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Jason pulled out a heavy-looking trunk from under the desk, the wood of the box the same wood as the floor, making it blend in.
We took one look at each other before Jason pried the heavy lid up, revealing a mess of papers and envelopes and photographs. Next to all the papers was a stack of cheap burner phones, each of them labeled across the front with either Leon or Leona. Jason took the first phone off the top and pressed the power button, the screen taking a few moments before it flickered on. There was a messaging app and a dating app but nothing else.
Jason opened the messages. “Sammy,” we both said as we read the name across the top of the screen.
The messages were salacious, the conversation taking a passionate turn almost from the first-ever message. We checked the next phone: Lionel. And the one before that: Sammy. Another one was sending messages to Julius.
All the victims were in this box, their private messages forever saved in a dusty underground bunker.
There was something all the message chains shared in common. “He always asks them if their partners know about the relationship. And they always answer ‘no.’”
Jason nodded. He must have come to the same conclusion I drew. “This is how he confirms he’s with cheaters, sticking to his MO every time. Jesus.”
“And the papers?” I asked as Jason started to shuffle through them.
“Notes. All of them handwritten, addressed to ‘J’… About how much she’s missed and how this is all for her. And—wait up. These notes get angrier. Look, here he’s talking about how much she hurt him, and this one is about making sure everyone feels the same pain he had… Some of them are just lists—weirdly look like grocery lists to me. And this last one is a page torn out of a book, talking about Greek mythology.” He handed them all to me, uncovering another box at the bottom.
Jason opened it, same as he did the trunk, same as he did the trapdoor.
He swallowed down a shocked gasp. The box held Polaroids inside of it, and the first one was a picture of Sammy, taken from outside of her window sometime at night. She lounged on her bed, scrolling through her phone wearing only her panties, completely oblivious to whoever creeped on her through the wide cracks of her broken blinds.
Underneath Sammy’s was Lionel’s photo, this one taken while he was showering, through the gap of an open bathroom door. Steam filled the room and worked as a veil for whoever snapped the shot.
The next photos all followed the pattern. Voyeur shots of a victim’s last moment, captured like heartfelt keepsakes instead of reflecting the atrocities about to occur.
And then we got to the last set of photographs. At the very bottom. Underneath all of the previous victims were the Polaroids dated as most recent.
My stomach immediately lurched up and got lodged in my esophagus. Jason had a similar reaction, rocketing up and dropping the box as if disgusted, shocked, stunned. The room felt somehow tighter, smaller than it was before. The weight of all the concrete and steel and iron and earth above us suddenly felt on the brink of collapse, like everything would all come crushing down on our shoulders at any moment. Gravity became heavier, stronger. Sweat beaded across my forehead as my body flung itself into fight-or-flight mode, a response that sent goose bumps trailing up my arms and the back of my neck.
A photo fell flat on the ground, the black back of the Polaroid facing up at us, tiny but as menacing as the black depths of a great white’s jaws.
I didn’t have to turn it over to see the photo; the image was already seared into my retinas, and I was sure it would haunt my dreams for a long while to come.
Because on the flip side of that Polaroid was a shot of three extremely familiar faces: Harry Quill, Jason Quill, and Me, all sitting and laughing and appearing to not have a care in the world at our lunch in Juno Pine’s diner.
Not a care in the fucking world.
Not knowing a serial killer had just marked us as his next targets.
23
JASON QUILL
I had trouble processing the images directly in front of my face. They didn’t make sense to me, even though it was clear as day. Nothing was wrong with the photo; it was sharp and in focus and clean. The faces were clear—our faces were clear—and if it were found anywhere else, it would have looked like a candid snapshot of a close group of friends, laughing over some dumb joke.
But then the photo would change, the image becoming distorted in my head, covered in blood as it oozed from our pores, coating the photo in a shiny film of ruby red. Our smiles and laughter were covered, smothered by the blood. My hand started to shake. I wanted to throw up and pass out at the same fucking time.
