One by One

by Ruth Ware

  “Of course,” she echoes, and for a second, just a second, her hand strays towards her pocket, where the missing passkey must have been hidden, in a totally involuntary gesture that I would have missed if I hadn’t been watching her every move. She catches herself before her hand makes contact, so that it just looks like she’s adjusting her ski suit. But I know what she was thinking.

  As we make our way up the stairs, I have a sharp, piercing sense of déjà vu, the number of times we have crept up these stairs in daylight or in darkness, to some horrible discovery. Only this time, I know what lies at the top of them, and I am the one who is fearing exposure.

  My heart is racing as we approach Elliot’s door, and when I reach into my pocket for the passkey, I find my hand is shaking.

  “Are you okay?” Liz says. She has put her glasses back on, and they glitter in the darkness. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, through gritted teeth. “Just cold.”

  And then I turn the key and we are inside Elliot’s room, the stench of death somehow even worse than before, though I know, logically, that cannot be the case, not in the few hours since I was last here.

  Liz gags, and puts her hand over her mouth, and her action gives me an excuse.

  The battery block is down the side of the desk, hidden from the door. If I can get her to concentrate on the far side of the room…

  “The smell’s pretty bad,” I say. “If you want to concentrate on the bed side of the room, I can take the desk.”

  She nods, and moves over to the other side of the room. I am busy going through the motions, opening drawers, pretending to search for a phone I know full well is just out of sight, when I hear something.

  And then—

  “Erin.”

  I look up, look towards the bed, but she’s not there. She has come up behind me. And she has found the phone.

  My heart starts beating so loudly I am sure that Liz will be able to hear.

  Run, run, run, a voice in my ear is screaming. But I don’t. I hold very still. Maybe I can still talk my way out of this. What does it say. What does it say?

  I wish I could see the lock screen, but I can’t. Liz is holding the phone in her hand, angling it towards her, so that all I can see is the light from the screen reflecting off her glasses.

  “That sound…,” she says, very slowly. She looks up at me, a frown furrowed between the lenses of her spectacles. “It was a text message. And it was to you.”

  LIZ

  Snoop ID: ANON101

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 0

  Snoopscribers: 1

  I stare down at the screen, and then up at Erin’s blank face.

  This doesn’t make sense. Or does it?

  Messages: reads the lock screen, and then a little preview pane showing the first line of the message. Fuck. Erin is that you?

  Erin is looking at me like a rabbit in a snare.

  Elliot’s phone is a thumb lock. It makes what I have to do next very easy.

  I reach out, and grab his cold, heavy hand.

  “No!” Erin yelps, and she reaches for the phone, but it is too late. I am in.

  SOS, I read, feeling fury begin to kindle inside me, making my cheeks hot. Please send help. IT’S LIZ.

  I stare up at Erin, looking her right in the eye, feeling my jaw fall open with shocked betrayal.

  That bitch. That total bitch.

  ERIN

  Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 5

  Snoopscribers: 10

  I see Liz’s face change as she reads it and I know, instantly, there is no way of explaining my way out of this.

  Her face goes white, and she stays very, very still, but I don’t think it’s fear that’s paralyzing her. I think… I think it might be something else. I think it might be anger.

  “You don’t understand,” I say weakly, but my voice is croaky, and I know there is no point in this. I don’t know how I ever thought that text was ambiguous. Seeing Liz’s face, I understand now, there is only one way for her to take it.

  “You know,” she says, and her voice is horribly calm. I want her to scream and shout—anything would be better than this icy chill.

  But there’s a kind of relief with her words, because now I can stop pretending. I can stop this horrible dance of Does she know I know she knows, and just face up to the truth.

  “Yes, I know,” I say quietly. And then I take a step backwards, and I sink down on Elliot’s bed and put my face in my hands. Partly because my ankle is killing me, and the pain is starting to make me feel sick, and partly because my legs are shaking so hard I can’t keep upright anymore.

  She stands there, looking down at me, her face blank and unreadable behind those huge glasses. The light from Elliot’s phone gives her face an eerie, up-lit glow. Behind her Elliot, the man she killed, lies sprawled across his desk—a terrifyingly immediate reminder of what she has done to protect her secret. The secret I now have. Oh God, what have I done? Danny, where are you?

  “God, he stinks,” she says at last, wrinkling up her face. She cracks her knuckles, click, click, click, but it no longer sounds nervy. It sounds like someone limbering up for a fight. “Let’s get out of here. Come downstairs and we can talk this through.”

  As if in a dream—or maybe a nightmare—I follow her out of the room. She holds the phone out in front of her like a candle, illuminating the corridor, and when we get to the top of the stairs she says, “After you.”

  I hesitate.

  I don’t want to make her angry—but at the same time, there is no way I am going down that slippery, precarious staircase with her at my back. I’m just not.

  Liz sees my hesitation and gives a mirthless laugh.

  “Okay, I don’t blame you. I’ll go first. But you keep a step back, okay? I’m not having you pushing me down the steps either.”

