Hiding Behind A Mask (The Maskless Trilogy #1)
Page 12
Chapter 11
Becca walks back into the room, her body shaking violently. Victoria’s eyes are wide open and empty of life. Her blood is still running out of her chest and soaking into the dark carpet beneath her. The mask swings slightly from the ceiling, turning little by little as the fan above it moves the air around the room at a slow pace.
Becca falls to her knees beside the body of Victoria, too deep in shock to cry or say anything. Instead, she feels only a gut wrenching aching inside of her that sends tremors through every inch of her body.
Victoria is dead and the guy that killed her is alive. Would she be such a monster if she had killed him? If the knife had flown perfectly into his heart?
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, a tear falling down her cheek.
She watches Victoria to make sure she’s not alive, to make sure she’s… dead.
And then, slowly she stands up and walks over to the bloody mask. She unties it and holds it as if it’s something that could kill her.
. . .
“She’s what?” Eduard says, stumbling back a little. “How...?”
Becca looks at the mask in her hands. The words are smudging together now as the blood runs down the white paint.
“There was a man... I don’t know...” Becca’s eyes are watering. “I’m sorry.”
Eduard shakes his head and turns away, leaving Mikey and Twitch standing in front of Becca instead.
“Well what now?” Nixon asks, trying to look unfazed by the death.
They all look at Becca, the lighting of the abandoned room casting eerie shadows on their masks as they wait for an answer to fix everything. An answer that Becca doesn’t have.
She looks up, feeling the weight of their lives, the weight of their trust in her. She isn’t the leader, Eduard is, even though he says she is. But she’s the one they look to now.
She glances at Eduard, who leans against the back wall with his head against the rough surface. He isn’t going to answer the question for her.
It’s time for her to.
“I say none of us go home anymore. Obviously he knows where I am—where we are… And I don’t know if this will happen to just us in here, or to everyone in the Maskless. But for right now, it’s just us. Just us can go out in the woods and hide from him. From whoever this man is, whoever he’s working for.”
“So you think he’s working for someone?” Nixon asks, stepping forward.
Becca shrugs and looks back over at Eduard, who hasn’t moved a muscle. “Otherwise, how would he know about us? How would he know where we are? No one’s that crazy to obsess over us and want us killed. And even on that note, no one would play games like he is and kill Victoria—” Becca’s voice cracks. “And not me.”
Mikey and Nixon nod, and Twitch stares at the mask with a horrified expression, his mask the only one off. He starts moving his hands around each other as they twitch uncontrollably.
“What is it, Twitch?” Nixon asks, his voice alarmed.
He looks up at Nixon and then at Becca. He does this two more times as he backs up two steps, before he looks back down at the mask Becca holds.
“Twitch?” Mikey asks.
“That—that mask…” He says. “That’s why…”
“Why what?” Nixon presses, walking towards the nervous boy.
“The man wanted it. He asked for it.”
Becca’s eyes go wide beneath her mask and Eduard steps forward, snapping out of his trance.
“What man, Twitch?” He asks.
“The man in the black mask.”