The Rules

by Nancy Holder

  “Boxes,” August deadpanned. “Holy crap, Larson, there are boxes everywhere. But what do I know? There’s also a murderer on the loose, and I sure as hell didn’t expect that.”

  “What about Drew?” Praveen piped up nervously. She looked at Robin. “You must have seen him.”

  “At the beach?” Robin asked, confused, and Praveen shook her head. “Seen him where?”

  Praveen licked her lips. “In the parking lot. When he left.”

  “Left?” Robin echoed. She looked excited. “Did you guys get one of the cars to start?”

  “No, he walked.” Praveen pointed to the door. “He said he was going to the road to get help.”

  Kyle shook his head. “We didn’t see him.”

  “Oh no.” Praveen scratched the backs of her hands. Her nails were leaving angry red lines. “What if the killer…Oh my God, please go look for him!”

  Beth narrowed her eyes. “Or he’s the killer and he just walked out of here.”

  Quivering, Praveen ran to Kyle and latched on to both of his hands. “Please, please, Kyle. Go look for him. He was going up to the road. You can find him. Maybe if both of you wait for a car to go by…”

  In spite of everything that was so massively more important, Hiro felt sorry for Praveen. Drew might be nothing but an unreliable doper who stole songs, but he did pull in the ladies, and it was just so ironic that he had gotten stuck with Praveen. Just more proof that Drew had no common sense. Everyone had been teasing Drew mercilessly about his jailbait, and he had sworn he’d dump her once they got to L.A. Hiro and Mick firmly believed they had to get rid of Drew before they got to L.A. Once Samurai Records realized what a buffoon Drew was, they’d dump “his” band.

  Maybe fate had just taken a hand in that.

  “The fog’s really bad,” Kyle said, and Robin nodded. “Who’s going to see him and stop?”

  “All the more reason to bring him back,” Praveen said. “Please.”

  Kyle and Larson traded looks as Robin got up and stood beside Kyle. Hiro glanced at Mick and they both smiled grimly. Mick shook his head. He was staying put. Hiro would rather be with the search party than with the rest of the Breakfast Club. He was also still suspicious of August, and frankly he wanted to get as far away from Cage’s body as he could.

  “I’ll help,” he announced, putting his tequila bottle on the table. “Safety in numbers, right?”

  “Cool,” said Larson.

  “And we can check your car,” Hiro told Larson. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Larson nodded and fished in his pocket. “That’d rock.”

  “Wait. Stop.” August made a circle with his hand. “We should stick together.”

  “We can all look for Drew,” Robin said, and Thea shook her head.

  “No way,” she replied, bursting into tears. Beth slung an arm over her shoulders. “Why did you invite me to this f’ing thing?”

  “We’re staying here,” Beth announced. “Me and Thea. And Robin. Until Larson checks his car.”

  “And me,” Stacy muttered. “I can’t even walk.”

  “Yeah, guys, go check the car and come back,” August insisted.

  “And look for Drew,” Praveen pleaded.

  “Watch him,” Stacy said. “Watch Hiro. Don’t turn your back.”

  Hiro scowled at her. “God, Stacy, I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Mick asked, narrowing his eyes at him.

  “No idea,” Hiro bit off. He didn’t like the way Mick was looking at him. This was getting way too crazy.

  “Please stop arguing and go look for him,” Praveen said.

  “Check the car,” August said.

  “Okay,” Robin said. “Let’s do this.”

  “Stay here,” Kyle said gently to Robin. When she began to argue, he said, “We’ll be right back.”

  All eyes were on Larson, Kyle, and Hiro. Getting out of this death trap.

  Going into the fog. And the unknown.

  THINNING OUT

  ROBIN’S RULE #6: When things are bad, they can always get worse.

  “He’ll push him,” Stacy murmured.

  Robin’s forehead wrinkled. She felt sorry for Stacy, who was now sprawled on the floor beside Praveen. Robin walked over and squatted beside them. Stacy’s head lolled as she looked up at Robin.

  “Hiro pushed me,” Stacy enunciated carefully, her head lolling as she looked up at Robin. Her lids were fluttering. “He says I fell but I didn’t…not.”

