One by One

by Ruth Ware

  “Well… it does change one thing, doesn’t it, mate?” Carl says. There is something in his voice I don’t quite like. It is a kind of grimness. Rik looks puzzled.

  “Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re getting at? Eva’s shares you mean? They’ll go to her husband I assume.”

  “Except they won’t,” Carl says flatly.

  “What? I don’t understand what you mean. Even if Eva’s intestate, Arnaud would still stand to get everything, and he’ll certainly want to accept the buyout now, won’t he?”

  “Shareholders agreement,” Carl says. When Rik still looks blank, he spells it out. “When the company was set up there was a clause in the original paperwork to say that no one could pass their shares to an outsider. You’re a shareholder mate, didn’t you know this?”

  “What?” Rik says, more forcefully. “No, I didn’t know this! Why the fuck would anyone think that was a good idea?”

  “It’s quite common,” Carl says with a shrug. “In fact I’d go as far as saying it’s good practice. Stops the company passing into the hands of twats and plonkers. Means the original founders can’t be forced out without their consent, that kind of thing. Topher and Eva set it up that way so this sort of thing couldn’t happen—you know, if someone gets divorced and has to give up half their assets, you don’t necessarily want their loony ex to have voting rights.”

  “So what the fuck are you saying?” Rik says. He looks horrified. “Eva’s shares disappear on her death?”

  “Nah, they still exist. But Arnaud has to sell them to Topher.”

  “To Topher? Why not to the rest of us?”

  “Because this agreement predates you and Elliot coming on board,” Carl says shortly. “This is how they set it up back when it was just the two of them. It was never updated when they issued more shares.”

  “So… Topher will have to buy out Arnaud?” Miranda says. She comes to sit beside Rik, her brow furrowed. “Except, well…” She stops, significantly, and exchanges a look with Rik.

  “Except he can’t,” Rik says bluntly. “He doesn’t have enough liquidity. I don’t think that’s any big secret, is it? So what does that mean?”

  “There’s an insurance policy to cover the cost. At least there should be, assuming they kept up the payments. They’ll have to be independently valued, and Arnaud’ll get whatever the valuers thresh out, I imagine. No idea how they’ll take the buyout into consideration. That’s for the insurers to decide I suppose.”

  “So wait, what you’re saying is…” Rik looks thunderstruck. “What you’re telling me—”

  “Is Topher’s voting share just got increased to sixty percent. Yup, that’s about the size of it,” Carl confirms.

  There is deathly silence in the room.

  Miranda looks stricken.

  Rik turns and walks out the door.

  ERIN

  Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 5

  Snoopscribers: 10

  The news of Eva’s death is like a pebble thrown into a pond. No, not a pebble—a rock. First there is the god-awful, bone-shaking impact, and then the ripples of reaction, radiating out from that original catastrophe, and then rebounding, interacting, magnifying, and negating one another.

  As Danny and I serve out soup to the guests in the silent, candlelit dining room, I can’t help watching them, the way they’re trying to make sense of Eva’s disappearance in their own individual ways.

  Some of them are in deep denial. Inigo, for instance, refuses to believe the GPS evidence. “She could still be down in St. Antoine,” he keeps repeating. “GPS is wrong all the time and anyway, even if her phone is somewhere—what does that prove?”

  Some of them seem to have been struck dumb by the tragedy. Tiger hardly eats. She just sits, head bowed over her untouched soup, letting the noise of the group wash over her as if the others aren’t even there.

  Some of them look stunned. Ani seems only half aware of what’s going on; she crumbles her bread and makes inane remarks to no one in particular. Liz looks white and shocked, and barely speaks.

  But some of them don’t seem to be affected at all. Elliot, for instance, is spooning his soup with a poker face and much gusto, as if the tragedy had never happened. His lack of reaction is almost disturbing, though when Ani bursts out, “Elliot, don’t you care?” he looks genuinely surprised.

  “Of course I care,” he says. “I still have to eat dinner.”

