Lock Every Door (ARC)

by Riley Sager

  “Is that where you’ve been all this time?”

  Ingrid drops onto a bench across from the showers. “I’ve been everywhere. Port Authority. Grand Central. Penn Station. Anywhere there are crowds. Because they’re looking for me, Juju. I know they are.”

  “But they’re not,” I say.

  “You don’t know that for certain.”

  “I do, because—”

  I stop myself before the rest of the sentence emerges.

  Because I’m the only one who’s been looking for you.

  That’s what I was about to say. But I now know that’s a lie. They’ve been looking for her, too.

  Through me.

  Rather than search themselves, they had me do it. It’s why Greta Manville suggested places for me to look. Why Nick lowered me down in the dumbwaiter to search 11A, hoping I’d find something of use. It’s probably even why he slept with me. To endear himself, keep me close, learn everything I had discovered.

  I assume he didn’t pretend to be Ingrid via text until after they realized I knew something was amiss. By that point, they were prepared to cut their losses as far as Ingrid was concerned.

  “If you were so scared of being found, why didn’t you take a bus or train out of the city?”

  “That’s kind of difficult when you don’t have any money,” Ingrid says. “And I’ve got next to nothing. My meals have been fished out of trash cans. I had to shoplift this stupid hair dye. What little money I do have came from panhandling and stealing coins from fountains. So far, I have, like, twelve dollars. At this rate, maybe I’ll have enough to leave the country after a decade. Because that’s what we have to do, Juju. Go someplace where they’ll never be able to find us. It’s the only way to escape them.”

  “Or we could go to the police,” I suggest.

  “And tell them what? That a bunch of rich bitches at the Bartholomew are worshipping the devil? Just saying it sounds ridiculous.”

  As does hearing it out loud, even though it’s exactly what I think is happening. They post discreet ads in newspapers and online, luring people to the building with the promise of money and a place to stay. People like me and Ingrid and Dylan.

  Each of us entered the Bartholomew willingly. But once we were there, the rules kept us trapped.

  “How did you figure it all out?”

  “It was Erica who started it,” Ingrid says. “We went to the park, just like you and I did, and she told me she found out that the person who was in 12A before her wasn’t dead, which is what she’d been told. That freaked her out a little. So I did some research into the Bartholomew and learned about some of the weird stuff that happened there. That freaked Erica out a lot. So when she left, I assumed it was because she felt too creeped out to stay there anymore. But then a few days later, Dylan came by asking if I’d heard from her. And that’s when I suspected something else was going on.”

  Her story is a lot like my own. Her new friend went missing; she started to think something weird was going on and decided to look into it. The only difference was that she learned about Greta Manville’s relationship to Cornelia Swanson much sooner than I did.

  “I met Greta in the lobby during my interview with Leslie,” Ingrid says. “And I thought it was cool to be in the same building as an author, you know? At first, I thought she was nice. She even gave me a signed copy of her book. But when I read about Cornelia Swanson and noticed their resemblance, I knew what was up.”

  “You asked her about it,” I say. “She told me.”

  “I guess she left out the part about threatening to get me kicked out if I ever talked to her again.”

  That detail went unmentioned, even when Greta told me about her life at the Bartholomew. My apartment used to be her apartment, which means that at one point it belonged to Cornelia Swanson.

  It’s the same apartment where she murdered her maid.

  Only it wasn’t just a murder.

  It was a sacrifice.

  Fulfilling the promise of the ouroboros.

  Creation from destruction.

  Life from death.

  Ruby might have been the first, but I have a heart-sickening feeling that Erica was the last. I try not to think about how many others there have been in between then and now. There’ll be plenty of time to dwell on that later. Right now, I need to focus on one thing—extricating myself from the place in a way that will cause the least amount of suspicion.

  “What happened after you talked to Greta?”

