He stares at Sienna’s curled fingers. Beneath the flecks of blood, he can see the telltale smudge of ink. Remembers the look on her face last night. The electric brightness of a new idea. Was it good enough to kill for?
If she had simply stayed with him.
If she hadn’t been so proud.
“But given that we’re the only ones here,” says Kenzo, “and I don’t think any of us are murderers, I’d say this was a terrible accident.”
“Or that’s what it’s supposed to look like,” says Malcolm.
“Not helping,” warns Priscilla.
“What would help,” says Jaxon, “is getting our shit back so we can call for help.”
The romance writer sighs. “Mr. Knight is right. We need to get into that safe...”
Malcolm hears them go, the shuffle of bodies moving toward the office, but he’s made the mistake of looking again. At the stairs. At Sienna. He hears Millie sniffling—she must have stayed behind, sweet girl—but he can’t tear his gaze from his wife’s left hand, the fingers curled gently around nothing.
Quiet settles like a veil. A shroud. An overused image, but he can’t think of anything clever. Description is her forte.Was. The tense is a missed step, a lurch in his stomach. Is that what Sienna felt, when she—
Malcolm tears his gaze away, and realizes Millie’s gone. He’s alone now. He doesn’t want to be alone. He drifts toward the hall, and the half-cocked door of Fletch’s office.
Unlike the foyer, with its painful stillness, this room is a riot of activity. Most of it concerning the safe.
“We’ve got to get it open,” says Cate.
“There’s no way to guess the code,” counters Priscilla. “If there evenisa code. After all, it’s atimelock safe.”
“Right,” says Millie, “Wouldn’t a code defeat the point?”
The time on the screen reads35:42:07.
As he watches, the seconds tick past.06. 05. 04...
“Every system has a back door,” says Jaxon. “A way to override.”
“We might as well try,” says Millie. “Maybe it’s like, deceptively simple? Like how most people’s phone passwords are just all zeroes. Or 123456.”
Kenzo’s voice rises from the floor behind the desk. “Doubtful... Aha.” He straightens, holding the cord of a landline. “I knew there had to be one. Now I just need to find the phone...” He starts tugging open the heavy oak drawers.
“Anyone know Fletch’s birthday?” asks Jaxon.
“June fifth,” answers Priscilla, to everyone’s surprise. She blinks. “It’s the same as mine,” she adds. “But I don’t know the year.”
“Sixty-three,” offers Malcolm, through the churning fog of grief. He remembers, because Arthur threw a party for his fiftieth, back in 2013. A rooftop affair, attended by the best and brightest of the thriller scene. Malcolm had tried—unsuccessfully—to snag an invite.
Jaxon claps his hands. “Okay, 060563.”
“What if we get it wrong?” asks Millie.
“Then we keep trying.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” says Cate, but Jaxon is already approaching the safe.
At the desk, Kenzo lets out another “Aha” as he drags out a clunky device, at odds with the elegance of the rest of the office. No wonder Arthur hid it. But when he plugs it in and lifts the receiver to his ear, his face falls. Malcolm can hear the absence of the dial tone.
“Well,” Kenzo says softly, setting the phone back on its cradle. “That’s not ideal.”
Just then, Jaxon finishes punching in the numbers on the keypad.
