Every Single Secret(68)

He shook his head. “Should I?”

“You said you hated it. You said Frank Sinatra was a deal breaker. Don’t you remember?”

He just stared blankly at me.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“We should go back to the room,” he said.

I took his hand. “We’re not just going back to our room, Heath. We have to get out of Baskens.”

He looked at me, expressionless. “Yeah.”

Somehow I maneuvered him back into our room, grabbed my bag, and started stuffing clothes into it. In the process, I fished out Jessica Kyung’s card and slid it into my jeans pocket. I’d be giving her a call about Dr. Matthew Cerny as soon as I could find a phone. The authorities were sure as shit going to hear about this insanity. In the bathroom, Heath seemed to have snapped out of whatever fog he was in and was gathering our toiletries and dumping them all into his bag.

“We should confront him,” he kept saying as he went back and forth between the rooms. “Get our money back.”

“Forget the money,” I snapped. “The guy’s a whack job. A lunatic. And we don’t need to engage with him. He could be dangerous. He could hurt us. He could hurt Luca. We have to leave.”

“I just think we should take a minute and think. Make a plan.”

“He tricked us, Heath. He set this whole farce up to make us think we were up here on this mountain, in this creepy house, with other people. But we’re not. We’re alone! And, incidentally, not only that, he’s got more cameras hidden around here, which we didn’t agree to. They could be running around the clock, and we’d never know—because he never told us. He’s gone to a whole hell of a lot of trouble to watch us night and day, and it’s not just because he wants to help us. Trust me. The man has got a screw loose. He’s got about a thousand fucking screws loose.” Grabbing a poker from the fireplace, I leapt up onto the bed.

“What are you doing?” Heath said.

“I’m showing him exactly what I think of his game.” I yelled out into the room. “You watching, Doctor? Remember how I said I didn’t do therapy?” I smiled. “Well, I changed my mind. I’m finally ready to express myself.”

I swung up at the lazily spinning fan, missed, then swung once more.

The poker hit the fan with a loud metallic clang. I swung again and again, beating the thing until it began to sway crazily. One final whack, and the blades caught the poker and flung it like a missile across the room. Heath and I both ducked. I snatched it up and headed for a painting. I whacked at it, as hard as I could, and the painting separated from the frame. In the crack between, I spotted a tiny lens and yanked it out.

But I wasn’t done. I circled the room, smashing lamps and pictures and the mirror above the dresser. Things shattered and ripped, fell off the walls, and crashed to the floor. Cameras sprung out of the wall, crazy, high-tech jacks-in-the-box.

I let the poker clang to the floor, panting.

Heath lifted his head from his hands. His face was ashen. “What the hell did I drag you into?”

I grabbed his wrist. “It doesn’t matter. What we need to do now is get the car keys. And get the hell out of here. The keys are hanging on hooks in his office. And get the cell phones too, if you can. I saw Luca—”

“Luca?”

“The cook, the waiter guy. I told him to run. He’s probably gone already. I’ll get the car and bring it around front.”

“Cerny will be in his office.”

“Okay, then. Forget the cell phones. We don’t need them.”

He followed me down the front stairs. We dropped our bags in the front hall, and I followed him to the sunroom. He gently eased the door open and slipped in. Snagging the keys, he tossed them to me. I darted back through the hall to the front door. Outside, I ran for the car. The Nissan was still there, thank God. I looked across the yard. Without the chain, the barn doors gaped open. I ran over.

The knife was wedged between the concrete floor and the rotted wood-board wall, right where I’d kicked it when Heath hadn’t been watching. I grabbed it and ran back to the car, slid behind the wheel, and dropped the knife into the pocket of the door. But what the hell did I think I was going to do with a kitchen knife? Stab Cerny? Or Glenys? If things got dire, would I even have the guts to do such a thing? I guessed I was about to find out.

I turned the ignition, and the engine sputtered. Dammit, not now. I gave it one more go and, thank God, it turned over. Shaky with relief, I shifted into reverse. The next sound I heard, the crunch of metal on metal, made me stomp on the brake. Shit. I’d sideswiped the car next to me, the green Tacoma truck. I bit my lip, then kept going, scraping all the way down the vehicle until I was past it. We were getting out of here, and there was no turning back. Shifting into drive, I swerved around the side of the house just as Heath was striding across the porch with the bags. He climbed in the car.

“I couldn’t find them,” he said. It took a minute to understand what he was saying. Our phones. He wasn’t able to find our phones. But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting away from this place. I punched the gas, and we spun away from the house.



Chapter Twenty-Six

Heath’s Nissan fishtailed over the gravel road, hitting every rock and rut as I maneuvered around the hairpin curves like a madwoman.