  “Well, it’s possible that you…,” Praveen began, then trailed off. “Oh my God, could it be Hiro?” She stared at Robin and jostled Stacy’s shoulder. “Stacy? Is Hiro the killer?”

  “Hiro pushed me,” she said again. “He tried to kill me. He used to love me.”

  “She’s just high,” Mick said dismissively.

  “How do you know?” Robin asked. “Why don’t you believe her?”

  “Well, just think about it. If he really tried to kill her, would he bring her back here?”

  “I don’t know,” Robin said. “I don’t think like that.”

  “I’m sick. Robin, I need help,” Stacy whispered.

  “I’m so scared,” Praveen said to Robin, and she pressed a fist against her mouth.

  “We’re all scared,” Robin said. “We just need to stay calm and stick together. Because otherwise—”

  A horrible wail pierced Robin’s eardrums. It was Drew.

  Robin leaped to her feet as Praveen started shrieking. August ran to the stage, picked up his cordless mike, and tried to put it on, dropped it, tried again.

  “Drew!” he shouted. “Drew, people are out there looking for you! Try to let them know where you are!”

  “No! No!” Praveen yelled. “The killer will know where he is, too!”

  “He already knows,” Robin said. Her heart was thundering; she tried to force herself to stay calm. Kyle, where was Kyle?

  Stacy raised a hand. “Maybe he fell down or something.”

  “Then he could be hurt and the killer can get to him!” Praveen shouted.

  August ignored her. “Drew, make noise! They’re out there for you. Let them find you!”

  “Not Hiro,” Stacy pleaded. “Tell him not to go to Hiro.”

  Praveen buried her face in Stacy’s chest, shaking, crying. “Drew, baby, oh, please, please,” Praveen said.

  Robin flew to the door, hands around the knob, and Thea and Beth ran up behind her, pulling on her and shouting at her not to turn it.

  “Get off me!” she shouted. “Let me go!”

  She pushed them away with all her strength; then she was out the door.

  August was back on the mike, yelling, “Whoever you are, tell us what you want!”

  Robin shut the warehouse door behind herself. The fog was thicker than ever, and her flashlight was useless. She turned it off and minced her way carefully, arms out in front of her. She honestly didn’t know which way to turn, and her heartbeat drowned out the crash of the water far below.

  “Kyle?” she whispered once, just once.

  “Robin,” he shouted, and then his arms were around her. He was wet from head to toe and his momentum carried her back to the warehouse.

  He was holding on to her, hugging her; he lowered his head and kissed her, hard. Need and energy; she held on as seawater sluiced all over her. They clung to each other; now he was something she could have lost. Someone she had a claim to.

  “Where’s Drew? What happened?” Praveen demanded from the doorway.

  The spell was broken, and Robin pulled away. Kyle kept his hand cupped around the back of her head, trailing it down her back to her waist. Together they trooped inside, past Praveen, with Larson following them.

  Robin kept looking at Kyle, fixing her attention on him only. Willing him to look at her because if he didn’t, if he looked away…

  “Oh God,” Larson murmured, covering his eyes with his hand. The bat and knife, which he’d been holding, clattered t
o the ground. “Oh my God.”

  “No,” Praveen cried, scratching her forehead, her cheeks. “Stop!”

  “We split up,” Larson said. “Kyle and I went to check my car first. Hiro went the other direction.”

  “Where is Drew?” Praveen shrieked. “Where is he? Did you leave him somewhere? Why isn’t he with you?”

  “Shut up,” Larson snapped. “He’s dead.” He blinked and his mouth formed an O, as if he hadn’t believed it until that moment. He said, far more gently, “Drew’s dead.”

  “No!” Praveen screamed. “No!”

  Shivering, Kyle looked away, and Robin began to quake inside. Her heart raced.

  No. Not happening, said a little voice in her head. Not more.

  All eyes fastened on Larson. Robin could hear Praveen screeching like a madwoman.

