ROWAN
On the downside, I still haven’t figured out who the hell we’re after.
On the upside, neither has Sloane.
Double plus: she hates it when I point that out.
I knock on Sloane’s door and shove my hands into my pockets, trying to look nonchalant despite the whirling storm of excitement that lights up my chest. When she opens it, her face immediately falls into a dark scowl.
“Expecting someone else?” I ask with a smirk.
“No,” she snorts, as though that’s the most ridiculous idea ever that some other fella might be wanting to come over at nine o’clock on a Thursday night. I guess the pickings are a little slim in the village of Ivydale. “I just know you’re here to gloat.”
I let out a theatrical gasp. “I would never.” My grin spreads and Sloane’s gaze drops to my lips. She likes to pretend she doesn’t really want to get to know me, but every time her eyes fuse to my scar, a little crease flickers between her brows. “If you let me in, I’ll tell you how I got that scar you can’t help but stare at.”
The look she gives me is one of pure horror. Blush crawls up her neck and brightens her cheeks. “I was not…I didn’t…” She huffs and raises her chin. “You’re the worst.”
All that fury combined with all that shyness, all her lethal ability wrapped in an easily-flustered package. She’s so fucking adorable. It takes everything in me not to laugh, and she can tell.
Sloane leans over the threshold, her fingers gripped to the edge of the door as she tries to keep me from seeing inside her room. Her furious gaze scours my face. “I’m a serial killer you know,” she hisses. “I could break into your room while you sleep and suck your eyeballs right out of your head with the industrial vacuum that Francis uses to clean the cat hair from the hideous lobby carpet.”
“I’m sure you could, Blackbird. No doubt.” My grin spreads and I raise my hands in a truce, though Sloane doesn’t seem convinced. “So, you gonna invite me in or what?”
“No, actually.” Sloane whips the key card from the holder next to the door and stuffs it in the back pocket of her jeans as she pushes past me. The door closes behind her with a loud click. “I’ve gotta be somewhere.”
My feet seem glued to the floor as I watch Sloane stride down the hallway, tossing the strap of her bag across her body as she goes.
“Gotta be… what?” I jog after her and match her stride, examining her profile as she marches down the hallway with a shit-eating smirk. “‘Be somewhere?’ Where?”
“Somewhere, Rowan. Or did you forget this is a competition?” she asks. She tries to hide that growing grin but she can’t.
My heart slams my chest wall as I realize she’s a little more done up than usual. A white cashmere sweater. Her makeup is the same as she’s worn it the last three days since we arrived, with winged eyeliner and black mascara and matte red lipstick, but she’s changed out her multiple earrings to a different set of gold pieces, some with stones that shine beneath her dark locks.
My mouth goes bone dry.
“Are you going on a date?” I ask as we turn a corner and head for the wide stairway that leads to the lobby.
Sloane sighs. “I wouldn’t call it a date, per se…”
“Then where are you going? You know, for like…safety purposes and whatnot…”
Sloane snorts. “You think I need your protection, pretty boy?”
No. But also yes.
“I should come with you, just in case. Wouldn’t want something like Briscoe’s to happen again,” I say as we enter the lobby. Sloane draws to a halt and turns to face me.
“No, Rowan, you can’t come. What if it is a date? That would be so awkward.” She pats my chest and grins. “Don’t worry, I’ll fill you in on all the gory details later.”
With a final tap on my chest that’s really more like a slap, she turns and strides away.
“But… I was the one who was supposed to be gloating,” I call after her as she reaches the lobby exit.
“Sorry, not sorry,” she chimes. She flips me the bird before she slips through the doors, leaving only an echoing thud behind.
I stand in her wake, stunned. A wave of confusion and worry and jealousy crashes through my chest. In one fell swoop, I’ve been filled with a fucking ocean of it.
What the fuck?
“Sloane,” I call out after her, marching to the door. I thrust it open with more force than necessary and let it hit the door stopper with a satisfying thud of wood against the rubber-coated metal. “Sloane, goddammit…”
I look left and right. I hold my breath and listen.
Nothing.
My hand drives through my hair. I’m not sure if I’m more irritated that I might be on the losing end of our first game, or that Sloane is on a maybe-date with some wanker from butt-fuck nowhere.
I strain to hear anything but crickets, but there’s still no sign of Sloane.
“Fuck.”
