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Kate stands in the arched entryway between the hall and the lounge. One hand holds the cool touch of her cellphone against her ear, and she leans her hard shoulder on the wall.
She watches that drunken excuse for a best friend.
Billie. Passed out. Slumped on the armchair. A trickle of drool turning up a faint red line at the corner of her parted mouth.
Into the receiver, Kate whispers, “I don’t want to leave her down here. Not by herself.”
It’s Trevor’s voice that comes through the cell in answer, “So wake her up.”
“Wake her up,” she echoes with a bitter scoff. “With half her blood count being made up of liquor, that girl would sleep through an earthquake. There is no waking Billie up. Not once she’s out.”
“Don’t know what to tell you, babe. Sleep on the couch?”
“I think I will.”
He doesn’t answer and she pushes from the wall. Her socks pad softly on the plush, cream carpet as she creeps around the large wood coffee table. Tucking the phone between her shoulder and her ear, Kate snatches up a woolen throw and gently drapes it over Billie’s limp body. The only signs of life in her best friend are the light gravelly snores and that ever-growing trail of drool.
Kate fixes up the throw over Billie’s shoulders. Then, as she turns to sneak back out of the lounge, she whispers into the cell, “Just need to shower first. I smell like Jim’s Joint.”
Trevor hums a curt sound. “Greasy burgers and bootleg booze. Who ever said there’s no culture in Dosser?”
Kate’s smile is fleeting, quick to be battered away by the exhaustion depleting her body. Shoulders drooped, eyelashes hanging low over her strained eyes, and her legs impossibly heavy as she lifts them one by one to climb the staircase that feels like Mount Everest tonight.
“Lock the door,” Trevor says.
Kate frowns as she climbs these impossible steps to the second floor. “The bathroom door? Why?”
Has he come to the same conclusion and she and Billie did at the Joint? There’s a killer out here, one that already took out Gigi.
But Trevor can’t know that—
He doesn’t know the details of Gigi’s death, not yet, so how can he be so suspicious of what’s out there in the shadows of Dosserport?
But then—
Trevor’s answer is anything but suspicious. “The lezzos. They’ll sneak a peek at you in the shower, no doubt.”
In fact, his answer was so predictable that Kate itches to smack herself on the head for overthinking it. As rich as Trevor is, as wealthy as the education his parents bought for him…
At heart, he’s nothing more than just another ignorant lug.
“They’re not lezzos,” Kate says, her voice dropped low to a hushed sound that whispers to a vanish in the hallway. Her steps aren’t much louder as she creeps towards the bathroom—then pauses at the bedroom door on the way.
It’s open, just a couple of inches.
Grace and Carmine retired for the night only an hour ago. Kate stayed downstairs with the rest of the movie on, True Lies—and she hoped for Billie to wake up so she could complain about the film to her.
Terrible movie.
Why did there need to be some pointless horse-riding scene through a damn hotel in the opening scene?
Oh right. Because ‘cool’.
“What are you doing?” Trevor’s voice interrupts her sour-movie thoughts.
Guess she was quiet for a moment too long.
She doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she holds her breath as though it makes her as silent as a ninja, and she leans towards the bedroom door. Peering through the crack, her eyes only see darkness. Takes a blink or two for her sight to adjust…
