I went upstairs and into the suite, passing by everybody who was in the lobby. People were trying to check out and move on, and judging by the line of people waiting to do so, I imagined that the retreat would only be half as full as it currently was by the end of the day. It was a relief to me to know the more people who were here, the more suspects there were as to who might be trying to hurt me or the retreat. I had no idea if they were connected, I only knew that I had to talk to Logan about the whole thing as soon as possible.
I was relieved when he showed up later that evening. I had gone down to dinner without him, avoiding everyone, doing my best to hide in the corner. It seemed like every time I walked by a table I heard whispers, even from people I’d never seen before. I felt like everybody knew what I’d done with Logan, though I knew the reason they were looking at me had more to do with Michael. I swallowed my annoyance and paranoia and got through the meal without a word to anybody, though on several occasions I tried to catch Marilyn’s eye.
When Logan opened the door, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw him smudged with dirt, his whole body covered in it.
“Sexy?” he asked, looking down at his soiled clothes. I nodded, grinning at him. He came toward me but I put my hand out.
“I already took a shower,” I said.
He laughed, leaning in to kiss me without getting his body too close.
“I’ll be right back,” he said and disappeared into his room. I thought of joining him in the shower but I had a feeling if we started touching each other, we wouldn’t stop long enough to talk. And I really needed to talk to him, to share with him something that had been on my mind since it had happened.
He came out of the bathroom scrubbing his hair with a towel, another wrapped around his hips. He looked mouthwatering, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he crossed the room and sat next to me on the couch. The towel fell low on his hips and I saw the v-lines that dipped just below, disappearing beneath the towel. I wanted to trace them with my tongue, all the way down to his cock, to take it in my mouth and watch his face as I made him come.
“You’re a dirty girl,” he said, as if he could read my thoughts.
I blushed but smiled at him.
“How did the rest of your day go?” I asked. I was still shaken by what had happened on my way back from the worksite but I was afraid to tell him, afraid that it would make him freak out too much and insist that I stay locked away in this room. I didn’t want to be trapped, to be protected.
“It was fine. Uneventful. Now tell me what you’ve been waiting to tell me.”
I took a deep breath. “The logs—the marks on them. I’ve seen them before.”
His brow furrowed. “What? Where?”
“Here,” I said, looking away from him. “The night—the night you thought I went to Michael’s room.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Yeah. You and I had that fight and I left. I just wanted to go for a walk outside. I did for a little while—I went out into the woods and walked around on the path with a flashlight. It was nice.”
“How long did you spend out there?”
“Most of the time I was gone. A couple of hours. I didn’t see anybody else until I started back up toward the retreat center.”
“Who did you see?” he asked, leaning into me.
“I don’t know,” I said, chewing on my lip. “I didn’t see their face. But they were—I couldn’t tell whether or not they had been following me.”
“What were they doing?”
“I didn’t know at first. I watched. It seemed like they were—they were just walking along the wall on the outside, staring at it. I hid behind a tree and watched for a minute. Whoever it was made two laps around the building before going inside.”
“Did you follow them inside?” he asked.
I nodded. “I did after a minute. Then I followed the footprints once I got inside. They were icy, so they left tracks.”
“Where did they go?” he asked.
I swallowed, avoiding his eye. “To the lounge on the first floor,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“They went into the lounge on the first floor. I saw—I saw them in there at the edge of one of those big bookcases. They were carving something into the wood with the edge of a coin.”
“They were carving something into the wood,” he repeated slowly, as if he hadn’t quite grasped the meaning of the words.
“Yes,” I said to him. “I was watching. And then they almost caught me—they looked up, but I couldn’t see their face. They were totally in the shadows under that hood. It just looked like a black hole.”
“Then what happened?”
“They left. I didn’t try to follow them again. I went to look at what had been carved into the shelf. It was—it was pretty much the same thing that was on the log out there. It even—it had the word “die” at the very bottom.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “Why didn’t you tell me this, Lilian?” he asked.
I snorted, crossing my arms over my chest.
“I got a little distracted when you accused me of being a slut who slept with my boss just to get back at you,” I said. Just saying the words, remembering the accusation made me angry with him.
“I didn’t call you that,” he said sharply. “I would never call you that. Michael was the one who said you went to his room.”
“And you believed him over me,” I said bitterly. For some reason, there was a heat curling within me, an anger that was threatening to take over. “I guess birds of a feather, you know—”
“I am nothing like your disgusting dead boss, Lilian,” he said. “Do not compare me to him.”
