One by One(81)

“Of course,” she echoes, and for a second, just a second, her hand strays towards her pocket, where the missing passkey must have been hidden, in a totally involuntary gesture that I would have missed if I hadn’t been watching her every move. She catches herself before her hand makes contact, so that it just looks like she’s adjusting her ski suit. But I know what she was thinking.

As we make our way up the stairs, I have a sharp, piercing sense of déjà vu, the number of times we have crept up these stairs in daylight or in darkness, to some horrible discovery. Only this time, I know what lies at the top of them, and I am the one who is fearing exposure.

My heart is racing as we approach Elliot’s door, and when I reach into my pocket for the passkey, I find my hand is shaking.

“Are you okay?” Liz says. She has put her glasses back on, and they glitter in the darkness. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want.”

“I’m fine,” I say, through gritted teeth. “Just cold.”

And then I turn the key and we are inside Elliot’s room, the stench of death somehow even worse than before, though I know, logically, that cannot be the case, not in the few hours since I was last here.

Liz gags, and puts her hand over her mouth, and her action gives me an excuse.

The battery block is down the side of the desk, hidden from the door. If I can get her to concentrate on the far side of the room…

“The smell’s pretty bad,” I say. “If you want to concentrate on the bed side of the room, I can take the desk.”

She nods, and moves over to the other side of the room. I am busy going through the motions, opening drawers, pretending to search for a phone I know full well is just out of sight, when I hear something.

And then—

“Erin.”

I look up, look towards the bed, but she’s not there. She has come up behind me. And she has found the phone.

My heart starts beating so loudly I am sure that Liz will be able to hear.

Run, run, run, a voice in my ear is screaming. But I don’t. I hold very still. Maybe I can still talk my way out of this. What does it say. What does it say?

I wish I could see the lock screen, but I can’t. Liz is holding the phone in her hand, angling it towards her, so that all I can see is the light from the screen reflecting off her glasses.

“That sound…,” she says, very slowly. She looks up at me, a frown furrowed between the lenses of her spectacles. “It was a text message. And it was to you.”





LIZ


Snoop ID: ANON101

Listening to: Offline

Snoopers: 0

Snoopscribers: 1

I stare down at the screen, and then up at Erin’s blank face.

This doesn’t make sense. Or does it?

Messages: reads the lock screen, and then a little preview pane showing the first line of the message. Fuck. Erin is that you?

Erin is looking at me like a rabbit in a snare.

Elliot’s phone is a thumb lock. It makes what I have to do next very easy.

I reach out, and grab his cold, heavy hand.

“No!” Erin yelps, and she reaches for the phone, but it is too late. I am in.

SOS, I read, feeling fury begin to kindle inside me, making my cheeks hot. Please send help. IT’S LIZ.

I stare up at Erin, looking her right in the eye, feeling my jaw fall open with shocked betrayal.

That bitch. That total bitch.





ERIN


Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

Listening to: Offline

Snoopers: 5

Snoopscribers: 10

I see Liz’s face change as she reads it and I know, instantly, there is no way of explaining my way out of this.

Her face goes white, and she stays very, very still, but I don’t think it’s fear that’s paralyzing her. I think… I think it might be something else. I think it might be anger.

“You don’t understand,” I say weakly, but my voice is croaky, and I know there is no point in this. I don’t know how I ever thought that text was ambiguous. Seeing Liz’s face, I understand now, there is only one way for her to take it.

“You know,” she says, and her voice is horribly calm. I want her to scream and shout—anything would be better than this icy chill.

But there’s a kind of relief with her words, because now I can stop pretending. I can stop this horrible dance of Does she know I know she knows, and just face up to the truth.

“Yes, I know,” I say quietly. And then I take a step backwards, and I sink down on Elliot’s bed and put my face in my hands. Partly because my ankle is killing me, and the pain is starting to make me feel sick, and partly because my legs are shaking so hard I can’t keep upright anymore.

She stands there, looking down at me, her face blank and unreadable behind those huge glasses. The light from Elliot’s phone gives her face an eerie, up-lit glow. Behind her Elliot, the man she killed, lies sprawled across his desk—a terrifyingly immediate reminder of what she has done to protect her secret. The secret I now have. Oh God, what have I done? Danny, where are you?

“God, he stinks,” she says at last, wrinkling up her face. She cracks her knuckles, click, click, click, but it no longer sounds nervy. It sounds like someone limbering up for a fight. “Let’s get out of here. Come downstairs and we can talk this through.”