in front of me, the hand on his hip reaching back to keep me at bay, but I lean out around his shoulder.I don’t want to take my eyes off her.Not after that kind of reveal, not after the skill she’s shown severing someone’s carotid artery without flinching.Without blinking.
“Billie—”
“Well, if it isn’t our resident policeman.”There’s an unnerving smirk on her face as she discards the mask onto the ground.It soaks up Jennifer’s blood, but the dark chuckle that emits from where Billie stands draws my attention away from the way the pink is turningmaroon.“Jennifer couldn’t wait to tell me.You really kept that on the down-low, didn’t you?”