  “I knew I didn’t want to stay there, that’s for damn sure.” Ingrid stands and makes her way to the row of sinks along the wall. She turns on the tap and starts splashing her face with water. “At that point, I had two thousand dollars in apartment-sitting money. Enough to get me far away from that place. But I also knew there’d be a lot more money coming if I stayed.”

  The cash. Dangled in front of us at the end of each week. Yet another way the Bartholomew trapped us. It certainly kept me there another night.

  “I decided to stay,” Ingrid says. “I didn’t know for how long. Maybe another week. Maybe two. But I wanted to feel safe so I—”

  “Bought a gun.”

  Ingrid looks at me in the mirror above the sink, her brows arched. “So you found it. Good.”

  “Why did you leave it there in the first place?”

  “Because something happened,” Ingrid says, her voice getting quiet. “And if I tell you what it is, you’re totally going to hate me forever.”

  I join her by the sink. “I won’t. I promise.”

  “You will,” Ingrid says, now using a damp paper towel to clean the back of her neck. “And I totally deserve it.”

  “Ingrid, just tell me.”

  “That gun cost me everything I had. That two grand I had saved up? Gone like that.” She snaps her fingers, and I can see the chipped remains of her blue nail polish. “So I asked Leslie if I could get an advance on my apartment-sitting money. Nothing huge. Just a week’s pay early. She told me that wasn’t possible. But then she said that I could have five thousand dollars—not a loan or an advance, but five grand with no strings attached—if I did one little thing.”

  “What was it?”

  Ingrid stalls by examining a strand of her black-as-pitch hair. When she looks in the mirror, there’s disgust in her eyes. As if she hates every single thing about herself.

  “To cut you,” she says. “When we crashed in the lobby. That wasn’t an accident. Leslie paid me to do it.”

  I recall that moment with vivid clarity, like it’s a movie being projected right there on the bathroom wall. Me burdened with my two grocery bags. Ingrid rushing down the stairs, her eyes on her phone. Then the collision, our bodies ricocheting, the groceries falling, me suddenly bleeding. In the chaotic aftermath, I didn’t have time to give too much thought as to how my arm had been cut.

  Now I know the truth.

  “I had a Swiss army knife,” Ingrid says, unable to look at me. “I held it against my phone, with just the tip of the blade exposed. And right when we crashed, I sliced your arm. Leslie told me it shouldn’t be a big cut. Just enough to draw blood.”

  I back away from her. First one step. Then another.

  “Why—why would they need you to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Ingrid says. “I didn’t ask. By then, I had my suspicions about what she was. What all of them are. And I guess I thought it was some kind of test. Like they were trying to convert me. Enticing me to join them. But at the time, I was too desperate to ask questions. All I could think about was that five thousand dollars and how much I needed it to get away from that place.”

  I keep moving away from her until I’m on the other side of the bathroom, sinking into an open stall and dropping onto the toilet seat. Ingrid rushes toward me and drops to her knees.

  “I’m so sorry, Juju,” she says. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

  A bubble of anger rises in my chest, hot and bilious. But it’s not directed at Ingrid. I can�
��t blame her for what she did. She was broke and desperate and saw an easy way to make a lot of money. If our roles were reversed, I might have done the same thing, no questions asked.

  No, my anger is reserved for Leslie and everyone else in the Bartholomew for exploiting that desperation.

  For turning it into a weapon.

  “You’re forgiven,” I tell Ingrid. “You did what you needed to do to survive.”

  She shakes her head and looks away. “No, I’m a shitty person. Truly awful. And right after it happened, I decided I needed to leave. Five thousand dollars was more than enough for me. I didn’t want to stay there and see how much lower I could sink.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all of this that day in the park?”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  The answer is no. I would have thought she was lying. Or, worse, deeply disturbed. Because no one in their right mind would believe there was a group of Satanists occupying a building like the Bartholomew. That, of course, is how they managed to go undetected for so long. The preposterousness of their existence is like a shield, deflecting all suspicion.

