Winter (Four Seasons #1)

by Frankie Rose

  CHLOE HOLDS a Taser in her hand, pressing the trigger so that an arc of electricity fires between the two conductors. The expression on her face is deadpan, completely flat.

  “The boys had no right to make that deal,” she says evenly. “It was my turn. I was supposed to get to pick who and how, but no. They switched everything out, picked your dad up while I was working. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work.” I’m too stunned by the news that Chloe is involved in this, is a killer, to say anything. She seems content enough that her captive audience is listening, anyway. “I only got to plan two. Jeff planned three. Sam planned three. Adam got to do seven. Psychopath,” she spits. “He chased those girls around with a blunt machete. What was so smart about that? He thought he was fucking Picasso.” She drags her hands back through her cropped hair, inhaling a huge breath. She seems to calm down a little.

  “There’s nothing clever or beautiful about drowning someone or setting them on fire, either. That just makes a mess. Everything should be neat and tidy. Yes, that’s right, neat and tidy. You can appreciate that, I know you do.” She paces up and down along the edge of the pool, scratching at the same spot on her head over and over. Suddenly she turns and pins me under a fierce gaze. “You have to treat them kindly. Make them look pretty. Brush their hair.” She stands directly in front of me and reaches out, her hand trembling. She brushes a lock of my hair out of my face. The reverence behind the action betrays a disturbing darkness. “You have such pretty hair,” she whispers.

  I immediately start strategizing, trying to figure out how I’m going to get myself out of this situation. Because this situation is grade A fucked. Chloe crouches down, staring straight at me. I get the feeling it’s not me she’s seeing, though. “You looked just like her back then. Now, well, your coloring’s a bit darker, yes, but I think that’s okay. It’ll still count. She would have looked like you now, just like you looked like her then. Does that make sense?”

  Horror is my new best friend. I shiver, kicking myself when I remember Chloe plucking the hair from my jacket back at the station when she invited us for dinner yesterday. Such an innocent gesture then is creepy as hell now. Chloe stands up, rocking back on her heels, looking me over.

  “I’ll let you watch the rest of the video, and then we can get on with it.”

  “No! I don’t want to see!” I scream. I lash out with my feet, trying to kick her, but she’s out of reach. My shouting flicks a switch in Chloe’s demeanor. She lunges towards me, brandishing the Taser, and presses it into my neck. I see stars for the second time, realizing that this is how she brought me down outside. I’m retching when she removes the conductors from my skin.

  “Shut your mouth, you silly little bitch,” she hisses, leaning so that her face is inches from mine. “You’re ruining everything. This is all your fault, you know. Your dad would still be alive and I wouldn’t have gotten angry and killed the others, either, if it wasn’t for you. Everything got so messy.” She shifts, coming even closer. “All your fault,” she spits. Her furious expression vanishes, a sudden void taking over. She straightens up. “But maybe you’re right, though. We don’t want to see all that mess again. And we’ve waited long enough.”

  Chloe goes into her pocket and draws out a slim, black box, and my heart starts hammering again. She mentioned Adam’s machete, and then drowning and fire, so that means… that means her method of killing was poisoning. Is poisoning. Strychnine. It’s a convulsant. Both girls asphyxiated. These were the two last killings before they stopped altogether, and they were also the only ones with the fourth symbol on their palms. Luke’s words come back to me, unwelcome. Chloe opens up the box in her hands and a syringe lies within, alongside a small vial of clear liquid. She removes both items from the foam protector and pops the cap off the syringe.

  “If you’re a good girl, I’ll make you look pretty afterwards, okay?” She sinks the needle into the small vial, adept and practiced, and I let rip. No sense in holding back now.

  “HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

  Chloe looks unimpressed. My shouting wouldn’t bother her at all if it weren’t for the sudden rumbling overhead. I know that sound well, used to listen for it nearly every weeknight when I was waiting for dad to come home from work. A car has just pulled up outside the house. There’s someone here, someone who might actually hear me hollering.

  “HELP!”

  “What the hell?” Chloe mumbles. She sets the syringe down and rushes to the stairs, staring up them into the kitchen above. The kitchen door must still be off its hinges, and there are lights blaring out into the darkness. Whoever is up there will definitely know something’s up if they take the time to walk around the back of the house. A car door slams above us, and Chloe runs back to the stool that the projector sits on, snatching up the sharp hunting knife she was carrying earlier.

