But there’s no sign of Levi. I stick my head in the dingy bathroom in the hall, also empty.
“Kenzie!” Molly screams at me from outside, a note of sheer panic and terror in her voice. “Kenzie!”
“Coming,” I call, running back to the living room, the effort taking everything from me as weakness presses on my body. I take one second to look in the kitchen, fully expecting the gas burners to be on.
But the stove is electric and it’s off.
So where is the leak?
I hear a clicking sound, a steady, insistent tap-tap-tap coming from somewhere. The walls? The floor?
There’s a low rumble, like a volcano about to—holy crap, I have to go. Forcing myself to run, I throw my whole body outside, rolling on the grass right into Candace’s body just as everything explodes, a mushroom of fire and heat like I’ve opened a furnace and stuck my face in.
Instinctively I throw myself backward, the noise of the explosion echoing over the forested countryside, a sickening, deadly sound I know I’ll never forget.
I roll away from the heat, squinting into the reflected orange tinge of the lawn for Molly, scanning in panic when I don’t see her.
“Molly?” I scramble to my feet, spitting dirt and ash from my mouth. “Molly?”
Is she at her car? Calling for help? Had she left her phone in the car? I cling to that hope, pivoting to check on the girls and nearly buckling in relief when I see Candace, Dena, and Shannon waking up. Ashleigh turns over and Bree starts to cough.
They’re alive!
Still moving on autopilot, I know I have to find Molly. I run to the car, stumbling and coughing, certain I see her inside. I grab the driver’s door because it’s closest and yank it open, another wave of raw relief when I see her leaning against the window, eyes closed.
“Molly?” I slide in, reaching for her. Was she overcome by the gas? Did she faint from shock? What the heck? “Molly!”
Another smell sucker-punches me, this one pungent and sharp, like vinegar. What is that—
With a gasp, I whip around to the backseat, meeting the dark, threatening, murderous eyes of Jarvis Collier and the glint of a blade he slides right under Molly’s jaw. In his other hand, he has a rag drenched in something that must have put her into a sound sleep.
“Obviously, it was a mistake to put you on that list.” He gestures the rag toward the steering wheel and flashes the knife at Molly’s neck. “Age, Quinte.”
CHAPTER XXIX
Age, age. Age … drive, imperative mood. Quinte … Fifth.
“Don’t hurt her,” I whisper, grateful I can make any sound at all as I turn to face the front and follow his command, stealing a glance at the burning trailer. I see the girls moving around, but I don’t think they’ve even realized what happened or know we’re in this car. I can’t think beyond my best friend, inches from a killer’s knife.
When he doesn’t answer, I look in the rearview to see him. “Please, please don’t hurt her.”
He lifts a brow, the hollows of his angular face making him look even more menacing. “One more moment of hesitation and she’s dead.”
“Where?” I croak, stalling for more time. My fingers tremble as I turn the key, which was in the ignition, and the lights come on. Should I flash the brights? Honk? Signal for help?
“Don’t even think about it,” he says, leaning forward to get his whole arm around Molly’s neck. “Just go. I’ll tell you where.”
I take one more look at Molly, who hasn’t stirred. “Don’t hurt her. Hurt me. Kill me, I don’t care, but don’t hurt Molly.”
“You should know me better than that by now,” he says. “My work is so much cleaner. But if you don’t drive this car, I will make an exception. They won’t find her body for so long it won’t matter how I kill her.” He nods toward the steering wheel. “You have exactly five seconds to move.”
I turn, my arm instinctively reaching for the seat belt, but I realize just how stupid that is. Anyway, I might have to leap out of a moving car.
No, not without Molly. I won’t let him hurt Molly, no matter what he does to me.
Very slowly, I start to pull out of the rutted driveway.
“Move it!”
The order bounces off the metal and glass of the car, loud enough to make Molly stir and whimper. Come on, Molls, wake up. Two of us are better than one against this maniac.
I hit the gas, increasing the speed a little, working with everything I have to stop the trembling fear that shudders through me. As long as I’m alive, I have a chance. And so does Molly.
I struggle to find the high beams because I’ve driven this car only a few times. I turn onto the deserted road, willing a car to drive by. What will the police think when they investigate this explosion? When they see Levi’s motorcycle?
I know he’s innocent … so where is he?
I steal another quick look in the rearview mirror, but Jarvis is purposely sitting at an angle where I can’t see him. He’s still leaning forward and I know that knife is inches from ending my best friend’s life.
Heavy silence thickens in the tiny space, the only sound my strained breaths. I blink when tears blur my vision, refusing to let him see how scared I am. He clears his throat and I brace for whatever order he’s going to give now.
“Lacrimis oculos suffusa nitentis.”
Oh, for crying out loud. My head isn’t clear enough for Latin.
“Beautiful words, don’t you think, Quinte?”
I manage a nod, grateful to think in my native tongue.
“Translate,” he orders.
Shit. “Can you, um, repeat the phrase?”
He chuckles. “Ah, memories of competitions. How I loved them.”
Okay, maybe he’ll talk. In Latin, about Latin, whatever. Maybe that will relax him and get me some answers and information … if I don’t die tonight. Which seems pretty damn likely.
