When he stops, the screen reads72:00:00.
Seventy-two hours.
It’s ages, and a blink. A long weekend. A marathon and a sprint.
Seventy-two hours, in this house, on this island, with no way to access the outside world.
No way to check email, or socials, google a synonym or doomscroll between sessions.
Seventy-two hours to finish a book.
Not just a book, butthebook, the most anticipated one in modern history.
Seventy-two hours to earn two million dollars.
And turn her life around.
The Thriller Writers
THE DOOR SWINGS OPEN WITH A WEARYsigh.
A sound unique to places long neglected, and secrets waiting to be brought to light.
“Ah,” says Malcolm, surveying the bedroom. “This’ll do.”
It’s smaller than he would have liked, but there was a mad dash for the rooms, Millie and Jaxon running around like kids at a sleepover, trying to grab the best one, while Kenzo struck out in search of the one with theleastamount of light, and Priscilla looked for the biggest bed.
Malcolm’s just glad that none of the rooms had two beds, since Sisi probably would have insisted on taking that one. And then the others would have noticed. Not that it will be a problem anymore. With so much on the line, Sienna will surely understand—they have to work together. Which means, they have tostaytogether.
The rooms are split between the house’s two wings, and by the time it all shook out, Cate, Kenzo, and Priscilla had claimed the East Wing, while Millie, Jaxon, and Malcolm and Sienna filled the West.
The rooms themselves are rather quirky.
Each seems to have been designed around a color. Which he supposes isn’t that strange on its own. Whatisstrange is the sheer dedication to employing that color, from the walls to the curtains, the tartan spread on the bed, the decorative cushions on the chair. That’s the other thing. Each room has also been given an old-fashioned typewriter, and the paper for it matches the rest of the room. It seems like an awful lot of work, matching the paper to the decor, having colored paper at all, for that matter, but according to Eleanor that will be the only way to differentiate them, since this whole affair is being judged blind.
That too strikes him as faintly ridiculous—surely they’ll be able to tell the difference between a seasoned thriller writer and a novice, and don’t even get him started on the romance author. Priscilla will probably wrap up Petrarch’s story in a neat little bow, give her that formulaic happily-ever-after, sealed with a kiss. Kenzo’s ending will undoubtedly be blood-soaked. Jaxon isprobablynot stupid enough to add extraterrestrials to the world’s most successful crime series, but he wouldn’t bet on it. Poor Millie’s will be overwrought, and Cate—well, she hasn’t even cut her teeth yet. No, the rest of them are woefully outmatched.
Malcolm takes up a sheet of butter-yellow paper.
The room itself is more egg yolk, a shade that reminds him of the gorse that painted the hills around Edinburgh every spring. He tries to dig up the name for the yellow tartan on the bed. “Sinclair,” he thinks aloud. He’s almost certain. But it doesn’t really matter. For once, Sienna can’t pull up the answer on her phone to prove him wrong.
On the desk beside the typewriter is a bottle of Wite-Out and a printed copy of Arthur’s final manuscript.
Minus the ending, of course.
Terrible business, he thinks.
If Sienna died, god forbid, he’d be able to muscle through, write an ending worthy of them both. But ifhewent first—no, it doesn’t even bear thinking about.
Behind him, Sisi is heaving her suitcase up onto the bed. She begins unpacking, sorting clothes into cupboards and arranging her meds on the bedside table as if she’s moving in. She always does that, even when they’re only staying for one night.
Malcolm leaves her to it and drifts to the window. He hoists it open, letting cool air spill into the room, the sound of the sea crashing against the cliffs below.
He inhales deeply, still trying to process the magnitude of the news about Arthur. If he’s being honest, he didn’t know the manthatwell. He’s looked up to him for years—hell, he’s the reason Malcolm started writing—and he always hoped that Penn Stonely’s eventual success would bring them closer, that Arthur would come to see him as a colleague and a friend. This weekend was meant to be the foundation on which he built that dream. Malcolm and Arthur, together in the drawing room, a bottle of Scotch and a roaring fire. Trading war stories from the narrative trenches.
That dream’s gone up in smoke.
And he’s devastated, he really is.
