by Adan Ramie
Riley, Sara, and Bethany waited, Bethany still crying softly and Sara whispering her overwrought explanation, until he looked back at them. He shook his head, and Sara turned her face into Riley’s chest. Riley wrapped her arms around Sara’s body as it shook with quiet sobs.
Nick stood at the bottom of the stairwell. He set his eyes on Sara’s back, then met Riley’s eyes.
“We need to keep going,” he said softly.
She didn’t want to agree, but she follow him anyway. Stopping hadn’t done them any good. Three of them were dead. Only four remained. If they stayed where they were, she knew someone else would die.
She whispered into Sara’s ear, then led her slowly down the stairs. When they got to the bottom, Riley led her around Veronica’s still body, and they went ahead of Nick. Riley didn’t care if they followed or not, but she heard Nick’s heavy footfalls and Bethany’s light ones soon after they started the next set of steps.
After a few floors, Riley finally stopped at the door marked with a large number three. It was as good as any other floor. She turned around to face the three people behind her.
“When do we want to start checking?” she asked.
Nick and Bethany stopped behind her. He pulled in a breath and reached out a hand. “Now’s as good a time as any,” he announced, then twisted the knob. “Open sesame.”
The door opened without a struggle, and Riley led Sara through. The floor looked like the sixth, only there were no open elevator doors or blood stains. Riley noted the improvement in a part of her brain that had long been silently screaming and waiting for its turn to be heard, then she pushed it further down. She would deal with it when the nightmare was all over.
“What do you think?” Riley asked Nick.
Sara was the one who answered. “Is that light?”
CHAPTER
18
“I will not follow you. Veronica followed you and now she has met an early end,” Bethany said, pressing her hands to the sides of her head. “No more. Please, stop the bloodshed. I beg you.”
Riley had had enough. She whirled on Bethany and lunged at her. “What is your problem?”
“She killed all of them!” Bethany pointed to Sara, who stood behind Riley panting loudly. “Now, women, hear the word of the Lord. Open your ears to the word of His mouth. Teach your daughters to wail, and one another to lament. For death has climbed in through our windows.”
“We don’t know how Jolie or Cindy died,” Nick said. “There could be someone else in the hotel who did that. Veronica’s death...” He looked at Sara over Riley’s shoulder. “I believe it was an accident. These things happen. People fall, especially in stressful situations when they aren’t paying attention.”
“And when they try to push someone else down the stairs, sometimes they are the one to fall,” Sara said coldly.
Riley turned to face her. She searched Sara’s face for the innocent girl she saw in the elevator, but Sara glared past her and Nick to Bethany. Bethany muttered another prayer. Riley turned to Nick.
“Maybe you should take Bethany. Sara and I will go on ahead, and you two can choose a different floor.”
“What do you know? Does she have traps down there set for us?” Bethany cried.
“Shut your trap, Bethany,” Riley yelled, startling even herself. She gritted her teeth. “Everyone is sick of hearing your crazy rants. Now shut it or I will shut it for you.”
Bethany, standing behind Nick, physically recoiled from Riley. Sara grabbed Riley’s hand and turned her around, then clasped their hands together.
“Come on,” Sara said. Riley looked into her eyes and saw the innocent girl again. She squeezed Sara’s hand.
“We will meet you down at the lowest safe level. You go down another flight and start there or go up another flight and go behind us. Whatever you think is best,” Riley said.
She turned and walked toward the light Sara had spotted at the end of the hallway. She hoped it was a window. If there was a window from which they could see light, then maybe they could get the hell out of the trap they were in.
When they got to the light, Sara pulled Riley to a stop. Riley looked down and met Sara’s eyes.
“What is it?”
“If we get out of here alive, promise me you won’t leave me,” Sara whispered.
Riley didn’t have to think about it. “I promise.”
Sara stared into her eyes and it felt good. Riley couldn’t remember feeling so loved for a long time. She had felt loved by her family, and a few of her friends, but though she had been in a couple of relationships before Isaac, no one had ever looked at her like that. Not before him, and not since him. And he had stopped looking at her like that for months before he did what he did.
Riley’s stomach squirmed and she looked away.
“I think I –” Sara started, but Riley cut her off by pushing them toward the window. Sara looked down at the dark water. “Do you think it would open?”
Riley licked her lips, pulled her hand from Sara’s, and wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “There’s only one way to find out. Will you help me?” She put her hands on the windowpane like she had seen Nick do a few floors above them, then waited for Sara to do the same. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Sara said.
Riley sucked in a breath and pushed.
CHAPTER
19
The window gave and the first thing Riley thought was how sour the air outside smelled. The odor was something like sewer meeting mosquito spray and doused with gasoline.
She pulled back and covered her nose with one hand. Sara had pulled her shirt up to cover her nose, and Riley grinned at her from underneath her hand.
“What?” Sara asked.
“Nothing,” Riley said.