“Take the highway. West.”
The highway is good—more cars. More chance of someone coming to our rescue.
“Lacrimis oculos suffusa nitentis,” he repeats after a few minutes.
I’m not listening, studying the other cars. Could I signal to one? Could I put an emergency call out somehow? What if I did something totally illegal and got pulled over? That would be brill—
“Translate!” he barks, and Molly turns and sighs.
“Okay, okay.” I picture each word. “Eyes with tears?” He doesn’t answer. “Eyes that are …‘suffusa’? Is that suffused? ‘Nitentis’?” I shake my head. “I don’t know those words.”
He snorts. “And you think you could win a competition? ‘Her sparkling eyes bedewed with tears.’ Book One of Virgil’s Aeneid, line 228.” After a pause, he leans closer to me. “Stop crying, Quinte. One of the reasons I chose you is that you aren’t a baby.”
“You chose me?”
“I choose them all, every year. But, it’s over, sadly. This will be the last year of the list.”
Despite the heat of the enclosed car, I feel goose bumps spread across my body. His arm is still over the seat, the knife millimeters from Molly’s throat. “You mean … the Hottie List?”
“Ah, yes,” he replies. “Who knew I’d still be using that expression long after it lost its luster? That’s the thing about English. It changes too much. Not like Latin, right, my friend?”
I recoil at being his friend and force myself to be more aware of traffic. At fifty miles an hour, I can’t risk hitting another car, but could I swerve like a drunk and get another driver to call 911? It’s an idea.
“My invention,” he says, pulling me back to the conversation.
“The list was?” Maybe talking and questions are the way to go. “Why’d you invent the list?”
He doesn’t answer and I risk another glance over my shoulder. His eyes are narrowed, looking out the passenger side. “I invented the list because I needed a finite set of individuals who are easily controlled and can be victims of occasional accidents.”
I feel my jaw slacken and my stomach turn as all thoughts of outsmarting him through conversation dissolve. “Oh.”
He’s a Virgil-quoting serial-killing lunatic who the whole world thinks is dead. Kind of an airtight alibi for a murderer—especially one who orchestrates accidents.
“You’ve really thrown me off my game tonight, Quinte,” he says calmly, as if we’re just cruising along for fun. “You should have come to the meeting on time like your boyfriend did.”
“Levi? Where is he?” Please, God, don’t let him have been trapped in that trailer and I somehow missed him.
“He goes where he’s told. Well, he does when he thinks the text is from you.”
So that’s why Levi’s bike was there. He thought I’d texted him.
“Where is he?” I ask again, my voice rising.
He ignores me. “Now I’m going to have to repeat the drive off the bridge, and that doesn’t look good at all.”
Look good to who? I shoot him a questioning glance in the mirror but he’s not looking at me; he’s thinking. Is this my chance to do something?
But then he glares at me. “Not that it’s a competition,” he adds, as if I have any idea what he’s talking about.
“Then what is it?” I ask quietly.
His eyes narrow at me in the rearview mirror. “Take the next exit.”
Molly shifts around again, whimpering a little and giving me hope that she’s going to wake up. But what if she does? Will he kill her immediately? Give her more chloroform or whatever he smothered her with?
Jarvis has to lean even farther forward to keep the knife close to her, enough that I can slide my eyes over and see his face. It’s set in a hard expression as his gaze darts around the highway, his tension palpable.
“We’re almost at Birch Run.” He sighs, sounding disgusted. “Not one of my favorites, but I’m a professional.”
A professional assassin.
He’s looking the other way, and the exit is coming fast. I keep my foot on the gas and hope he’ll be distracted by his thoughts for the ten seconds it’ll take to pass the Birch Run exit. I know that section of river, and I know that bridge. It’s—
“Hey!” The knife comes at me this time, flashing in my peripheral vision. “This exit!”
I jerk the wheel to the right at the very last second, wishing I’d hit the guardrail, but I don’t. I roll down the exit road and wait for him to tell me where to turn, even though I know exactly where we’re going. An old bridge with rickety sides.
My mother won’t even let me drive over the Birch Run bridge. And now I’m going to drive off it. At least, I think that’s what the “professional” has in mind.
I can’t let that happen to Molly. I can’t.
Why is he doing this? “It doesn’t make sense,” I mutter, my brain short-circuited enough that I talk out loud.
“It makes sense to me,” he says.
How reassuring.
“Juvenal said it best when he observed the dark side of human nature,” he says. “Et qui nolunt occidere quemquam posse volunt. Don’t you agree, Quinte?”
I don’t have a clue what he said beyond who does not want to … something.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“ ‘Those who do not wish to kill anyone wish they were able,’ ” he says, followed by a slow, deep breath into his nostrils. “And that’s why no one else can do this and I have to prove that to them.”
“To who?”
He doesn’t answer and I decide to push it. “Your secret society?” I go a little further. “Nihil Relinquere?”
He turns sharply to me. “Of course I’ll leave nothing behind. That’s the whole idea, Quinte. No proof, no evidence, no clues, no suggestion of foul play.”
“Then why do you leave those coins?”
