One by One(72)

It means Tiger was lying on the sofa where I found the key, her hip right on the point where the cushions join. It would make complete sense—the key could so easily have slid out of her pocket while she was lying there crying. Except… it makes no sense at all. Tiger is the only person who didn’t need a key to kill Ani. She was already in the room. And if she wanted an alibi, she could have simply said she forgot to lock the door.

But no one else occupied that seat after the key went missing, apart from me…

And Liz.

As if hypnotized, my gaze drifts upwards, to the ceiling, where on the floor above Liz is moving around her room, gathering up duvets and pillows. I can hear the faint creak of the floor joists, and then the sound of her door shutting.

I hear the shush, shush as she drags the duvet along the corridor.

Then I hear the halting noise of her feet on the spiral stairs, going carefully this time; she does not want to slip again.

Then she appears in the doorway of the living room, her hands full of bedcovers, her face unreadable in the dim light, the firelight flickering off her big, owl-like glasses, and with a funny little pang I remember that very first day, the way she reminded me of an owl, paralyzed by the lights of an oncoming car.

She still looks like an owl, but suddenly the resemblance seems very different, and quite another kind of chill comes over me as I realize I was right all along—but so very, very wrong.

Because here is the thing. We think we know owls. They are the soft, friendly, blinking creatures of children’s rhymes and stories. They may be wise, but they are also slow, and easily confused.

The problem is, none of that is true. Owls are not slow. They are fast—lightning fast. And they are not confused. In their own element—the dark—they are swift and merciless hunters.

Owls are raptors. Predators.

That was what I saw in Liz, right back on that very first day. I was just too blinded by my own preconceptions to recognize it.

In the dark, owls are not the hunted, but the hunter. And right now, it is dark.

“Hi,” Liz says, and she smiles, an unreadable smile behind those blank, flickering lenses. “Are you all right?”





LIZ


Snoop ID: ANON101

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When I come back down, my arms full of duvets and pillows, Erin is standing stock-still in the middle of the room, one hand on the sofa-bed frame, as if a thought has just occurred to her.

“Hi,” I say. I throw the bedding into the armchair. Then, when she still doesn’t move, I add, “Are you all right?” I don’t know why I say that, except that she looks really odd. “Is the sofa bed stuck?”

“What?” She seems to shake herself. Then she gives a smile and a short laugh. “No, sorry. Just thinking. I was—I was thinking about Danny. They must be there by now. I was wondering if we’d hear from them tonight.”

I glance up at the clock on the mantelpiece. It is so dark now that the hands are almost unreadable, but I think I can make out that it’s nearly eight o’clock.

“I guess you’re right. How long did you say it would take to get there?”

“I thought about three hours. But given Miranda and Carl have never snowshoed before, it might take longer. Still, they left just after one. Even allowing for rests and stuff, they ought to be at Haut Montagne easily by now. Maybe even on their way back, though I don’t know if they’ll snowshoe in the dark.”

She gives the metal frame a tug. The sofa bed unfurls with a screech.

“I hope you’re right.” I move my pillows onto the mattress and then help Erin take the cushions off the other sofa and unfold the bed. “Losing the water feels like the last straw.”

“We’ll have to melt snow,” Erin says. Her face looks white and strained in the dim light, but it’s not surprising really. “I can’t believe it’s only been two days since the avalanche. It feels like forever.”

“Two days?” For a second I don’t believe her, and then I count up in my head, and I realize she’s right. Two days and four hours. It feels like a lifetime ago. It does feel like we’ve been trapped here forever. And now it is almost over. The strange thing is, I am not sure I’m ready to face reality again. It is just dawning on me that what felt like captivity might actually be a kind of idyllic tranquility. Perce-Neige is a crime scene. And we are suspects. When we get back to the real world, we are going to have to face the full glare of publicity. There will be a police investigation, reporters, news stories. Interviews. I can see the headlines now: CHALET OF DEATH.

All sorts of things are going to come out of the woodwork.

Now it is my turn to stand, stock-still, staring into the darkness, thinking.

“I’ll go and get my bedding,” Erin says, into the silence. “Can you put another log in the stove?”

“Sure,” I say, shaking myself back to the here and now. I watch her as she picks up a torch and passes through into the lobby, the thin beam spiraling around as she makes her way up the stairs, her hand going click, click, click on the banister as something hard, a ring perhaps, strikes against the metal.

Click. Click. Click.

I hear again my mother’s breathless, nervous Oh, Liz, you know Daddy doesn’t like that…