  It’s Topher who my gaze keeps returning to. Topher, who has lost a partner, and gained a company.

  For Snoop is now in Topher’s complete control, that seems pretty clear, and for all his wild-eyed grief in the kitchen earlier, he doesn’t seem that shaken by the news that he is now the majority shareholder in a billion-dollar company. In fact, he seems to have taken it in his stride, feeding on it almost, as if his personality has expanded to fill the vacuum left by Eva’s absence. As I clear the soup bowls and refill the wineglasses—at least wine doesn’t need cooking or refrigeration—he picks up his glass and downs it, laughing wildly as he does. He has been drinking a lot, throwing back glass after glass as he regales the silent Tiger with some tale of his and Eva’s exploits when they first started the company. And the thing is, I can see it—I see the reason why they made this man CEO. I see the confidence that led him to think he could take a wild, improbable idea in a crowded market—and make it into a billion-dollar proposition. Something I never quite understood before—how someone would have the chutzpah to do this, and all before their thirtieth birthday—is suddenly plain.

  Rik on the other hand seems to have shrunk. He looks bewildered, punch-drunk, like a man who’s lost everything which, in a sense, I suppose he has. With Topher in charge, that billion-dollar buyout is melting away, leaving him with… what? Shares in a company he tried to sell out from under the founder? A position under a leader he doesn’t trust? I can’t see him surviving much longer in his post when they get back to the UK, best friend or no best friend. Topher doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who would forgive or forget the kind of coup Rik and Eva were attempting to pull.

  What’s more impressive is that Carl and Miranda, who might easily have switched loyalties when they saw which way the wind was blowing, have instead both rallied around Rik. Do they really believe Snoop is doomed without Eva at the helm? Either way, they are not siding with Topher, that much is plain. Instead they sit either side of Rik, like chess pieces guarding their king.

  But it feels like the match is over. They have lost their queen. For once more there is a space at the table, an empty place. Not Topher’s this time, but Eva’s, her empty chair a constant painful reminder of what has happened, not letting anyone forget, even for a second.

  * * *

  The chalet is still relatively warm in spite of the power cut and the temperature drop outside. Its thermal insulation and triple glazing means that the heat from earlier in the day is still enough to make the bedrooms bearable, while the two log burners downstairs keep the living room and dining room toasty.

  Nevertheless, I distribute extra blankets and duvets before bed, limping from door to door with a torch clamped under my elbow, clutching armfuls of the spare bedding we keep for emergencies, along with thermos flasks of hot chocolate.

  I’m about to knock on the second-to-last door when Danny, trailing behind me with a stack of blankets, says, “Erin, mate—” with a warning note in his voice.

  And I stop. It’s Eva’s door.

  And somehow that one simple thing catches me like a blow to the stomach, a reminder of the reality of what has happened here. An avalanche. A death. Will Perce-Neige ever recover from these twin disasters? It’s hard to imagine people reading news like this in their Sunday paper and then turning to book a holiday, but then, St. Antoine isn’t the first alpine resort to experience tragedy in the form of an avalanche. It happens almost every year, in fact there was another, similar fall just up the road earlier in the season.
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  “Mate?” Danny says, and I realize I have stopped stock-still, lost in thought.

  “Sorry,” I say stupidly. “I—I wasn’t keeping track—I—”

  “You all right?” Danny asks uneasily. “You should be sitting down, I’m not happy about you walking on that ankle.”

  “I’m fine,” I say shortly. The truth is that my ankle is hurting. A lot. Danny’s probably right, and I shouldn’t be putting weight on it. But I can’t bear to sit alone and silent in the darkness of the staff quarters, feeling it throb, thinking about what’s happened and what’s going to happen. I’m better off working; somehow the endless tasks keep my thoughts at bay. Plus, more practically, guest interaction isn’t Danny’s strong suit. They’ve forgiven him for his tactlessness in the wake of the avalanche, at least I hope they have, but our roles are firmly back in place now. We’re here to be polite, good hosts, even in these circumstances. Perhaps especially in these circumstances. It feels like everything is crumbling—and our ordained roles are the only thing we have left to hang on to. Danny and I must remain in charge. If we don’t keep that authority, if we let Topher take over—well, I don’t like to think about how the situation could play out.