  I nod. I don’t mind keeping my distance. It would be almost as easy for her to snatch my ankle out from underneath me as it would be for me to kick her in the small of the back.

  God, this is surreal.

  I watch her as she makes her way carefully down the stairs, holding the handrail, the phone guiding the way like a faint will-o’-the-wisp.

  Downstairs, she moves away from the foot of the stairs and feeds another log into the burner, making it flare so that the room is bright with its glow, and I hurry down while her back is turned, my heart beating quicker until I am on solid ground. Then she straightens up and shuts the glass door of the stove.

  I am alone with a murderer. I am alone with a murderer. Maybe if I keep repeating the words to myself it will start to feel real?

  LIZ

  Snoop ID: ANON101

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 0

  Snoopscribers: 1

  In a way, it is a relief to have it out in the open. I could tell there was something wrong, and I have always hated trying to read between the lines, second-guessing myself, attempting to parse a frown or a blank look or a pause that might be something or might be nothing.

  Now we both know where we are. Which is a relief. But it is also a problem. Because I liked Erin. No, that’s wrong. I shouldn’t be using the past tense. Not yet.

  I like her. I actually do really like her. I don’t want to have to do this. But she did something really, really stupid when she sent that text, and now I have no choice. She’s forced my hand, really. If anything this is her fault.

  The sense of injustice boils up again. This is so unfair.

  “I never wanted any of this, you know,” I say to her as she sinks down onto one of the chairs, staring into the flames. She is shaking. I’m not sure if it’s cold or shock.

  “What?”

  She looks up, and I feel anger bubble up inside me, and then I push it back down. Has she even been listening?

  “I said I never wanted this.” I sink down into the armchair
opposite her. I stare at the fire, feeling its heat on my face. “I would never have killed any of them if I could help it. I’m just as much of a victim here.”

  She blinks—and for a minute it looks like she’s going to say something, but then she seems to think better of it.

  “Tell me about it,” she says. And so I do.

  ERIN

  Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 5

  Snoopscribers: 10

  I am lost in thought as Liz sits down opposite me, and it takes me a moment to realize she is talking. What she is saying doesn’t make sense—some nonsense about her being the real victim in all of this.

  I look up, and I meet her eyes, and I am overwhelmed with the urge to slap her, to shake her, to scream, You? Are you kidding me? What about Eva? What about Elliot? What about fucking Ani, who never harmed a fly?

  But I don’t.

  Because I suddenly know what I have to do here.

  I have to humor her. I have to keep her talking long enough for Danny to get back here with reinforcements. He has seen the text. He knows what it means. He will be doing everything he can to help me. I don’t know what time it is, but it must be way after midnight. If I can just keep Liz talking long enough, I may be able to survive this. I may even be able to get justice for all the people she has killed.

  Because I am a survivor, that’s what Liz doesn’t know about me. She sees a soft, posh girl from the same background as Topher and Eva, someone who has never had to work for her living, to scrap for survival.

  But that’s not true. Not in my case. In spite of my family name, I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, not in the way Topher and Eva did. I’ve always known that I was second best, and that I would have to fight for myself. I know what it’s like to clean up other people’s messes for a living.

  But more than that, the most important thing about me, something Liz will never understand, could never understand, unless she had stood in my shoes: I looked death in the face once, and I turned him away.

  I can do it again.

  “Tell me about it,” I say. There is a catch in my throat, and my voice is shaking with the effort of keeping it calm, when I feel anything but. But Liz doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, she smiles. Incredibly, unbelievably, she smiles.

  And she begins to speak.

  LIZ

  Snoop ID: ANON101

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 0

  Snoopscribers: 1

  “You don’t know what it was like, starting at Snoop,” I say. It is easier not to look at Erin while I’m telling her this, so I look away again, into the fire, remembering that first day—opening the office door, and seeing them all, lounging around inside, laughing, bantering, so effortlessly, searingly cool. “It was like walking into a different world. Like something off the TV, where people were sleek and beautiful and witty. They were like a different species, and I wanted to be them so much. School—school was so horrible. I can’t explain it. I knew I was different from the other girls in my class, I knew they all laughed at me. But somehow I thought when I got to my real life it would be different. I thought that maybe I was just an ugly duckling.”

  I swallow. It is strange saying all of this—unwrapping secrets I have carried for three years.

  “But when I got to Snoop I realized that wasn’t true—I wasn’t going to magically grow into a swan overnight. Eva and Topher, even Elliot and Rik in a way, they had been different and special and beautiful right from the day they were born. And I wasn’t. I was never going to be a swan. I had to accept that. But the thing is, I was good at my job. Really good. And Snoop was doing well. And I cared about it—about them. So when the firm had problems raising money just before the launch, I offered Topher and Eva my grandmother’s money. I still remember the shock on their faces when I made the suggestion.” I laugh, remembering Topher’s expression when I spoke up in that meeting—as if his office chair had piped up, offering a solution to their finances. “I think they realized then that they’d underestimated me—that the girl who brought the coffee and took the minutes was a real human being who could understand a profit and loss sheet, and figure out when the company was in trouble. It was like they really looked at me for the first time. Eva offered to pay me back with interest, and it was a good rate too. I would have got back almost half as much again by the time it was all paid back. But Topher—Topher took me aside into his office and told me I should ask for shares, and hang out until I got them.

