“What?” he said groggily.
Quinn looked around. Kate was sitting up in bed (his bed) and looking at him.
“How did you get in here?” she asked again. She was looking at the door, which still had the dresser propped up against it. “I never heard you get past that. The noise should have woken me up.”
It took Quinn a moment to remember everything. He was surprised he had fallen asleep. One moment he had been waiting for something to happen and then… nothing. And he appeared to have slept pretty deeply too. He wiped some drool off the edge of his mouth.
“You were screaming,” he said. “You started screaming and I busted down the door enough for me to get in.”
“I don’t remember that,” Kate said. Her tone sounded accusatory.
“Well, that’s not my fault, is it?” he snapped back at her. She had acted like this all the previous evening—cold and distant. On the one hand, they were together and supposed to be partners in this mess. But he felt like he was just dead weight in her eyes. He was simply an obstacle the killer would have to mow down before he got to the real show.
“I didn’t…” Kate said and stopped. She took a deep breath. “I just meant, what happened? Why was I screaming?”
“I’m not sure,” Quinn said. “I thought I woke you up, but you were sleep walking. Well, not walking. I guess sleep talking. You stopped screaming at any rate and we talked for a little bit.”
“What did we say?” Kate asked.
“Look, is that important?” he replied. “You had a bad dream. You kept looking at the door and telling me I needed to close it. So I said I would on my way out and you said I should stay here. So I fixed the dresser back up against the door and stayed here. I just thought it was safer that way. What is the point of one of us staying in a boarded-up room and the other one left outside it?”
“I put it there because…”
“I know why you put it there, Kate,” Quinn said. He suddenly didn’t feel like playing nice anymore. “Because either you don’t trust me and think I might kill you, or you don’t care what happens to me out there.”
“That’s not true,” she said.
“It isn’t? So if I had started shouting for help out there, how fast could you have been out there with your gun? How long do you think it would take for somebody to kill me? Jesus. If we’re supposed to be safer together, then let’s be together. But instead you want it both ways. I’m out guarding the main door, but if he makes it through there, then at least you get some time to prepare before I’m out of the way.”
“Quinn, I…”
“Look, I know you are scared,” he said. “I understand that. But I’m scared too. I know this guy is gunning for you, but do you really think he is going to stop and have tea with me when he finds us? I’m staying near you because I want to help. But between yesterday’s ‘I don’t need your help Quinn’ and physically locking me out of my own room, what the hell am I supposed to think?”
He was really angry now and knew he should drop it. She had been through a lot and it wouldn’t help if he blew up at her. But damn if he didn’t feel better.
Quinn got up and walked over to the door, taking a minute to work the dresser out of the way.
“Either trust me or don’t,” Quinn said, more quietly this time, as he opened the door. “If you can’t trust me, then take shelter somewhere else, because then I’m just one more thing to worry about.”
He walked outside. And stopped dead cold when he saw the note.
Right on the outside of the door was a small post-it note. It simply had one word on it.
“Almost.”
Fifteen minutes later they had checked the apartment with her gun and satisfied themselves that there was no one else there. The front door had clearly been forced from the outside. If Quinn thought he would have satisfaction from finally having proof that he wasn’t involved, he didn’t feel it. Instead, he concentrated on the fact that if not for Kate’s nightmare, he could have been dead. Likely would have been.
Of course, he had been awake in the living room. Maybe he would have been awake when the guy came through the door. But he didn’t feel like it. He felt that somehow the guy must have known when he was sleeping. Even after checking every nook and cranny of the apartment, he did not feel safe. Would the guy hit them on the way out the door? Would he be waiting in Quinn’s car?
Kate, for her part, appeared better than she had been for several days. She checked the apartment with a strange calm that Quinn was grateful for, since he was definitely lacking it. For the only time he could remember, Quinn was glad he had few rooms—and fewer places to hide.
“We can’t come back here,” she said finally. He nodded and they packed quickly. Their visitor was in all likelihood gone, but how could they be sure of anything?
Five minutes later they were at the car and after Quinn first checked the trunk and back seat carefully, they climbed in. He felt like he was being watched from somewhere and knew that was probably right.
He started driving with no real direction in mind.
“Where to?” he asked when they pulled onto Route 7.
“We need to check the hotel,” she said.
“That’s not a safe place,” Quinn replied.
“I agree, but I should pick up some stuff before we hit the road.”
“And where, exactly, are we going to go?”
“For starters—Bluemont,” she said.
“You can’t be serious,” Quinn said.
Kate just stared at him, raising her eyebrows.
“Okay, apparently you can be,” Quinn said. “Even if I got the right guy, how’s that going to help?”
“It’s a lead,” she said. “And besides—we have to find Lord Halloween before he finds us, again. Wouldn’t you rather be on the offensive?”
“Couldn’t we just run?” Quinn said. “We could just take off, you know. We don’t have to stay here. He can’t follow us forever.”
“I’ve done that, remember?” Kate said. “You run now and it’ll never end.”