  There’s just one door left. Topher’s. And I hitch my armful of blankets a little higher before I knock.

  He’s drunk, I can tell that when the door opens. He’s wearing a robe, open to the waist in spite of the cold, and holding a bottle. And he’s not alone. With the overhead light out, I can’t see who’s inside, but I’ve got a horrible feeling it might be little Ani, who didn’t open her door when I knocked a few minutes ago. I want to tell her the answer to her distress over Eva doesn’t lie in Topher’s bed—but I can’t. It’s none of my business. She’s the same age as me, she’s a guest, not a friend, and I have no right to tell her what to do, even if I think she’s making a fairly huge mistake.

  “Ellen,” he slurs. “Why hello. What brings you to my room at this late hour? It’s a bit late to be tucking people in.”

  “Extra blankets,” I say with my best cheerful smile. “Just in case the temperature drops overnight. Can’t have you all freezing to death on my watch.”

  “I’ll tell you a secret…” Topher leans in, confidentially, his robe gaping to show a smattering of dark blond chest hair. “The best survival kit is a naked woman.”

  Oh, ffs.

  I can feel my smile thin.

  “Well, I’m afraid the service doesn’t extend to that.”

  “I’ve already got that part sorted,” he says, but he reaches out for the blankets I’m holding, swaying slightly as he does.

  I’m about to turn and leave when he says, out of the blue, “Don’t I know you?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say firmly.

  “No, I do… I’ve seen you somewhere before. Did you waitress in London before you came here?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “I do,” he persists. “I know you. I’ve thought it since I first arrived.”

  “Mate, she said she doesn’t know you, and you’re pissed,” Danny breaks in, pushing past my shoulder to stand in front of me. Topher steps forward too, his expression turning ugly in less time than it takes for me to think, Oh shit.

  Danny bunches his fists, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords, and for a minute the two men just stand there, chest to chest. I feel my heart thudding. Danny cannot hit Topher. He will get fired.

  But Topher knows when he’s on thin ice, and it’s he who steps back, with a laugh that’s just the right side of ingratiating.

  “My mistake. Mate.”

  And then he closes the door, and Danny and I are left standing, looking at each other, wondering how much longer this can go on, before the ice cracks.

  LIZ

  Snoop ID: ANON101

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 0

  Snoopscribers: 1

  When I wake up, it is cold. That is the first thing I notice. It is a sharp contrast to yesterday, when I woke with a dry mouth and the feeling of having slept all night in a room a few degrees warmer than my bedroom at home.

  I reach out and take a sip of the water on my bedside table. It is chilled, as if it has been in the fridge.

  Under the extra duvets Erin dropped off I am still relatively comfortable, but I am not looking forward to getting dressed. In the end I reach out and grab the complimentary toweling robe off the end of the bed, dragging it under the covers with me to warm up before I put it on. I remember doing the same thing in my childhood bedroom when I was growing up, pulling my school uniform under the covers to get dressed. The room was in a badly converted loft, and in winter it was almost like sleeping outdoors. When I woke in the morning and breathed out, there would be a cloud of white hanging in the air. At night the moisture used to condense on the sloping ceiling and then freeze, so that I would wake to little runnels of ice on the wall above me. This is not as bad as that. I am in a luxurious chalet, not a Victorian terrace in Crawley, for a start. But as far as temperature goes, it is still painfully chilly.

  I pick up my phone and peer at the screen. It is 7:19. The battery is down to 15 percent but I barely have time to worry about that fact because I am distracted by something.

  I have a notification.

  At some point in the night my phone has managed to connect to the internet. The reception is gone now, the bars grayed out to zero, but that notification is still there, proving that at least for a moment, there was a flicker of connection.