  “Be quiet,” she snaps, pointing the knife at me. “If you make a sound, I’ll kill whoever’s up there. Don’t think I won’t.” I don’t doubt that she’s mad enough to follow through with her threat. It takes every scrap of will power I own to keep my mouth closed. I sit, listening intensely and praying. I’ve never prayed so hard or so much in entire life.

  I’m holding my breath again, when I hear a voice upstairs. “Iris? Iris, you here?” It’s Luke. I let my head fall forward, my chin pressing into my chest, and I start crying.

  Chloe tugs off her loose black shirt to reveal her police uniform underneath. She tucks the knife into her waistband and shoots me a warning glare. “I’ll kill him,” she hisses, and then she’s off up the stairs. “Luke!” she calls. “It’s Chloe! We got a break in call up ‘bout half an hour ago, but there’s no one here!”

  Clever bitch.

  “Chloe? Iris tried calling me, too. When I rang back, the line was dead.”

  Chloe cut the line? Relief and horror races through me. If she hadn’t done that, Luke probably wouldn’t have come. But now that he’s here, he’s in very grave danger. I need to see up the stairs into the kitchen. I need to see what the hell is going on. I shuffle my feet as far forward as I can, a mere two inches from the chair legs, and shunt myself forward. The chair makes a scraping against the tiles, and my heart explodes in my chest. She said not to make a sound, and that definitely qualified. I sure as shit don’t want to die but my need to keep Luke safe outweighs my own desire for self-preservation. I don’t try it again. Instead, I lean as far forward as I can, bending double at the waist. From that position, I can see a bolt of yellow light up in the kitchen—along with a pair of black police issue boots and a pair of scruffy Chuck Taylors with the bottoms of wet jeans cuffed up around them.

  “Was the door like that when you got here?” Luke asks. He sounds perplexed, worried. Panic tinges his voice, although I can tell he’s trying to rein it in.

  “Yeah, there were footprints in the snow. Signs of a struggle. Did anyone know she was up here alone?” Chloe asks.

  Only you knew, you crazy bitch! I pull on the zip ties binding my hands behind my back but there’s barely any point. Chloe has had years of practice in making sure people don’t escape from these things. I’m not going anywhere.

  “No. No, I didn’t even know until she called from here. We…we had a fight.”

  Silence fills the kitchen. And then, “She find out about your dad?”

  “No.” Luke lets out a long, heavy sigh. His feet turn around and then turn back again. I can picture the look on his face as he anxiously surveys the kitchen. “I was going to tell her, but...”

  “S’okay, I understand. No sense in adding another body to the list, right?”

  “It’s not that. I just—” he breaks off abruptly. “The dead should stay dead.” He pauses. One breath. Two. There’s an edge to his voice when he asks, “Why were you in the basement?”

  Chloe takes a step backwards and a pulse of adrenalin floods through my body. This is it. He’s figured something out. He knows. Is she going to kill him? The w
orld tips sideways.

  “Lights were on down there. Don’t think anyone’s been down there, though.”

  More silence. Oh, come on, Luke! Work it out, work it out! I screw my eyes shut and hold my breath, waiting, praying, hoping that everything snaps together inside his head and he rushes down the stairs. But he doesn’t.

  “Okay, I’ll run a sweep upstairs. You take the downstairs?” Luke says, his voice firm. Determined. Like his confidence has been bolstered now that he thinks he’s got help. That Chloe is his backup and not the psychotic bitch who orchestrated this whole thing. My hopes plummet when Chloe agrees.

  “Sure thing. Holler if you find anything.”

  Luke’s Chucks squeak as he turns and leaves the kitchen, and I hear him racing up the stairs, calling out my name. I want to scream out for him, but by the time he reaches me, even if he hears me two floors down, Chloe will have charged down here and slit my throat. I keep quiet, the taste of blood fresh in my mouth from where I’ve bitten my lip so hard. Chloe’s boots pause at the top of the stairs before she hurries back down into the basement, the knife back in her hand. She looks crazy. Crazier than before.

  “We don’t have time for pleasantries anymore, Miss Breslin. I’m afraid we’re going to have to rush through procedures. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “You can’t be serious? You can’t honestly think you’re going to be able to kill me and get away with it when Luke’s upstairs?”