  “I knew it was a risk. Rik spelled it out really carefully—I wouldn’t see my money back for a long time, and if the firm went under, I’d lose everything. But Topher—you don’t know what he’s like. He’s so charismatic. He makes you feel that you’re everything, that he will take care of you, that your money could not be in safer hands. So that’s what I went for in the end. I thought at the time that Topher was being generous. I thought he was looking out for me.” I stare into the flames, feeling the brightness burning into my retinas, as if it can burn away the memories I have carried with me for years. “I didn’t know then what I know now—that he had seen how it would pan out in the event of a disagreement, and thought I was someone he could pressure in the event of a split.”

  I stop. Suddenly this feels hard in a way I didn’t think it would. It is good to spill all of this. Erin is a good listener in some ways, and it feels a little like lancing a boil—letting out all the poison that has festered away since that night. But it hurts too. And when I swallow against the pain, my throat is dry. The sensation gives me an idea.

  “Shall I make some tea?” I ask.

  “Sorry?” Erin says. There is an incredulous note in her voice. I can’t quite blame her—the question must have sounded slightly surreal in the midst of all this.

  “Tea,” I say. “I don’t know about you, but I’m really thirsty.”

  “Tea?” Erin echoes, like someone speaking in a foreign language, and then she gives a shaky laugh. “Tea… would actually be great. It’s exactly what I need right now.”

  We get up and limp together into the kitchen, where I find two cups, and Erin fetches the stovetop kettle and a packet of tea bags.

  “There’s no milk I’m afraid,” she says as she puts the kettle under the tap. “It went off yesterday.”

  We both stand there, waiting for the kettle to fill, but there is no sound of rushing water. And then I remember. I can see from the sudden look of comprehension on Erin’s face that she has remembered too.

  “The pipes,” she says unnecessarily. I nod.

  “Should we get snow?” I ask.

  “I… guess?” Erin says, but I can hear from the hesitation in her voice that she doesn’t want to go outside. I can’t say I exactly blame her. I don’t really want to go out either. We both know that stepping outside the chalet would give the other person the chance to lock us out, where we would very likely freeze to death. But the snow is piled up against the front door, so if we do this right, neither of us needs to go outside.

  “If you open the front door,” I say, “and stand there with the kettle, I can chip bits off the drift by the door.”

  She nods, and I can see from her expression that she is grateful that I have taken on the more precarious role. The snow is piled up so high that you have to climb over the drift to get out, so it’s fairly unlikely someone could just push you out of the door, but it is still possible.

  “Thanks,” she says, and together we troop through into the foyer, where Erin unlocks the bowing front door. I begin to dig at the hard-packed snow with a spoon, chipping off lumps, and putting them into the kettle Erin is holding out. At last we are both shivering with cold, but the kettle is full, and we shut the door and return to the living room, and the blazing fire, where Erin balances the kettle on the edge of the woodstove, and we both warm up our hands at the glass.

  “You were saying,” she prompts, as the kettle begins to hiss and sigh. “The shar
es?” Her words bring me back with a bump to our present reality. I finger the empty packet of sleeping pills in my pocket. I think about what I have to do.

  ERIN

  Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 5

  Snoopscribers: 10

  Finding the kettle, getting the snow, all the little mundane practicalities of making the tea have let me push our situation to the back of my mind for a moment, but as the silence closes around us, I feel fear settle like a weight on the back of my neck. Liz is silent, her face blank and unreadable, her hands stuck out to the blaze, and somehow her silence is more terrifying than any speech. I find myself trying to work out what is going through her mind—is she figuring a way out of this? Or just thinking about what she has done?

  The kettle hisses softly. Liz just sits there, staring at the kettle, one hand held out the blaze, the other in her pocket, and suddenly I can’t take it anymore.

  “You were saying?” I blurt out.

  Liz looks up. She looks at me appraisingly, in a way I don’t like. She is crunching a piece of plastic in her pocket. The noise is loud in the silence and I think if she doesn’t say something, I might scream.

  And then she swallows and picks up her story again.

  “The shares. Yes. So yes, there I am, twenty-two, a shareholder in this up-and-coming app—and Topher and Eva start treating me a bit more like a human being, now that I’m invested in the business. I mean, I’ve only got two percent. Even Elliot and Rik dwarf my share. But I am a shareholder. And one night, a few days after we signed the papers, there’s this drinks party in this flashy London bar—I can’t remember why, I think they were after a partnership with some streaming company, some kind of quid pro quo.”

  She stops. Something is coming, I can tell. I don’t know what exactly, but it feels like Liz is gearing herself up for something, forcing herself on to a part of the story she doesn’t want to spell out.