  “We were looking everywhere. Larson and I were going to go down the road but we thought we saw something on the trail,” Kyle said. “Then I saw something on the cliff, above the road.” Larson’s eyes were practically spinning. “It looked like a person, standing. We figured, Drew. Maybe Heather. I cupped my hands to call out to him. And then…he…he fell. Into the ocean.”

  Praveen was still screaming. Robin pivoted, the room spinning around her. Things were stretching sideways. She was going to faint.

  “You don’t know that it was Drew,” Thea said. “It could have been Heather. Or Morgan.”

  “I ran down, jumped into the water. I tried to swim out to him,” Kyle said. His voice broke. “There was definitely someone in the water.”

  “You don’t know that it was Drew!” Praveen shrieked.

  “Don’t you get it? Hiro pushed him off the cliff!” Stacy said.

  Then Beth let out a high-pitched wail and Kyle was yelling and covering Robin, people were running and shouting. Robin was baffled; then she looked up and followed the line of Beth’s hand, extended toward the dead skull lights, toward the loft—

  —toward the loft—

  —where Heather seemed perched as if she was going to jump. Her face was bloody, her eyes bloodshot, and the terror in them made Robin scream, too.

  Then Heather jumped out of the loft—

  —or was pushed—

  She fell straight down. There was a rope around her neck, a hangman’s noose. Robin shrieked, running with her arms out, as if she could catch her. But the rope went taut.

  Above all the fury, Robin heard a crack like a gunshot.

  Heather’s feet swung out of reach. She was wearing just one shoe; the other foot was bare and bleeding; then the lone shoe fell off and smacked the floor.

  Heather swung back and forth,

  back and forth,

  like a bell.

  HELL BREAKS LOOSE

  ROBIN’S RULE #7: Help others whenever you can.

  Screaming.

  Nonstop screaming.

  Hands grabbed and dragged Robin backward. Larson leaped at Heather’s feet, but they swayed above him.

  He finally grabbed a knife and dragged a table over, yelling, “Damn it, help me!” Beth and Thea, confused, picked up a second table. Larson shook his head and put a chair on the table, then climbed up.

  “Heather!” Robin cried. Wildly, she struggled against whoever was holding her. August led Mick around the stage, disappearing. Stacy pointed up at the loft. She tried to get away. Had to get to Heather. The whole room tilted and blurred. Someone ran past her; someone was still holding her, putting their hand over her eyes, forcing her not to look.

  She heard a sickening thud as the floor took an impact. They had cut Heather down.

  She pried the fingers away as Larson flung himself down to his knees trying to loosen the noose from around her neck. Bloodshot eyes as big as plums were pressing outward from their sockets.

  “Shit!” Larson bellowed. “Shit! She’s dead!”

  Larson got up and staggered away from Heather. He looked around with huge eyes, shell-shocked; Beth ran toward him but he turned away. She threw her arms around him from behind, sobbing.

  Robin’s throat was raw and her scream finally croaked to an end with bile searing her vocal cords. She buried her head in Kyle’s chest. He was the one who had been grabbing at her. He wrapped his arms around her and held her so tightly she could barely breathe.

  August and Mick ran back into the room. “I had a ladder to get up there,” August said, pointing at the loft. “For the lights. But it’s gone. I don’t know how she got up there. I don’t know…”

  “That’s the rope you made us bring here!” Beth shrieked at him.

  Robin shook harder as the words sank in. The rope August had sent them to find had a hangman’s noose at the end.

  “Kyle, I found that rope. I found it,” Robin said, gasping.

  He tightened his arms even more until she was afraid he was going to crack her ribs.

  “No. Don’t go there.”

  “Who did this? Who would want this?” she whispered.

  “It’s August’s party. His rules. His sick collection of stuff,” Kyle said.

  For one insane moment she felt like she was back home, sitting at her kitchen table, playing Clue with her brother. I suspect Mr. August in the warehouse with the rope.

  She didn’t know which was worse—that three people were dead or that she was trying to parse who had killed them as though it were just another puzzle to solve, just another game. One thing was for sure. This wasn’t going to end. She’d thought earlier that maybe someone with a grudge had followed Cage. But this was someone who had it out for more of them, maybe all of them.