I barrel toward the lobby door and toss it open with more force than necessary as I stalk back into the hotel and head to my room. I pace there for a while as I consider my options. Maybe I should go out and find the local pub and get shitfaced. But what if she runs into someone like Briscoe or Watson? Briscoe must have landed a lucky hit—the bloke was as sedentary as a fucking boulder. But Watson was a crafty bastard. What if she’s cornered by someone like that? What if she’s trapped and I can’t find her? What if she calls for help and I’m pissed drunk at the tavern singing Country Roads?
I never expected I’d be pacing my room as I stress over the whereabouts of the fucking Orb Weaver, my heart racing and palms sweaty, worried about whether she might get hurt.
The ding of an incoming text is the only thing that stops me from wearing a hole into the floor.
I’m fine.
I snort.
I wasn’t concerned.
A complete lie, obviously. I sit on the edge of the bed as I try to resist the urge to resume my track across the room, my knee bouncing.
Oh good.
In that case, don’t wait up!
“What the fuck…”
I barely temper the urge to hurtle my phone against the wall, electing to clutch it in an iron grip and punch the mattress instead. It’s wildly unsatisfying to punch a fucking mattress, by the way.
So I resume pacing.
After a while, I give up on the walking and try to do some research on the local area, but I come up with next to nothing, just like all my efforts over the past three days. The only thing I’ve found of significance is a handful of news articles. Random stories, nothing to tie the pieces to a suspect. A missing hiker, just like Francis said. Another dead body in a ravine. A car with New York plates dredged from the Kanawha River. How the fuck Lachlan put together that there’s a serial killer in the area, I have no idea. In fact, I’m starting to think he sent us here as a hoax.
I give up and flop on my bed to stare at the ceiling.
It’s three hours later when I finally hear the quiet click of Sloane’s door closing as she slips into her room next to mine.
Three fucking hours.
Besides the fact that she could have won our game in that amount of time, she also could have done all kinds of other things. Been on a date, for one. Maybe she had dinner somewhere other than this hotel with Francis’s frozen peas and unseasoned, overcooked pork chops that I’ll probably crack a tooth on before the week is out.
…Maybe she hooked up with some guy.
A groan rumbles in my throat and I turn over to suffocate myself in the floral pattern of the cheap polyester duvet.
“Rowan you feckin’ eejit,” I snarl into the indifferent mattress. “This game is already blowing up your feckin’ face and it’s day three.”
As if on cue, the sound of music comes from next door.
The volume is low, but I can make out a few of the lyrics through the paper-thin walls, and then the sound of Sloane’s voice as she sings along with the occasional bar of the song.
Though I’m relieved she’s back in one piece, I still drag a pillow over my head and try to muffle the sound, mostly to stop myself from marching over there to demand she tell me what she was up to, even though it’s none of my fucking business and I might not want to know.
The pillow doesn’t work, of course. And not just because it’s as thin as a fucking tissue. It’s probably because I’m straining to listen even though I’m pretending not to.
The song changes and Sloane’s quiet voice disappears.
The absence of her presence stretches on, scratching at my skull. Against my better judgment, I roll off the bed and head to the wall that separates us before leaning forward to press my ear to the faded damask wallpaper.
The music is a little clearer, the volume still low. I hear her mattress creak. And then a gentle buzzing sound.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I whisper, dragging my hands down my face. What I would not give to be in that room right now. Sloane’s raspy moan sets my blood on fire. My cock is already rock-fucking-hard.
I’m about to step back from the wall. I really am. I’m starting to lean away when I hear a single word pass her lips.
Rowan.
Or maybe sewin’. Or Cohen. Or Samoan. Can’t really be sure. I’ll just go with Rowan.
My blood is fucking volcanic. My heart thunders. Every cell in my body screams with need. It takes everything in me to start moving away again, but then I hear something strange coming from farther down the wall.
A quiet groan.
I creep toward the source of the sound.
Another groan. A garbled whisper. When I press my ear to the surface, I still catch the faint buzz of Sloane’s toy. But much closer is the distinctive sound of someone wanking off.
I recoil from the wall and note the structure. About two-thirds down, toward where it joins the back of the room, there’s a right angle where the wall comes farther into the living space. So I make my way there, each step careful and silent.
Heel. Toe. Heel. Toe.
I stop at the protrusion of the wall and press my ear next to the brass frame of a portrait painting.
A man’s whisper finds me over the rhythmic sound of a hand pumping an erection. “Yes, baby… just like that…”
Rage floods my veins.