I took a deep breath. “You’re right. You’re different. Even Michael would have thought I was ruined goods after he found out I slept with you. You didn’t even care if you were nothing but sloppy seconds as long as it meant you’d get what you wanted.”
He stared at me, not even responding as I stood up.
“You think I got what I wanted from you, Lily?” he asked quietly.
“Didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t gotten half of what I want from you yet.”
“Yet?” I asked, my breath catching in my throat. “What exactly do you think is going to happen here?”
“I think that you’re going to relax and have the best fucking sex of your life with me every minute that you can before you leave this retreat,” he said.
“You think it was that good?” I asked him, my heart speeding up at his words, my pussy feeling swollen and wet in my panties.
“Oh, I know it was that good,” he said with a cocky grin. He put his hands on my hips and pulled me back down onto the couch, onto his lap. Then he softly kissed the back of my neck.
“I’m sorry I thought you slept with Michael,” he said quietly. “I was—I was jealous. Like an idiot.”
“Jealous?”
“I couldn’t imagine the thought of another man getting to touch you before I did,” he said.
I frowned, looking back at him. “Is that what it’s about? Getting to me first?”
“No,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Stop trying to fight with me, Lilian.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he said, kissing me again. “You’re trying to make me angry so that I don’t want you. Because if I don’t want you then I won’t tempt you.”
“That’s not true,” I breathed.
He chuckled. “Tell me what else happened that night. Did you come straight back?”
“Yes,” I said to him. It was hard to breathe sitting in his lap like that, especially when I felt his cock press against my ass. I wiggled against him, unable to help myself, and it grew even harder beneath me. “I came straight back and went to bed.”
“I see,” he said. He shifted my body, turning me to the side so that I could look at his face.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked. I looked
away from him, thinking about what had happened earlier in the snow and the look on Michael’s face when he’d fallen.
“Nothing,” I said to him, kissing him instead of answering. He hesitated, but then allowed me to taste his mouth, wrapping his arms around me to hold me against him.
It wasn’t long before my legs were open and he had those thick fingers buried in my pussy just the way I liked, fucking me with them as I bucked against his hand. The pleasure was immense as it crashed over me, only getting me wetter to start the rest of the night with him. We didn’t speak anymore, but made our way into the bedroom and spent the rest of the evening with our bodies grinding against each other, trying to enjoy the moments we had together before they ended.
12
Logan
I woke up to Lily grinding her wet pussy up and down the length of my already-hard cock, letting the head of it rub against her clit. She seemed barely aware of what she was doing, her hips lazy, her body speeding up when I kissed her. I lifted her hips and slid deeply into her pussy without waiting, fucking her good and hard first thing in the morning just like she wanted. I didn’t know how I’d ever be able to wake up happy without her in my bed again. So far, we had no idea how long Lily would have to stay at the retreat. We hadn’t heard back from the cops after what had happened to Michael—I was told that there would be an autopsy before they could move on with the investigation, and in the meantime Lily was to stay put, which kept her in bed with me for as long as I could hold her there during the day.
I got up eventually, taking a shower and getting ready to go. Lily had taken to staying in the room, and I felt bad that she felt like she had to avoid the rest of the guests at the retreat. She didn’t feel safe there—people believed she’d killed Michael, and though I wouldn’t admit it to her, I wasn’t quite sure myself that she hadn’t. She refused to talk about it, which made me think that something had happened she didn’t want to mention. I knew better than to bring it up with her. After what had happened when I’d accused her of sleeping with Michael, I never wanted to see her get that angry again.
I left Lily in the bedroom and made my way downstairs, stopping in at my office to grab a few things before I went down to examine the burnt-out room. The inspector had come the day before and cleared the room for people, though it was to be limited to staff until repairs had been made and the inspector had been out to check them again. I sighed when I got to the doorway and looked over the damage, knowing it was going to cost a fortune just to get the east wing of the building up and running again.
I heard a noise in the room and paused before I went in, straining my ears to listen. It was a soft sound, and at first I thought it might be an animal—maybe a kitten crying, stuck in the debris. I crept inside, looking through the shelves to see there was a woman sitting on the remains of one of the chairs in the lounge, her face buried in her hands. She was crying, and from the look on her face, she had been for a long time. For a moment, I thought I should leave her alone, but she really wasn’t supposed to be in the room and I was compelled to make sure that she was okay. I stepped closer to her, clearing my throat so I wouldn’t startle her before I spoke.
“Miss?” I asked. She looked up at me, her eyes rimmed red. I recognized her face as one of the lawyers from Lily’s work. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, sniffling, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Just fine. I just needed a moment alone.”
“You’re Marilyn, right?” I asked. “Lily’s friend.”