  That was when she realized that she had to solve it. No cars, no phones. She couldn’t let anything happen to Kyle. Or Thea. Or Beth. Or…everyone.

  Heather lay crumpled on the ground. August, Mick, and Larson gathered in a half circle behind her. Mick and Larson were staring with open hostility at August, and Robin tensed, certain that they were going to attack him.

  Praveen staggered over to a crate, put her head between her knees, and unceremoniously vomited. Stacy was across the room on another crate doing the same. Thea and Beth stood well away from the body, arms around each other as if they were holding each other up.

  The door flew open. It was Hiro, eyes wide.

  “I heard…Shit,” Hiro said. He stared at Heather’s body.

  Praveen ran toward him and threw her arms around him. He stumbled from the impact. “Tell me Drew’s alive!”

  He held on to her as his gaze fixed on the rope around Heather’s neck. “Who did this?”

  “Well, you weren’t here,” August ground out. “Were you?”

  “No, man. No way.” He looked at Praveen and cautiously began to disengage. “I’m sorry. Yeah, I saw it. He fell, Praveen.”

  “No. It wasn’t him. It was someone else,” she insisted, grabbing at him. She hit his chest with both her fists. “You’re lying!”

  Mick came over to Praveen and gathered her up. His gaze flickered over to Hiro as he forced Praveen to walk back across the room with him.

  “Wish I was,” Hiro said. He staggered over to the drink table, grabbed his bottle of tequila, and threw it back. He looked up at the ceiling, then around the room. “What the hell happened?”

  “We don’t know,” Kyle said.

  “Yet,” Robin added.

  She made herself look at Heather. Everyone was turning away from her. Soon she would be covered, like Cage. She leaned her head against Kyle’s trembling arm.

  From that angle, she noticed something white beneath the coil of rope around her neck. It was one of August’s damned envelopes.

  “Look,” she said, forcing herself to squat down and pluck it up with her thumb and forefinger so that she could read what was written on the front.

  “ ‘You killed them, you sick bastard,’ ” she read to the group.

  August was obviously meant to be the sick bastard. He was clever; he would have known all eyes would turn to him as the sadistic jerk in charge of this whole n
ightmare. So staging a note from someone else was a fairly useless attempt to deflect his guilt, if he was guilty. But with all the adrenaline and the emotions charging around the room, Robin wouldn’t be surprised if someone snapped and beat up August before he could prove his innocence.

  If he could.

  Maybe that was exactly what the real killer wanted.

  “Okay, but what’s inside the envelope?” Mick asked.

  The envelope was secured to the rope around Heather’s neck, and a tug failed to free it. Robin looked hard at August, who blanched and backed away, hands lifted. “You do it. No way am I touching a dead girl to find out.”

  A dead girl. Robin forced herself to take a deep breath. She didn’t want to touch the dead girl, either. More sharp acid flooded her mouth as she bent down again and reached for the envelope. Heather’s arm slid sideways and thudded gently onto the floor.

  Robin hesitated. Then she grasped the envelope. It was stuck.

  “It’s taped onto her…her skin,” Kyle said, looking sick.

  Robin’s lip curled back and she heard her own breaths through her clenched teeth as she worked her fingers beneath the noose and picked at a strip of clear packing tape on Heather’s chest. Kyle put a steadying hand on Robin’s shoulder. She bit down hard on her lip and tugged. Heather’s chin bounced.

  She pulled it free and started to stand, but soon froze, staring at Heather’s face. There was a beat and when she still didn’t move, Kyle took the envelope. His hand was shaking so badly it was nearly impossible for him to pull out the single white sheet of paper inside.

  “Well? What does it say?” Mick said.

  Kyle licked his lips. “ ‘Play by my rules or be the next to die.’ ”

  A wail tore out of Thea. Beth struggled to quiet her as she collapsed onto the floor. As stealthily as she could, Robin picked up the knife and slid it into the pocket of her bomber jacket.

  “There’s more,” Kyle said, speaking over Thea’s meltdown, Praveen’s wails.

  “I didn’t do it, okay?” August said, before anyone could even accuse him.

  Kyle read.