Chapter 16 - Phantom
"Wow, what a safe passcode," I muttered as the door clicked after him.
I opened Gabriel's contacts, and despite Annabelle's name being alphabetised at the top, I had to scroll a few pages until she appeared. The line started ringing, and as I waited, I wandered over to the window, pulling up a small corner of the curtain to watch Gabriel in the parking lot below. Even though he couldn't see me, I waved as he got into his car and carefully pulled onto the road.
Once he had disappeared, I shut the curtains tightly again, making sure there weren't any gaps.
That was when all the lights went out.
I yelped in surprise, the phone dropping from my hands.
Okay, stay calm. It was only some extreme darkness.
I stood still for a few anxious moments, waiting. Waiting for sound, for suspicious movement, even for the sound of someone else's breathing.
But there was nothing.
I realised then that the sensor had felt the key card leave, and now it thought the room was empty.
I laughed to myself, more out of shaky relief that it had been a false alarm than anything else. I picked up the still-ringing phone and turned on the flashlight, searching for the rectangle-shaped greeting card I had seen earlier on the desk. With the card in hand, I hunted down the manual key slot by the light switches, and as soon as I slid the cardboard paper in, the lights came back on.
That was an ordeal.
"Gabriel?" Annabelle answered finally. Her voice was hushed low, keeping quiet amidst all the loud background noise. "Hello?"
I brought the phone to my ear.
"Did you find Luca?"
"Yeah, he found me."
"Luca," Annabelle breathed, "thank god. Where are you guys?"
"Somewhere safe," I answered. I kept it vague just in case the police were tapping phone lines now. Or worse, if the killer thought to do it. I mean, if they had the ability to help Rebekah collate photos of our every move during the last leg of the Hunt, then what was a phone line?
"You better stay there," Annabelle muttered. "I was just grilled by the police. Judging by their rapid-fire questions, I don't think they have a clue to where you are."
I squeezed my eyes shut, collapsing on the desk chair. "What did you tell them?"
"The truth," Annabelle said. "That I didn't know either, and that you were present while the bullets were flying."
But it would appear that wasn't enough. Even if I wasn't directly to blame for the bullets, I knew the truth. I had gone digging around Joshua's house, trying to find a clue, and I had stirred the pot. I had brought the chaos home.
"How's Jules?" I whispered, feeling a pang of guilt.
"Still in surgery," Annabelle said. "I'll go check on him once they're done patching me up, but they've said he'll be completely fine, even if it takes him a while to wake up from the sedatives."
Alarm rocketed through my body, shocking my spine upright. "Patching you up? Annabelle, were you hit?"
"Just a graze," she assured quickly. "I hardly felt it while it was happening."
I splayed a hand over my face, trying to swallow my horror.
"This is so messed up," I whispered. "But you know what's worse?"
Annabelle stayed silent, prompting me to go on.
"We're getting off too easy." I leaned back into the chair. "Douglas told me something interesting: he thinks the victims are the key survivors of the last round of killings. We're at top of that list, and tonight was the first time we've been intentionally hit."
"What—" Annabelle made a noise of confusion. "Douglas?"
"Everyone else is dying," I continued, "and despite being told You're still next, we haven't been touched. Why?"
"Back up," Annabelle said. "This is Douglas' theory?"
"Long story," I sighed, "but he let me out of that cell, and it turns out he's not as stupid as he acts."
"Hard to believe," Annabelle muttered. "Look, I'm not saying it's not weird that we haven't had any knives flying at us prior to tonight—" Her voice suddenly became removed as she murmured something to someone on her end. I managed to catch the words "your mother," from the other speaker, and Annabelle replying "please send her in."
"Trust me," Annabelle continued, bringing her mouth to the receiver again, "after Joshua's death, I have to check every hiding spot in my house before I can relax. I've removed all the sharp objects from my bedside table. I keep my laptop camera on record whenever I'm not in my room. We're at the centre of all this and we haven't been attacked, and it makes it worse, doesn't it?"
I knew exactly what she meant. "Keeps us paranoid," I whispered. "Stresses us out. Pushes us to a breaking point."
"Something is on its way, Luca," Annabelle said, her volume low. "And call me a coward, but I don't want to be at the centre of it. I want to hide out in this hospital room with police guards posted at every entrance point." Her voice broke. She sounded more weary than anything else. "After Rebekah, I don't want to feel so scared every second again. I'm not you or Gabriel, I'm not selfless."
I blinked, lost for words. Was that really what Annabelle thought?
"Don't say that," I whispered after a while. "You're not a coward for preserving your own safety."
"I don't know," she sniffed. "On the ambulance ride, while Jules was being put under, I thought about what he said. I wondered if I could do the same if I was threatened." She paused. "I don't know if I could pull a trigger."
I shook my head, even though she couldn't see it. "We shouldn't have to deal with this at all."
"Until it ends, it's just going to keep happening," Annabelle said, "and all we can do is hide. Hide and hope that we're not being saved for a gruesome death at the very end."
"Sounds like a plan," I sighed. "I don't know what to do, Annabelle."
"I don't know either," she said softly.
We breathed through the line in a long moment of silence, thinking about the lives that had been already lost. There wasn't a reason for the deaths in Altswood. There were just killers, one in jail and one running rampant.
"Going back to what you said," Annabelle started, breaking the pause, "Douglas?"
"I was hesitant to believe him as well, but I suppose it makes sense." I thought back to what he had said, repeating his words. "Us four, Birdy, Daphne, Steven and Zane. The only thing we have in common is our infamy."