What she didn’t say was how young Sara looked, and how sweet. How, in different circumstances, she might have gotten to know Sara slowly, pulled back her tense and caustic layers, until she could see the soft underbelly she tried so hard to protect. How they could have been something to each other.
She turned back to the window and leaned forward. “There’s so much water.”
Sara leaned forward and they looked out the window together. “Do you think Veronica was right?”
“Right about what?”
“She said it’s not supposed to flood here.”
Riley racked her brain, but she couldn’t think of any reports of the city flooding in her recent memory. Then, she wasn’t from nearby and she didn’t pay much attention to weather unless there was an urgent alert or she was planning a convention trip, so maybe she wouldn’t have heard if it had flooded.
“I don’t know.” She watched the water flow by in the light from the building across the road. “Maybe it’s climate change, because it’s flooded now.”
“You may be right.”
She swept her eyes across the building with the light. There was only one light on, but as she watched, it went off, then on again. She closed her eyes, rubbed them, then leaned forward and looked again. The light blinked again, then again. She felt a smile spread across her face.
“Do you see what I’m seeing?” she asked.
“Is there someone over there trying to get our attention?” Sara whispered.
“I think so,” Riley answered.
She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and turned on her flashlight, all the while wishing she remembered anything of the Morse code her father had taught her so many years ago while camping.
“I used to know how to send messages, but it’s all a blur now.”
Sara watched the light across the road for a long moment, then nodded. “They’re saying they have provisions. They’re set up over there.”
Riley handed over her phone. “Can you ask them for help?”
“I can do that. Should I try something complicated or just SOS?”
“That would be great, Sara. Do that,” Riley said.
She watched as Sara shined the light, then covered it and uncovered it i
n a complicated system of patterns that she didn’t remember from her camping trips as a kid.
Then Sara turned off the app and handed it back. Riley tucked it in her pocket and watched as the light in the other building sent back another message, and Sara translated it.
“They say they will send help.”
Riley grabbed Sara and wrapped her in a hug. For the first time, she smelled the fruity shampoo in Sara’s hair, and she breathed it in. Sara wrapped her arms more tightly around Riley and buried her head in Riley’s shoulder.
Riley rubbed her back and thought about what she had read in Sara’s biography. She had only been eleven years old when her family died, and that had been less than ten years before.
The number twenty popped into her head, and suddenly, the presence of Sara so close felt wrong. She pulled out of the hug but smiled down at Sara.
“That was amazing. Thank you so much. You’re a good friend,” she said.
Sara searched Riley’s face with her eyes. “Of course. Should we head down and see how far we can get?”
“Definitely.”
“I wonder which way they decided to go,” Sara said. She sneered. “Maybe Bethany decided to go stay in the stairwell with Veronica and pray over her body.”
“Sara,” Riley said in a warning tone as they walked across the floor to the opposite stairwell from the one they had left Nick and Bethany in.
“It sounds like something she would do, doesn’t it?” Sara asked. “She would have probably stayed with Jolie’s body if we had let her.”
“She could have. No one forced her to come.”
“Veronica would never have let anyone stay back in the room. You know she wouldn’t.”
Riley knew she was right, so she didn’t answer. The idea of speaking ill of the dead – even of a woman she disliked as much as she did Veronica – didn’t sit well with her. They were in too precarious a situation to tempt fate or karma or whatever other otherworldly forces might exist.
She opened the door and let Sara go ahead of her. Sara walked slowly down the steps, taking them one at a time like a fearful child, and Riley stayed a few paces back.
She wondered exactly what had happened in the stairwell with Veronica. If what Sara said was true, they might be safe. If Veronica was the person who killed Cindy and Jolie, then all they had to do now that she was gone herself was wait out the storm until the roads were passable.
Then they could break out and the hotel could deal with the damages themselves and probably a lawsuit for locking several people in the hotel while the rest of the city evacuated.
They got to the second floor and Sara reached out a hand to the doorknob. Riley took the hand and squeezed it between hers.
“What is it?” Sara asked.
Riley looked into Sara’s eyes. “I’m indebted to you. I couldn’t have done that without your help.”
“Of course,” Sara said. She blushed and dropped her head, then looked up at Riley through her eyelashes. “I would do anything to help you, Riley.”
“I know. You’re a good friend and I couldn’t have gotten this far without you,” Riley said.
She opened her mouth to say more, but Sara’s blush had gone so furiously red, she knew she had better keep the rest to herself. She cleared her throat and put on her biggest cheerleader smile.
“Come on, let’s do this. Are you ready?”
“Never more ready,” Sara answered. Then she pulled her hand out of Riley’s, reached forward, and opened the door.
The second floor was empty and dry, and like the floors above it, an exact replica of all the rest. Riley laughed and Sara ignored her.
“Do you think the first floor got water damage yet?”
“Let’s find out,” Riley said. She led Sara over across the floor to the next stairwell and stopped at the door. “Would you like to do the honors?”
“I think you should. You are our leader, after all,” Sara said with a grin.
Riley twisted the knob, opened the door, and stepped into the stairwell. She started to turn to say something else to Sara, but suddenly a weight hit her from behind and shoved her into the open stairwell. The door slammed behind her.