  “And you certainly wouldn’t have forgiven me for hurting you like that,” Ingrid says. “In my mind, the best thing I could do was try to warn you off by giving you some idea about what was going on there. I hoped it would, I don’t know, scare you enough to leave. Or at least make you think twice about staying.”

  “Which it did,” I say. “But does this mean you really did run away?”

  “Yes, but not the way I wanted to,” Ingrid says, talking so fast now that I can barely keep up. “That night, I was all packed and ready to leave. I put that note in the dumbwaiter, trying to do everything I could to get you to leave. I left the gun for the same reason. Just in case, God forbid, you needed to use it. I didn’t leave immediately because Leslie told me she’d be by at some point in the night to give me the five thousand dollars I was promised. Also, I had arranged to tell Dylan everything I knew, just in case it could help him find out what happened to Erica. My plan was to get the cash from Leslie, meet Dylan in the basement, grab my things, and give the keys to Charlie on the way out. That didn’t happen, obviously.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “They came for me,” Ingrid says. “Well, he did.”

  My thoughts flash back to that video of Erica.

  It’s him.

  “Nick,” I say.

  Ingrid shudders at the name. “All of a sudden, he was there.”

  “At the door?”

  “No,” she says. “Inside the apartment. I don’t know how he got in. The door was locked. But there he was. I think he had been there for hours. Hiding. Waiting. But the moment I saw him, I knew I was in danger. He looked mean. Like, truly scary.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “That I shouldn’t struggle.”

  Ingrid pauses, and I suspect she’s replaying that moment in her head the same way I saw our collision in the Bartholomew’s lobby. She starts shaking again. Not just her hands but her entire body—an uncontrollable tremble. Tears pool in her eyes as she croaks out a single, mournful sob.

  “He told me it would be easier that way,” she says as the tears break free and stream down her cheeks. “And I knew—I knew that he was planning to kill me. He had a weapon with him. A stun gun. I screamed when I saw it.”

  And I heard that scream as I stood in the kitchen of 12A. Which means others probably heard it, too. Including Greta, who lives directly below that apartment. I suspect no one said anything because they knew what was happening.

  Ingrid was being led to slaughter.

  “How did you get away?”

  “You saved me.” Ingrid wipes her eyes and gives me a warm, grateful smile. “When you came to the door.”

  “Nick was there?”

  “Right behind me,” Ingrid says. “I didn’t want to answer the door, but when we heard it was you, Nick told me I had to open it or you’d get suspicious. He had the stun gun pressed against my back the entire time, just in case I tried to warn you. He told me he’d paralyze us—me then you.”

  That explains everything. Why it took Ingrid so long to open the door. Twenty seconds, by my count. Why she had opened it only a crack. Why she wore that obviously fake smile and told me she was fine.

  “I knew something was wrong,” I say, surprised by my own tears, which spring forth suddenly now that Ingrid’s have stopped. “I wanted to help you.”

  “But you did, Jules. I had pepper spray in my pocket. A tiny bottle attached to my key ring. Nick appeared so fast I didn’t have time to grab it. Then you came to my door. And you talked to me just long enough for me to reach into my pocket and grab it.”

  I remember that vividly. The way her right hand had been plunged into the pocket of her jeans, grasping for something.

  “After you left, I begged him not to hurt you,” Ingrid says. “Then I hit him with the pepper spray. After that, I ran. I didn’t take anything with me. There wasn’t any time. I had to leave everything behind. My phone. My clothes. Money. The only thing I had were the keys, which I threw onto the lobby floor because I knew I wouldn’t be able to come back.”

  The locker room door opens, and Bobbie pokes her head inside.

  “Ladies, you’re going to need to wrap this up,” she says. “I can’t stay out here all night. It’s getting packed out here, and someone’s going to take my cot if I’m not in it soon.”