"Well," Annabelle muttered, "Steven and Zane can thank Douglas for the fame, since he was the one who uploaded that video of them."
I stiffened. I had forgotten about that.
"Do you think he has something to do with this?"
I sensed Annabelle shrug over the line. "I don't know what I think. But if he let you out of that cell, surely he must have an ulterior motive." Annabelle seemed to doubt herself then. "Right?"
I shared her feelings.
"I don't know," I echoed. "I really don't know."
Before Annabelle could say anything more, someone called her name, loud enough that even I caught it.
"That's my mom," she said. "I'll talk to you later, okay?"
"Of course," I said. "Text me—well, text Gabriel—updates on Jules when you can."
"Will do," Annabelle replied. "Luca—" she paused. "Please stay safe."
We hung up, and the room became too silent again.
I set the phone down on the bedside table, snorting a little at Gabriel's home screen image—a photo of Bottle Island that belonged on a tourist brochure—and wandered into the bathroom.
I stripped off all my clothes and chucked them into the shower with me, letting them soak as the soap suds sunk to the floor. My hair was the hardest to wash, with the strands tangled together in a mess of pins and mud. I had been kidding with myself earlier, but then I pulled out an actual small twig, flabbergasted as to how it got there. As I moved to throw it out of the shower stall, my arm pulled, sending a twinge of pain through my nerves.
"Ouch," I muttered. I had forgotten about being slashed by a glass shard.
By the time I got out of the shower, I felt like I had scraped off a layer of my skin. I wrung out my clothes and hung them up, feeling proud of myself for my laundry skills. Then, I saw the problem.
"To-bring list when I go on the run," I said to myself. "Umbrella. Pyjamas."
Shuffling around the bathroom in a towel dress, I found a hair dryer that looked like it had electrocuted itself a few times. Still, it roared to life when I plugged it in, and I started blow-drying my underwear.
No one ever said hiding from the law would be glamourous.
Once those clothing articles were dry, I put them on and turned the hair dryer to my shirt, thinking it was long enough to double as a night gown.
Surely.
The sound was loud enough to keep me from hearing Gabriel return, so as I waved the hair dryer around, I peered out from the bathroom periodically to check the door. It remained closed even after my shirt fully dried and I pulled it on again.
With nothing left to do, I started pacing.
"What's taking so long?" I wondered aloud.
Various scenarios started flashing through my head. His brakes were cut. His house had been set on fire. His window had been rotted away by mites so when he tried to climb out, he fell to his death.
I paced and I paced, my mind cycling through every worse case, when the doorbell suddenly rang, its sharp, melodic noise bouncing from wall to wall.
"Finally," I muttered, rushing for the door. "Take long enough why don't you—"
I froze, my hand only an inch away from the handle.
Didn't I give Gabriel the key card?
Slowly I pulled my hand back. I stood at the door, listening for movement.
I could only hear the rain pattering down from above, it too trying to barge its way in.
Taking care not to make any noise, I brought my eye to the peephole.
There was no one there.
My breath caught in my throat as I skittered away. It had probably just been room service getting the wrong room, or another hotel-goer who had accidentally leaned up against the doorbell.
Even knowing this, I couldn't stop myself from stepping farther and farther away from the door.
"Breathe," I whispered to myself. "You're overthinking. Maybe Gabriel forgot his key in the car, rung the doorbell, then went back to get it. That sounds logical. That must be it."
Not an instant later, the doorbell rang again.
I reacted on instinct this time. I grabbed a lamp, the nearest heavy object, pulling it from its plug outlet so roughly that the plastic cover ripped from the wall and cracked down the middle. Holding the lamp like one would hold a sword, I marched to the door again and flung it open, ready to smash the object down.
There was no one there.
"This isn't funny!" I screamed into the hallway. "Who's there?"
At my words, a cleaning maid popped her head around the corner.
"Are you okay, ma'am?" she asked. "Do you need anything?"
I tried to slow my breathing. I tried to appear calm.
"I'm fine," I said forcefully. "Did you see anyone knocking at my door? Maybe blond? Tall?"
I described Gabriel, even though I was certain now that if he had truly forgotten his key card, he wouldn't be ringing the doorbell twice and disappearing.
The maid's first expression was a frown. Then, it morphed into concern.
"I haven't seen anyone come onto this floor," she said. "Would you like me to call someone for you?"
"No!" I exclaimed. Then, clearing my throat, "No, no, it's fine. You didn't see anyone?"
She shook her head. "I've been doing laundry by the stairwell. The elevators haven't made a peep. No one has come up for a while now."
I looked down at the lamp I still held in my hands. Had I hallucinated the bell ring? Was that possible?
I realised the cleaning maid was still watching me. This was definitely the precise sort of incident I was trying to avoid while Officer Louws was campaigning for my capture.
"Thank you for your help," I said quickly, stepping back. "It must have been another sound."
The maid nodded and returned to her duties, the thud of the stairway door echoing after her. A washing machine started whirring up again.
I sighed, stepping back into my room.
And just as I was about to close the door, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
Gasping, my head turned on reflex, just in time to catch the tail end of a dark shadow darting out from behind a large potted plant at the end of the corridor.
I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. A person? A smudge of dirt in my eye?
It was on the move before I could blink, but I was thinking fast too. I could practically hear Gabriel's tut of disapproval in my head, but whatever it was, I couldn't let it get away. I couldn't lose a chance to figure out this nightmare because I was too scared to act.
I tore the lamp in half. The lampshade as a doorstopper, the heavy base as a weapon.
Then I sprinted down the corridor.