I step back and scan the room for something I can use to destroy the fucking wall before I have to resort to using my bare hands. My gaze lands on the nightstand and sticks there. If inanimate objects had feelings, the brass lamp next to the bed would be shitting itself.
I march over to it and rip it from the plug, gripping its long body like a baseball bat as I turn toward the section of the wall where the pervert is hidden. I’m just about to take my first swing when the eyes of the painting flick open. A real set of human eyes stare back at me and widen with alarm.
“Oh shit,” a man’s voice whispers.
My instant of shock dissolves into fury as the eyes disappear, leaving dark and empty holes behind. “Motherfucker.”
I rush the wall and smash the painting with my weapon, lurching halfway into the tiny, hidden room when the thin canvas gives way with nothing behind it. I don’t even catch sight of the other man—I can only hear him scurry away like the fucking rat he is.
Sloane’s shriek rises above the chaos from the next room over, her string of expletives merging into a cascade of vitriol.
“Rowan Kane you fucking Irish perverted weirdo WHAT THE FUCK are you doing I’m going to FUCK YOU UP—”
“No no no,” I protest, though she doesn’t hear me over the continued string of swears and now crashes of sound. She must be hurtling her belongings at the wall. My imagination instantly takes me right to whatever vibrator she was just using as a heavy thunk slams against the plasterboard. I stumble backward into my room and out to the corridor, the lamp still clutched in my hand as I rush to her room and pound on the door. It swings open before I’ve even finished the third knock.
Sloane is fucking fuming.
“There was a man in the wall,” I blurt out.
“I know,” she snarls as she shoves me with both hands. “His name is Rowan Kane and he has no fucking boundaries because he’s a fucking pervy weirdo—”
“No, I swear—”
“Were you spying on me getting myself off?”
“No,” I protest, but she glares at me as though utterly unconvinced that I’m telling the truth. It doesn’t help my case that she’s wearing a tiny pair of sleep shorts and a spaghetti strap tank top, and she’s probably able to hear the no bra alarm blaring on repeat in my head. “Okay, I heard you but I stepped away from the wall—”
“Rowan—”
“And then I heard something else,” I say, grabbing her wrist with my free hand. I tow her behind me. She squirms and protests, but I refuse to let her go. “You’re right, there was someone watching you in the wall. And he took off before I had a chance to see his face, let alone bludgeon it with a lamp.”
We stop at the gaping hole where the ruined painting hangs askew and I drop Sloane’s wrist so she can peer into the narrow room. She leans in, twisting to assess the exit point to a hidden corridor in the back wall.
“Motherfucker,” she whispers.
“Right? That’s what I said.”
Sloane turns to me, her arms crossed over her chest. I expect to see lingering anger or suspicion, not her eyes dancing in the dim light and the murderous grin that sneaks across her lips. “I fucking knew it.”
A heartbeat later, Sloane is marching past me.
“Wait…what’s going on?” I follow in her wake to stop at her door as she tosses on a plaid shirt, not bothering with the buttons. She slips on her sneakers and whips her sheathed hunting blade from the floor, and then she’s pushing past me again to stalk down the corridor toward the staircase. I toss the lamp into her room with a crash of broken glass and jog after her, catching up as she hurries down the stairs.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m boobing boobily, Rowan. What does it look like?”
“You’re…what?”
“Chasing that motherfucker down, that’s what.”
“Who?”
“Francis,” she says as she storms through the lobby. “Francis Ross.”
All the pieces click into place, the picture coming into view. The car in the river. The plates from New York. When the right victims made the wrong decisions and wound up at the Cunningham Inn, he watched them. And sometimes he killed them.
He watched Sloane. Maybe he would have tried to kill her too.
Rage stains my vision red as we burst out of the lobby and into the night.
The thought that he could have hurt her collides with another realization, stopping me dead in the parking lot as Sloane storms forward on a paved path that winds around the side of the hotel, leading toward the caretaker’s house. “That emo wannabe fuckboy with the pink tie is the killer? And you went on a date with that wanker?”
Sloane snorts a laugh but doesn’t stop. “Gross.”
“Sloane—”
“It’s a competition, Butcher,” she says as she reaches the corner of the hotel. She doesn’t even look over her shoulder as she gives me the finger and leaves me with two parting words: “Get fucked.”
Sloane turns the corner with a devilish cackle, her running footsteps consumed by shadow.
“Like hell,” I hiss.
And then I take off after her into the night.