  The second surprise is that it is from Snoop. I never get notifications from Snoop. You only get a notification if you get a new subscriber to your feed, and I never do.

  Only… now I have. At some point in the night, someone snooped me. I’m not even sure how, since I wasn’t listening to anything. I had no idea that was possible. Although maybe when the Wi-Fi connected it somehow restarted my stream where I left off, just for a minute?

  The realization gives me an odd feeling. There is no way to know who it was—you can only see who is snooping you in real time; once they log off the connection is severed, only the number remains. Then I dismiss the issue from my mind. In all probability it was a bot or a server glitch, or someone mistyping the ID of someone they actually wanted to follow.

  * * *

  Downstairs the rooms are quiet but considerably warmer, and there’s a pile of what I imagine must be yesterday’s croissants keeping warm by the woodburner in the lobby, and two big thermos flasks sitting on the hearth.

  I pick up a croissant and go through to the living room to warm my hands at the fire while I eat it. I assume I am alone. But then something catches my eye and I turn to see Elliot, seated in an armchair, bent over his laptop. The sight surprises me for two reasons—one, his laptop is on and seems to be plugged in. And two, Elliot almost never comes out of his room except for meals. In fact, when I was working at Snoop, he didn’t even leave his office for those. He got whoever was doing work experience to bring him takeout—the same thing every day, black coffee and three Pret cheese-and-bacon croissants. It must have been very inconvenient when they stopped serving croissants all day and moved them to the breakfast menu. I find myself wondering what he did. Changed his lunch? Somehow I can’t imagine that. Maybe he started sending the work experience person out at 10:00 a.m.

  I don’t normally talk to Elliot. He is very hard to make conversation with, though perhaps that is not my fault. Eva once told me that he divides women into ones he would like to sleep with and ones who are not of interest to him. I am definitely in the latter category. But now I pluck up my courage.

  “Hi, Elliot.”

  “Hello, Liz.” He says it flatly, but I know him well enough to know that’s not a measure of his enthusiasm. He greets everyone like that, even Topher, who is probably his favorite human being out of anyone.

  “How come your laptop is working?”

  “I always carry a battery pack.” He holds it up, a chunky thing the size of a brick that
is plugged into the power port of his computer. Of course. How like Elliot to leave nothing to chance.

  “But you’ve got no internet, right?”

  “No,” he agrees. “But I don’t need it for coding.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “The geosnoop update.” His normally pale face flushes with excitement a little bit, and he launches off into a long explanation I don’t completely follow about geotracking, ad partners, information storage, GDPR, and the technical challenges of making all those elements work with the law and the existing Snoop interface. I nod along, feigning more interest than I really feel. The only thing I really care about is the fact that he used this technology to find Eva. Somehow that seems unbearably poignant—that her own app may be what leads search and rescue to her body.

  “I see,” I say at last, as Elliot grinds to a halt. “It sounds very… exciting.” I try to make my voice sound convincing, but Elliot doesn’t really seem to care. It’s not like he ever shows much expression of his own feelings.

  “Now if you don’t mind, I need to work,” he says abruptly, with the directness that is so disconcerting.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I thought maybe you came down to chat.”

  “I came down because it’s too cold to type in my room,” he says, and then he puts his headphones on, and his fingers begin to clatter across the keyboard once more.

  I should be offended. I feel like I ought to be. But I’m not. He may be direct to the point of rudeness, but right now, there is something reassuring about that. With Elliot, there are no secret codes to unravel, no hidden meanings, no weight of expectation. If he wants you to know something, he says it. If he wants something to happen, he tells you. Just at the moment, there is something comforting about it, in contrast to the smoke-and-mirror world of Topher and Eva, where you never know quite where you stand. Sometimes, back in the early days at Snoop, they would remind me of my parents—the way it would all be sweetness and light in front of visitors, and then screaming and threats when the company had left. At least when Elliot says, “Have you got a problem with that?” you know he genuinely wants an answer.