“That’s all well and good, but this is serious,” he said. “They say that in the movies all the time, but this is real life. Couldn’t we live with a few phantoms over our shoulders?”
She shook her head and put her hand on his shoulder.
“If you want, go ahead,” she said. “But I’m through running. I told you—there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him. I’m not going to keep going like that, even if it means I’m dead. Besides, I think he is underestimating us.”
“You do?” Quinn asked. “No offense, but we got caught with our pants down back there. He walked in right under our noses.”
“But we are still here, Quinn. We are still here, aren’t we?”
“Forgive me if I don’t feel that much better,” he replied. “That seems like blind luck.”
“You are thinking of it all wrong,” she said. “He has had the advantage from the beginning. There is no surprise. He knows who I am. He knows who you are. We don’t have that luxury. We can’t follow him home. But he has given himself away too. I don’t think he came here meaning to scare us again, Quinn. I think he came ready to kill.”
“And let me get this right—this makes you feel better?”
“It does,” she said. “Because he failed. And he proved to me one thing—you aren’t helping him.”
“How can you be sure?” he shot back. “Maybe I went outside, forced the door open to look like a break-in, left a note, broke down your door, then put it all back up again.”
“Why would you do that?” she asked.
“I’m honestly not sure,” Quinn said. “So that you’ll be lulled into a false sense of security and trust me? I admit it’s a reach.”
“Yes, a bit too far,” she said. “The only reason he would do all that would be to kill me at my most vulnerable. But you’ve already seen me that way.”
“When?”
“Last night,” she said. “You could have ki
lled me then.”
“Well, you were kinda awake,” he said.
“Not enough,” she said. “I’m sorry I blocked the door, but the other night, I couldn’t sleep at all. I kept wondering what if. What if you are working with him? What if you are him? What if…”
“I get it, I get it,” he said.
“But if last night was a test, you passed. I never heard that dresser come down and I never saw you put it back up either. We were locked in a room by ourselves—so much so that he must have thought he could not get through without waking both of us up. I don’t think this guy plays the kind of psychological game where he pretends to be my boyfriend and then murders me. I think if he had the chance to kill me—just one chance—he would have taken it.”
“Why? He seems to enjoy playing with his prey.”
“No, I think I figured out what he wants,” she said.
“Which is?”
“He wants a story,” Kate said.
“He is a story,” Quinn said. “He is all anybody talks about.”
“But talk is the right word,” she replied. “So far nobody has put his nickname in the paper. People might be talking, but there is no real mention of him.”
“He will get it soon enough.”
“I agree and I think he knows that too,” she said. “But I think he wants the story to be about us.”
“You and me?”
“Me and him,” she said. “I think he would have killed us last night and left a note about who I was. That would have been a two-for-one—it would have proved to the police he is Lord Halloween and it would have splashed the story right on the front page with his name on it. It also would have been a sad story, with pictures of me and my mother and interviews with my dad. And details about how I concealed my identity.”
“You have it all worked out,” Quinn said.
“Believe me, so does he. That’s why I caught his attention. He might be taking down some other people to add to his body count, but I think he intended to make me his official grand entrance, so to speak.”
“Well, he came close.”
“But that’s just it—close, but not close enough,” she said. “And I don’t think he thinks very highly of our ability to protect ourselves.”
“Well, we have one thing in common,” Quinn said.
“That’s going to change,” she said. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. But one problem was my own doubt.”
“In what?”
“In who?” She re-phrased his question. “I doubted you. But I’m going to take that leap of faith you suggested. From this point on, we are in this together.”
Quinn laughed.
“From this point forward? I’ve been there,” he said.
“Well, now I’m there too,” she said.
They drove to the hotel.
They had barely crossed the lobby before a manager began approaching them. Dressed up in a tight, vaguely Victorian-era version of a tuxedo, he was clearly angry.
“We’ve been trying to reach you, madam,” he said, giving Quinn a glance that suggested he thought very little of him as a dresser or a person.
“You’ve had my cell phone,” she said.
“Well, your boyfriend said you changed it,” the hotel manager said. He looked meaningfully at Quinn.
Kate looked confused and glanced at Quinn, who shrugged and indicated he had no idea what was going on. Secretly, however, in the middle of one of the biggest scares of his life, he was pleased. The manager had said boyfriend and Kate had assumed—just assumed—he was referring to Quinn. Maybe that meant something or maybe it didn’t, but he was still damn glad to see it.
“He gave us your new phone number,” the manager said, but the glances between Kate and Quinn had unnerved him. The bluster and outrage building in the hotel employee appeared to be fading. Something was not going according to his plan.
“And you didn’t think to try the old one?” Kate said. “Who, exactly, did you say said this?”
“Your boyfriend,” he replied, sounding less angry. “He called from your room.”
“And was I in it?”
“Well, I assumed you were,” the manager said, and anger had clearly been replaced by something else: defensiveness.
“Why were you trying to reach me?” Kate asked calmly.
