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But right now, in this surreal moment of aftershock, the only thing I could manage to feel was just apocalyptically disappointed in myself.
Leaning against the hood of my car, I was astonished at how physical my reaction was.
My head was spinning. I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt dizzy.
Flashes of what had just happened kept appearing on the screen of my mind without my permission. Jack opening his door in full movie-star mode—his face totally blank, like I was a stranger. Jack tilting his head in mockery as he said, “Did you think that was real?” Jack slicing the hell out of my toes, and then watching, emotionless, as I bled in front of him. Jack’s posture as rigid as a mannequin as he waited for me to catch up, grasp my own contemptible stupidity, accept my fate, and move on.
Hey—
Wait a minute…
Jack’s posture as rigid as a mannequin?
Jack Stapleton—famous sloucher and world-champion manspreader—with posture as rigid as a mannequin?
That didn’t seem right.
With that, my thinking started to shift. I know that he’d just told me it had all been a joke and that he’d never really liked me. But the longer I stood there, the more I started to wonder if I one hundred percent believed him.
It was hard to know what to believe.
But the more I thought it over, the more I wondered if the besotted version of Jack I’d seen so much of last night was more convincing than the psychopath I’d just met.
Now my brain shifted gears, and I started flipping back through the pages of my memory with purpose to reread that moment.
Some things about it were off, for sure.
Jack had only opened the door partway, for example—but he was much more of a fling-the-door-wide-open kind of guy. I’d assumed he was trying to keep me separate from his friends, but if he was really enjoying the joke he’d just played, wouldn’t he let them see me? And if he was really a sociopath, would he have cared if I’d seen them?
I kept scanning for abnormalities. There had been an unfamiliar tension in his face—like he was trying to look relaxed without actually being relaxed.
And had the expression in his eyes been coldness—or intensity?
Had the tightness of his voice been irritation—or anxiety?
I kept flipping through the interaction, scanning everything with different eyes—until one moment stopped me still.
Right after he said he’d been acting, just after he gave me a nod of confirmation, Jack had glanced to his left. Almost like there was somebody standing right next to him. And the emotion that had flashed across his face right then, in the second of that glance, was pretty unmistakable if you’ve been in this business long enough.…
It was fear.
SOMETHING WAS WRONG.
There was something in that house Jack was afraid of.
Someone.
I grabbed my keys, hit unlock, and dived into the back seat for my iPad.
I logged in to check the security footage on Jack’s camera, scrolling back and forth at time-lapse speed.
Nothing on the driveway cam. Nothing on the backyard cam. Nothing on the pool cam. But then, suddenly, on the motion-activated interior camera in Jack’s front hall, I saw Jack talking to a tall man in jeans. Slowing down to get a better look, I wondered if this might be one of the “friends” Jack claimed were there.
Until the man pulled out a 9 mm pistol and pointed it at Jack’s head.
Holy shit.
I scrolled through the footage fast, trying to get the basics. I saw Jack put up his hands, but then lower them again. I saw them both turn toward the door, and then I saw Jack open it, just a few inches, and the other man take a step back and settle into a stance a few feet away with his gun pointed straight out.