“Sara!” Riley said. She pushed the door, but it didn’t budge. “Sara, what happened? Are you there?”
Sara didn’t answer.
She pounded on the door until her fists throbbed and screamed Sara’s name over and over. Then she stopped and listened. Not a sound responded to her pleas.
She reached out, grabbed the knob, and twisted. It turned and the door opened. She pressed forward and ran back onto the second floor, but it was deserted. There was no blood, and no body, but also no Sara.
“Sara?” she called.
She jogged in and started checking rooms. The first room was busted apart and covered in a thick layer of dust from what she assumed were building materials. She looked at the floor. Nothing disturbed the dust, not footprints or drag marks.
She left the door open and walked to the next. The same. The rest of the doors were the same. No dust had been disturbed.
She ended up at the opposite end at the stairwell door.
She reached out for the knob, then stopped and thought about what she might see. The idea of finding another body, especially the body of the one person who hadn’t wanted to leave her side in hours, made her stomach drop and her chest seize.
She tried to put the image of Sara lying broken on the floor out of her head. It stuck. She heaved in a breath, twisted the knob, and pulled the door open.
The concrete space in front of the stairwell was empty. There wasn’t a drop of blood or clump of hair waiting for her. There was nothing. She stepped in and looked up – nothing – then down – more nothing.
“Sara?” she called. Her throat felt like closing, so she sucked in a deep breath and clutched onto the rail in front of her. “Sara?” she called again, this time louder. Her own voice echoed back at her, but other than that, it was quiet. “Sara, please, if you can hear me, say something!”
There was no answer. Riley considered her options. She could go searching up one floor at a time in the stairwell and have to step back over Veronica’s twisted body looking for her friend, or she could keep going down and try to meet up with Nick and Bethany.
At least then she could have two more sets of eyes to help her find Sara. She was more convinced than ever that the person who killed Cindy and Jolie was not one among their group; Sara’s disappearance proved it.
“Sara?” she called one more time, then listened hard, but there was no response.
She started down the stairs, stopping every few steps to listen for Sara’s answering call, however faint it might be. Her own heartbeat thumped so hard in her ears, she was surprised she could hear anything at all, but when she listened hard, there was the rain beating against the sides of the building.
The tropical storm raged outside. Inside, another sort of storm had broken them down into ragged pieces and was working on destroying them all, but she determined not to let it take her down.
She came out on the first floor, and the first thing she did was call out, “Sara?”
Heavy footsteps came toward her, and she balled her fists to ready herself to fight if the person coming toward her was the killer. Nick came around the corner and stopped short when he saw her. His breathing was heavy, and his cheeks were flushed.
“Riley! Where’s Sara?” he asked.
Riley searched what she could see of the first floor, then looked back at Nick. “Where’s Bethany?”
“I don’t know!” he answered, a shrillness creeping into his voice. She noticed that his hair was messy, as if he had been pulling at it in despair, and his eyes were wet. “We got separated.”
Riley looked past him to the clear windows and doors that kept the outside out. Water flowed past the doors fast and dirty, and it came up about a foot everywhere she looked. The rug in the front of the lobby was darker in patches, and she knew if she walked
over to it, her feet would squelch in the water.
Then she looked back at Nick. He was staring at the door behind her. She whirled around, expecting to see someone standing there, but there was nothing but the empty stairwell. She closed the door and walked to him.
“How did you lose track of her? She isn’t exactly the quietest person.”
Nick opened his mouth, closed it, then pulled a tuft of his hair with one fist. She suddenly could see why his hair was so messy, and she felt sorry for him. She reached out her arms and he went to her, crushing her in a hug and burying his head in her hair.
She let him hug her, and even hugged him back, for long enough for him to stop shuddering. Then she held him out at arm’s length.
“How did it happen?” she asked. “Tell me so I can help you.”
“One minute I was coming out of the stairwell, and the next the door was slamming behind me,” he said.
It was so eerily similar to her experience that a chill ran down Riley’s spine.
“I couldn’t get it open. It was jammed. So, I went to the opposite side, ran across the floor above it, and got into the stairwell I had last seen her in, but she wasn’t there.”
“Could she have gotten hurt and tried to go for help?” Riley asked.
“I don’t know. She vanished.” He panted for a minute, then straightened up to his full height and looked at her face as if studying it for clues. “What did you say happened to Sara?”
“Basically, the same thing,” Riley said. “Only I was going into the stairwell, not walking out of it, when the door shut on me.”
“Did you see anyone before it happened?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “And I couldn’t find her. Nothing. Not a hair or-”
She didn’t say drop of blood, but she could tell by his stricken expression that he heard it anyhow. Then she remembered what she and Sara had found, and a sloppy smile spread across her face.
“But we did see a light in the building across the street before we were separated. There’s someone there. I don’t know Morse code or whatever it is, but Sara does, and she sent them a message that we needed help. They said they were sending someone.”