“Your room. It was left in an unacceptable condition,” the manager said, but he was looking around him now. Quinn thought he looked like a man searching for back up.
“I see,” she said. “And did it ever occur to you that my ‘boyfriend’ may actually have been an intruder? That maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t with me at all?”
“No, that did not occur to us,” the manager said. “He seemed so confident, like he was supposed to be there.”
“I want to see the room,” Kate said.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” the manager said, clearly wishing he hadn’t started the conversation to begin with.
“It’s my room—I paid for it,” Kate said.
She started walking very calmly toward the elevators.
“Madam,” the manager said. “Madam, I can’t allow that.”
“But you can allow a total stranger in my room?” Kate said. “How did he get in there anyway?”
“We assumed you let him in,” the manager said. “I think now maybe this is a police matter.”
“You may be more right than you know,” Kate said. “Which is why I want to look at the place before they get here.”
“I can’t allow that,” the manager said.
“What’s your name?” Quinn asked. He pulled out a pad of paper and started writing.
“Eric Hoffman,” the manager said stiffly. “I have the full backing of the hotel’s owners, I can assure you. There’s no use trying to intimidate me.”
“I’m not trying that,” Quinn said evenly. “Just wanted to know your name for the paper.”
“The paper?”
“We work for the Chronicle, Mr. Hoffman,” Quinn said. “I work on the crime beat. And this is a crime. I’m sure a lot of people will be interested in your security standards.”
“Or you could just let us in and we’ll keep your name out of it,” Kate said.
The manager paused and considered. It felt like forever, but he finally gestured toward the elevator.
“But my name is not to be anywhere near this story,” he said.
They rode the elevator in silence and Kate walked quickly to her room once it stopped and opened. If she was nervous, she didn’t show it. Quinn almost wondered if she would grab her gun, but she didn’t even pause when the manager opened the door.
“Dear God,” she said as she walked in.
The room was a disaster. Virtually every piece of furniture had been overturned. The table lamp lay on its side with the light bulb crushed into the carpet. The bed’s mattresses had been taken off the bed frame. One lay against the wall and the other was strewn halfway on the bed. The coffee table had been shattered as if someone had fallen on it. Quinn glanced into the bathroom and could see shards of mirror lying on the floor.
“You see why we were upset,” the manager said.
“You thought she did this?” Quinn said.
“We thought… the man said… he told the front desk there was a bit of a party. We didn’t hear much, so we didn’t think about it. It wasn’t until the next morning…”
“How could you not hear this?” Quinn asked.
Kate started walking around. Her clothes had been removed from the drawers and were strewn all over the room. There was a bra hanging from a light fixture and three panties laid out in a row on the bed’s headboard. Kate made no move to pick anything up.
Instead, she appeared to be looking for something.
“Watch out for the broken glass,” Quinn said. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for.
“We need to call the police,” the manager said.
“In a minute,” Kate said. “You and I need to
talk first.”
“Talk about what?” the manager said. He sounded nervous. He clearly had assumed Kate would pay for damages and now had stumbled onto something quite different.
Kate didn’t answer. Instead she scoured the hotel room floor, stepping over a pair of pants and a blouse. Quinn was about to ask her what she was looking for when she leaned down and scooped a piece of paper off the ground. She read it, crossed the room and handed it to Quinn.
“I’m going to kill you slowly, Trina,” the note read.
“What’s it say?” the manager asked.
Neither one of them responded.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Kate said. “I’m going to cut you a deal.”
“Cut me a deal? We have insurance. If you don’t know the gentleman who did this…”
“Oh, I know him,” Kate said. “Lord Halloween did this.”
The man audibly gasped.
“How can you say such a thing?” the man said. “That’s libel. I’ll sue.”
“First of all,” Quinn said, “It’s slander, not libel. Libel is printed and we haven’t done that yet. Second of all, it’s also true.”
“You’re going to make two copies of the hotel security feed for the past several days,” Kate said. “One copy goes to me and the other goes to the police.”
“Why would I do such a thing?” the man said. “I’m not giving anything to reporters. If the police want them, we will of course cooperate.”
“You want to help me,” Kate said, and she smiled. Quinn thought she was beautiful, but the smile looked cold and ruthless. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to put this on the front page of the Chronicle: ‘Lord Halloween Strikes Leesburg Inn.’”
“The police will do that anyway,” the manager said, but he sounded doubtful.
“Please,” Kate replied. “The police want to cover this up even more than you do. But as you say, we’re reporters. I would be more than happy to write in detail of how the hotel security let a psychopath into one of their guest’s rooms. Do you know how fast business would dry up?”
“I’ll tell everyone you threatened me,” the manager said.
“Say what you want,” Kate said, and smiled again. If anything, it looked more cruel than before. “No one will believe you. You will just be trying to protect yourself. They’ll be too busy running away from here and your bosses will be too busy trying to find someone to blame. And it won’t take them long to find someone, will it?”
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