Beck, Sierra, and Adi exchanged glances.
“Carter,” Beck said gently. “The Game Master is dead. Without him, there is no show.”
32
Beck
Beck tossed and turned, unable to fall back asleep. He’d wokenentirely too early, images of the Game Master’s hotel suite lodged in his mind, and had spent the past hour trying unsuccessfully to switch off his brain.
It was all just so awful. The body on the floor, the note on the table, the condensation dripping down the wine bottle, two glasses set up for a conversation he would never have—
Wait.
Beck sat up suddenly. He ran through the scenario again, the disjointed facts of the evening. The text messages. The wineglasses. What he knew about Carter and Alicia and, most of all, what he knew about Louis Augustus Russell. He tried to fit the puzzle pieces together in a way that would make sense, but . . . they didn’t make sense. And now he knew why.
He threw off his blankets and ran into the hall, nearly crashing into Sierra as she burst out of her own room.
“Why did he invite Carter over?” Sierra cried, stopping Beck in his tracks.
“Holy crap,” he said, gesticulating wildly with his arms. “That’s what I was going to say!”
Sierra laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth. It was the first time Beck had ever seen her without dark eyeliner and black lips.
Yet nothing was more surprising than her expression. She looked downrightgiddy.
“Either he wanted to do the interview,” Beck said, “or he wanted to seduce her. Which, gross, but there’s no reason he would kill himself before she got there!”
“Whassgoinon?” Carter mumbled, staggering out of her room.
“If he was planning to kill himself, why did he invite you over?” Beck said.
Carter stared at him through half-lidded eyes. Then, “I’m making coffee.” She shuffled to the kitchen.
Beck’s mind whirled. He didn’t need coffee. “Louis barely knew Carter. Of all the people in his life, why would he choose her, a contestant, to be the one to find his body? He wouldn’t invite her over and then kill himself.”
“Maybe because Carter’s a Solve Specialist?” suggested Adi, appearing in the doorway. “He wanted her to break the news to the Domain first, before the police did?”
“But that doesn’t explain—”
“—the second wineglass,” Beck and Sierra said in unison.
He blinked at her in surprise. Okay, now it was getting creepy.
“So . . . what are you saying?” called Carter from the kitchen.
The three of them made their way to the stools around the island.
“Louis didn’t kill himself,” said Sierra. “And if he didn’t kill himself, that means . . .”
“He was murdered,” finished Beck.
“But what about the suicide note?” asked Carter. “It was definitely his handwriting.”
“Maybe he was under duress?” said Adi. “Forced to write it at gunpoint?”
“Or it was forged,” said Sierra. “It’s not hard to find samples of his handwriting online.”
Beck pinched the bridge of his nose, now trying to remember the details from the hotel room rather than block them out. Louis had been expecting Carter, but his killer had gotten there first.