  A twisted smile develops on Chloe’s face. She calmly walks to the small stool where she left her syringe and the poison and carefully withdraws the needle again. “Luke isn’t the brightest of boys, Iris. He’s been spending more time singing in cafes than he has concentrating on his work recently, or so I hear. And this will only take a second. Besides, it’s about time I received some recognition for my work.”

  Bile bubbles in my throat. Recognition for her work? Luke’s words replay in my mind, and I finally realize that I’m doomed. Serial killers usually want to get caught. Typically they’re proud of their handiwork. They want to claim responsibility in the end.

  There is no way out of this for me.

  Chloe paces forward, a small smirk playing over her lips, and goose bumps burst out over my skin. There’s no point in keeping quiet now. I tug with all my might against the zip ties, the narrow plastic biting angrily into my skin, and I scream.

  “Luke! In the basement! LUKE!”

  Chloe tuts, standing right in front of me. “Pathetic. Really pathetic.” She roughly pulls up the sleeve on my shirt, exposing my arm. I try to shy away from her touch but there is nowhere for me to go. She brings the tip of the needle to my arm, bending in concentration as she searches for a vein. And that’s when I notice Luke running down the stairs behind her.

  “Chloe, what the fuck! Chloe, no!” Our eyes meet for a second and the emotions pouring out of him are overwhelming. Fear. Panic. Anger. His terror hits me hard—makes me see how bad the situation looks. He doesn’t think he’s going to reach me in time. And he doesn’t.

  The sharp burn of the needle tears through me, forcing its way upwards, cold and unstoppable. The pain that follows is worse. Far, far worse. It’s instant, like a bomb going off inside my head. The crippling sensation spreads through me, polluting me, and an uncontrollable trembling follows behind it. Luke crashes into Chloe, sending her sideways and ripping at the needle, tearing my skin. Their bodies hit the ground hard, but the needle remains hanging out of my arm. I watch as Luke reaches back and swings, punching Chloe in the face as hard as he can. The utter despair on his face destroys me, but pretty quickly I’m not worrying about his despair. I’m worrying about my own. My head snaps back as every single muscle in my body tightens and I start convulsing. The spasms that wrack through my body are so strong I can hardly breathe, the force pushing down on my body refusing to let my diaphragm contract enough to pull in a single draw of oxygen.

  My eyes roll back into my head, and another kind of pain lances through my body as something hits my leg. Instead of a spiraling, deep pain, this new pain is a bright stinging, burning pain, radiating up my leg. A terrifying scream builds inside me but I have no means of letting it out. My body is now convulsing so hard that I can feel where the zip ties have cut all the way through my skin, the wet sensation of my blood running over my hands and dripping from my fingers.

  A loud, echoing bang fills the basement, along with Luke’s shouts, and the chair I’m sitting on takes a heavy impact. I want to open my eyes to see what’s going on, but I can’t. My body is no longer my own; it won’t respond to my will. A pressure starts to build in my chest, my heart laboring, beating way too fast. The pressure builds, builds, builds until my heart pauses and then hiccups in my ribcage, beating once really hard and then racing away again. The pressure starts rising again, and I know the poison is doing its work, trying to tighten its chokehold around my vital organs so they can no longer function. I don’t have long left.

  Another huge impact rocks the chair beneath me, more shouts and screams ringing off the tiled walls of the basement, and the world starts to tip all over again. But this time it’s real. The sick sensation of the ground coming up to reach me floods my stomach, and suddenly I’m back in my room in my apartment. I’m falling backwards onto my bed, but this time it’s not Noah standing over me; it’s Luke. He’s laughing as I squeal, and I’m laughing, too. I’m safe, I’m warm, I’m protected. When the fall ends, my bed cushions me, softening my landing, and for a moment everything is normal as Luke looks down on me, smiling, warmth and adoration in his eyes.

  “Love you,” he whispers.

  I smile back. When I open my mouth, words forming on my lips, water fills my mouth. Cold, rushing, persistent. I can’t figure out why water would be rushing into my mouth, but I make sure I finish telling him how I feel. Somehow, I know this is the last time I’ll be able to.

  “I love you, too, Luke. I’m so sorry.”

  Thirty Two

  Steel