Marilyn snorted, giving me a dry look. “Right.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “You do work together, right?”
“Yes, but we’re not friends,” she said sharply. “We used to be, but not now.”
“What happened?” I found myself asking her curiously, though I knew it was none of my business. The woman huffed, tilting her nose in the air.
“That’s none of your business. But if you must know, Lilian isn’t exactly who she pretends to be. And I wouldn’t feel safe around her if I were you.”
I felt something cold run through me. “What does that mean?”
“It means that she’s capable of more than you think. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
I shook my head after a moment. “I can’t let you stay in here. This is closed off to the public right now.”
“Fine,” she huffed and walked out without another word. I watched her as she left, shaking my head before turning and walking over to the edge of the shelf Lily had been talking about. The wood was burnt—almost black—but when I touched the wood I could feel the distinct grooves of letters that had been carved into it. I looked closer, tilting it so the light would hit the shelf in just the right way to allow me to see the words carved there. As it had been on the log, it was just a jumble of letters, meaningless gibberish with only one word that mattered. I shook my head when I saw it, scrawled in all capital letters: DIE. A warning and a threat. It made me shudder to think about it, how close Lily had come to the person who had written this on the shelf, on the logs, the one who had probably nailed those carcasses to the trees in the woods.
I pulled out the notebook I’d brought downstairs with me and placed it against the shelf, rubbing the page faintly with a pencil to trace the outlines of the words. I folded the paper and hid it in my pocket, starting to pick through the burnt debris in the room to get to the doorway. I heard the voices before I even got there and paused, then crept toward the doorway, careful to keep my footsteps quiet.
“They don’t know anything about it,” came a male voice, one that I recognized immediately as Richard’s. “And they’re not gonna know anything about it if you just shut up.”
“Well, I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Richard’s voice cut off the other, a woman’s. “Just keep quiet. She’s digging her own hole with that one. She’ll be locked up before she steps foot off this retreat.”
“She’d better,” the woman hissed, and I knew then that it was Marilyn. I recognized the coldness there, even from the brief conversation I’d had with her. “Or else—”
Marilyn cut herself off and I froze, holding my breath.
“We’ll talk about this later,” she said after a moment, and I heard the sounds of her heels clicking against the floor while she walked in the other direction. I took a deep breath and stepped into the room where Richard was still standing.
“Hello, Richard,” I said to him stiffly.
I had no idea what he’d been talking about with Marilyn, but I had a feeling in my gut it was something to do with Lily. My first instinct in that case was to protect her, even if it meant having to face Richard beyond what I normally would be forced to do.
“I didn’t think you were still here.”
“Oh, yeah,” Richard said. “I already told you, Logan, I’m not going anywhere until I get my money. The only way you’re going to get out of this is if you die.”
I felt a chill run through my spine when he said the words.
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged in a nonchalant, noncommittal way.
“It just seems to be a pattern in this place,” he said, then winked at me in a way that made me shiver. He left and I watched him go, my eyes on his back as he made his way down the stairs. I looked up at the fourth-floor railing that Michael had tipped over, wondering again exactly what had happened that afternoon and what Lily wouldn’t tell me. It was driving me crazy, but I knew that pressing her wasn’t going to get me anywhere. It was one thing for Lily to keep things from me, but it was another for her to refuse to answer the cops’ questions. I only hoped she wouldn’t be too stubborn and get herself into worse trouble than she needed to be in if she hadn’t had anything to do with Michael’s death.
I made my way to the shed outside, just at the edge of the retreat center. It was where we kept the gear we used to go back and forth from the worksite, and I made my way through the fresh snow, looking around. The valet was busy running back and forth fr
om the lot, bringing cars around to disgruntled guests who I knew would probably never come back. Attendance though was the least of my worries right now—half of the building had to be inspected and fixed, something that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars I wasn’t sure the retreat had.
I sighed as I opened the door to the shed, going inside to find the place where I usually hung my winter coveralls. I got dressed quickly, slipping into my boots, looking around for a spare pair of gloves. I noticed one in the pile, picking it up to look at it closely. I pulled the other glove out of my coat pocket—the one I had found at the worksite, and wasn’t surprised to find that it matched. I flipped it inside out, searching for a pair of initials or anything that would mark them as belonging to someone on my crew. We often just had a pile of work gloves sitting out to pick and choose from, so unless somebody had marked it, there was no way of knowing who’d had them last without asking the men directly.
I shoved the glove in my pocket, making my way down the hill toward the worksite. I saw the men standing around the truck waiting for me, and as I approached them, I held the glove out in front of me.
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