  Ingrid and I make our way out of the locker room into a shelter even more crowded than when we left it. Bobbie is right. All the cots have now been claimed. Many are occupied by people sleeping or reading or just staring off in silence. A few serve as makeshift social hubs, where groups of women sit in clusters to laugh and converse. It’s a loud and bustling place, which makes me understand why Ingrid stuck to bus and train stations. There’s safety in numbers.

  For the two of us.

  But there’s still one apartment sitter left at the Bartholomew. And he’s all alone.

  That realization prompts another thought. One so awful it makes my heart beat like a snare drum in my chest.

  I pull out my phone and swipe through my search history, returning to the lunar calendar I had looked at earlier.

  I type in this month.

  I type in this year.

  When the results appear, I gasp so loud it makes others in the shelter stop and stare. Ingrid and Bobbie close in around me, concerned.

  “What’s wrong?” Ingrid says.

  “I need to go.” I pull away from them, heading to the exit. “Stay with Bobbie. Trust no one else.”

  Ingrid calls after me. “Where are you going?”

  “The Bartholomew. I need to warn Dylan.”

  In a matter of seconds, I’m out of the gymnasium, then out of the building, then out on the street, where the moon still glows bright and round.

  It’s a full moon.

  The second one this month.

  Another blue moon.

  42

  I take a cab back to the Bartholomew, even though I can’t afford it.

  My wallet is empty.

  So is my bank account.

  But speed is the most important thing right now. I’ve allowed myself twenty minutes to get back to the Bartholomew, collect what I can, meet up with Dylan, and then get the hell out of there. No explanations. No goodbyes. Just in and out, dropping my keys in the lobby before I’m out the door.

  Already I’m behind schedule. Traffic on Eighth Avenue is a slow crawl north. In five minutes, the cab’s traversed only two blocks. I sit in the back seat, fear and impatience forming a potent combination that has my entire body buzzing. My hand shakes as I grab my phone and call Dylan.

  One ring.

  The cab, which has been idling at a red light, surges forward the moment the light turns green.

  Two rings.

  We zip past another block.

  Three rings.

  Another block goes by. Sixteen more to go.


  Four rings.

  After zooming across one more block, the cab screeches to a halt at a red light. I’m thrust forward, barely avoiding the plexiglass barrier between the back seat and the front. The phone drops from my trembling hands.

  It keeps ringing, the sound distant and tinny on the cab floor. The ringing stops, replaced by Dylan’s outgoing voicemail message.

  “This is Dylan. You know what to do.”

  I snatch the phone from the floor, practically shouting into it.

  “Dylan, I found Ingrid. She’s safe. She doesn’t know where Erica is. But you need to get out of there. Right now.”

  In the front seat, the cabbie looks up and gives me a curious glance in the rearview mirror. Arched brows. Creased forehead. Already he’s regretting picking me up. He’ll regret it even more in a minute.

  I look away and keep shouting into my phone, the words tumbling out.

  “I’m on my way there now. If you can, meet me outside. I’ll explain the rest after we leave.”

  I end the call as the light changes and the cab speeds forward again, hurtling us through Columbus Circle at a dizzying pace. On the right, the buildings fall away, replaced with the tree-studded expanse of Central Park.

  Thirteen blocks to go.

  I send Dylan a text.

  CALL ME.

  I immediately send another, more urgent one.

  YOU’RE IN DANGER.

  We zip by one more block. Twelve more remain.

  I tell myself to stay calm, stay focused.

  Don’t panic.

  Think.

  That’s what will get me out of this mess. Not panicking. Panic only breeds more panic.

  But thinking—calm, rational thought—will work wonders. Only rational thought is impossible after I check my watch. Ten minutes spent in this cab and I’m not even halfway there.

  Time to bail.

  When the cab stops at the next light, I throw open the passenger door and leap out. The driver starts shouting at me, words I can’t make out because I’m too busy scrambling past cars in other lanes on my way to the sidewalk. Behind me, the cabbie honks his horn. Two quick, angry honks followed by a lengthy one that follows me up the block.