“Proof that it wasn’t an accident,” he says. “Proof that only certain people in my society would understand and believe.”
“I thought they tracked people. I thought that’s why Josh left one at the convenience store.”
“A rookie error, I assure you.”
In my peripheral vision, I see a flash of black and white under a billboard. Hope surges through me as I realize it’s a police cruiser waiting for a speeder. What do I do? Flash the brights? Hit the brakes? Speed like hell?
I go with plan C and smash my foot on the accelerator, the engine screaming.
“What are you—” He sees the cop and instantly leans forward. “Don’t even think about it.”
The cop pulls out but doesn’t put on his lights. Next to me, Jarvis pulls Molly’s sleeping body a little higher.
“You go one mile an hour over or under the speed limit, blink your lights, touch your brakes, or so much as think about signaling that cop and I will put this blade five inches into this girl.”
I say nothing.
“Isn’t one death on your conscience enough, Quinte?”
Does he mean the other girls, or Conner? How would he know I feel guilty about my brother’s death? Nausea threatens to rise and I fight the feeling.
“You really didn’t think you were on the list because of your looks, did you?” he adds.
I can barely breathe as we approach the bridge. The cop is letting us get ahead, and he still hasn’t turned on a siren or flashed his lights. If he does, surely this madman wouldn’t risk being pulled over and having a cop find a dead body? Should
I—
“Did you, Quinte?” he demands. “Did you think you earned a spot thanks to your great beauty?”
Oh, God. This has to do with Conner. I’m on the list because of Conner. My whole body shudders like I’ve just dropped off a ten-story building. I sneak a look in the rearview mirror; the cop is still back there. Way back there.
“If you’d done your research, you would have seen that many of the girls on the list fall into the category of not so hot, but so very … vulnerable. Like you, they also have weaknesses and tendencies and allergies and histories. I’m very careful who I pick. Turn here. Right here. And use your signal. I see the damn cop.”
I follow the orders and we head back up a hill, away from the bridge. That’s good news. The bad news: the cop doesn’t follow.
“Stay on this road. I have another plan.”
Of course he does. “Where are we going?”
“No more questions. You can’t keep doing this to me.”
“Doing what?”
“You escaped the cut brakes, you found the gas leak, and I couldn’t flatten you on your bike. But your luck has run out. Memento mori, Quinte. Memento mori.”
I don’t have to dig too deep into my translation well for that one. Remember to die … or, figuratively, remember you’re going to die. Yeah, how could I forget?
CHAPTER XXX
I’m not completely surprised when Jarvis directs me to Nacht Woods, although we’re far from the Collier property. This section of the woods is at least a mile from any homes, a desolate and dense forest that only the most seasoned hiker would attempt to enter. I don’t know what to expect, except that it can’t be good.
Next to me, Molly grunts softly, surely coming out of her sleep. Two of us can take him down. Molly and I can silently communicate and beat this nutcase at his game … unless he kills her first.
No matter what, I have to protect Molly. I have to outsmart him because he might be crazy, but he’s smart. That’s what I have to be, too.
“Up that hill,” he orders. “Cut through those trees and find the path.”
My lights slice through the densest section of evergreens. “Through them?”
“You’ll make it. Might scratch your pal’s nice ride, but she and her car are about to go through worse.”
Not if I can stop you.
But how? I have to gun it to get up a steep embankment, the path carpeted with slick leaves that make the tires skid. I manage the climb and cringe when the needles scrape over the car like nails on a chalkboard.
Then I realize we’re
driving up to Stony Creek Cliff, the very place a hiker was …
“Stephanie Kurtz.” The woman’s name pops into my head and out of my mouth. She wasn’t a teenager, but a young mother who graduated from Vienna High and had probably been on the list.
“Mmm. That was a good one. A flawless accident, orchestrated with perfection.”
To fall off the cliff onto the rocks of the creek below?
“I called her Septime.”
I don’t get it. “You mean you killed seven that year?” I can hear the breathlessness in my voice. “Women who were once on the list?”
“I didn’t kill her,” he says. “I merely choreographed that one and let one of the trainees take the credit. This year’s different.”
“How? Because everyone dies? In order?”
“Getting the order right is just, shall we say, a flourish on my signature. Not as necessary as getting all ten taken care of.”
“Why?” I choke out the question.
“Let’s just say the stakes in my business got higher, and I have something to prove to get a promotion.”
“You kill people to get a promotion?”
That makes him laugh. “I kill people for a living, Quinte. I do it better, cleaner, and faster than anyone else and I get the promotion. It’s really like any other job.”
It’s his job. Sick to my stomach, I force myself to focus on all that matters right now: staying alive and saving Molly. And then … Levi. I have to find him, too.
I cling to those goals and inch the car up the glasslike surface of stone and rock, heading toward the embankment about fifteen feet over Stony Creek.
In my pocket, my cell phone vibrates.
“Give it to me,” he says.
Can I swerve the car when I reach into my pocket? Is this my chance? When he reads the phone? Or should I press the call button when I hand it to him and have whoever is calling hear what’s happening so at least someone will know the truth?
“Why are you doing this? Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” I practically scream the questions that won’t stop.
They All Fall Down Page 23
