Page 9

Hollis didn’t flinch. He was more worried I’d ruin something else in his club.

I turned to Rhett and knocked his glass over. It spilled across the counter and splashed down his front. He jumped to his feet and swayed where he stood. He was shit-faced.

“What the fuck?!” he yelled before he turned from the bar and headed for the door, bumping into people as he tried to make his way through the crowd.

Hollis was already sweeping the broken glass into a rag. He didn’t look up.

“Cameras in the back lot have been down all week,” he said. “Don’t be so fucking obvious.”

I blew him a kiss before I followed Rhett out.

I didn’t feel the cold. Snow drifted under the streetlights, soft and quiet, the kind that swallowed sound. Rhett stumbled down the sidewalk, then cut around the side of the building toward the back lot, keys jangling in his fist.

I pulled the mask from my bag and slid it on.

His footsteps were sloppy. Mine weren’t. The back lot was dark. One dead bulb over the dumpster. No cameras. Hollis never lied.

Rhett reached his car and fumbled with his keys. Dropped them. Swore.

I kicked the dumpster.

The clang rang off the brick like a gunshot. Rhett jerked upright, keys forgotten in the snow. His head lifted. His nostrils flared.

I let him breathe me in.

Whatever had been on the tip of his tongue at the bar finally landed. His car door. His mailbox. His pillow.

He turned around.

Ghostface, ten feet away, standing in the snow.

“You’re—” His voice cracked. “You’re not real. That’s a fucking story.”

I tilted my head.

The color drained out of his face. “No,” he breathed. “No, no, no—”

He ran.

He was drunk and stupid, and he ran the wrong way, toward the chain-link fence at the back of the lot. I didn’t run. I didn’t have to. I let the snow crunch under my boots so he’d hear me coming, let him get halfway there, then closed the distance in three long strides and drove my fist into the back of his skull.

His body crumpled. His face hit the concrete with a crack that echoed off the brick.

He went limp.

I stood over him and listened to his breathing, wet and ragged. Blood bloomed dark on the snow beneath his cheek. He was out cold.

It wasn’t enough. Not for what he’d taken.

I lifted my boot and brought it down on the back of his head. Once. His face ground into the concrete, and something gave beneath my heel. His nose, a tooth, maybe both. I pressed down until I felt it, then stepped back before I could do it again.

Not yet. He still had things to say to her.

Snow kept falling, settling on his back, on my shoulders, on the mask. My breath plumed out in front of me. It was quiet out here. Peaceful. Christmas lights blinked across the street, red, then green, then red again.

I crouched beside him, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and lifted his ruined face out of the snow.

“Merry Christmas, Rhett,” I murmured. “Let’s get you wrapped.”