You've Been Warned

  The door’s open.

  Just an inch, not even that. A small sliver of space between the door and the jamb. Slowly, I push my way in.

  It’s no Motel 6. The room is more of a chic apartment. I step into a foyer with black-and-white tile like a chessboard. More games to play? For the first time, I hear something — a voice from around the corner.

  It’s Stephen.

  Is he laughing? Why would he be laughing?

  I take a few more steps forward and realize he isn’t laughing. No, he’s crying. Sobbing is more like it.

  Peeking my head out, I glimpse down the short hallway and I see why.

  Michael has a gun pressed to his forehead.

  Chapter 102

  “PLEASE, DON’T DO THIS,” begs Stephen in a high-pitched whine. “Please, no! Please!” He’s naked, quivering and cowering by the foot of the bed. It’s all I can see in the dim room.

  “Shut up!” barks Michael. “Shut the hell up!”

  It’s happening so fast, and I’m frozen, almost as if I’m stuck in time or I’m watching a dream. That hideous burning smell is back too.

  Michael cocks the gun, his voice seared with rage. “You fucked the wrong woman, and you definitely fucked with the wrong guy,” he says to Stephen. Then —

  PFFTT!

  I see the spurt of blood even before I hear the strange muffled blast.

  The back of Stephen’s head blows out, and the wall behind him is splattered with dark red brain matter. For a second, he remains standing, his eyes open and brimming with terror. A flap of scalp juts out behind his ear like an open gate. This isn’t a dream, Kris.

  Then Stephen’s body goes limp, as if a puppeteer suddenly released the strings. His arms and legs fold as he melts to the floor, a pool of blood around his head creeping wider and wider. The blood on the floor looks almost black.

  God is in the details, right?

  I begin to scream, just like in my dream.

  Michael whirls around, his arm outstretched, the gun aimed right at me. Watching his gloved trigger finger twitch, I throw out my hands. “NO! MICHAEL! IT’S ME!”

  He squints, seeing that it’s true. It is me.

  “What are you doing here?” he says, lowering the gun.

  I struggle for words, but there aren’t any up to the task. All I can do is slowly walk toward him. I’m not sure if I want to hold him or hit him.

  “Don’t touch anything!” he says. It’s an order.

  Huh?

  “Fingerprints,” he explains. “Ours can’t be here. Don’t touch a thing.”

  He begins twisting a small tube off the gun’s barrel — a silencer, I assume. That’s why the blast wasn’t really much of a blast.

  Then he stops, thinks for a split second, changes his mind. Twist, twist, twist. The silencer stays on.

  That’s the word for this, isn’t it? Twisted.

  I keep moving toward him, my body feeling as if it’s crumbling with each step. Words finally come. “What have you done, Michael?”

  That’s when I look farther into the bedroom and realize — I only knew half of it.

  Michael slaps his hand over my mouth before I can scream again. Keeled over on a desk by the bed is a very naked, very dead Penley, blood still dripping down her chest and leg. An awful lot of blood is pooled on the floor.

  Michael removes the hand from my mouth, raising a finger to his. “Shhh, we don’t have a lot of time,” he says. “We have to leave now. Kristin, we’ll be fine.”

  He’s so cool as he pulls a silk kerchief from his suit pocket and wipes the gun clean. Kneeling down, he places the gun in Stephen’s hand. Then he does something I don’t understand at all. Michael wipes the back of his own hand on Stephen’s fingers, wrist, and forearm.

  I watch it all in total shock.

  Michael seems so eerily calm, almost robotic as he works. He could just as easily be making a ham sandwich as framing another man for a murder-suicide.

  What did he say about Stephen on the answering machine? “What if he doesn’t take the news well?”

  Michael stands up, scowling at me, and it’s as if I’ve never seen him before in my life.

  “You weren’t supposed to be here,” he says.

  Were that only true. But I know otherwise. I was definitely meant to see this; I just don’t understand why yet.

  “Where did you get the gun?” I ask.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I think I know. “Vincent gave it to you?”

  Michael nods. “He’s parked downstairs. Around the corner. He’ll take us home, and we’ll wait for the police to contact me. You and I have a lot of acting to do, Kristin.”

  Chapter 103

  I BARELY HEAR Michael as my legs turn to rubber. I’m feeling dizzy and faint. I’m his accomplice now, aren’t I? An accomplice to a double murder. But I didn’t do anything. I came here to stop Michael, not to help him.

  He grabs my shoulders, giving me a hard shake. “Stay with me now, okay? You’ve got to stay with me, Kristin. We’re going to be okay.”

  This doesn’t seem like the time or place for a heartfelt confession, and yet it’s perfect, somehow.

  “I have something I need to tell you,” I say.

  “Not right now. Not now!”

  “Yes. Right now, right here. Three years ago —”

  “Kris, shut up! Just shut up!”

  “Three years ago, I was pregnant and about to have a baby, Michael. I came to New York with my boyfriend, who was the baby’s father.

  “I had the baby right here in this hotel, Michael. Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? It all revolves around this place, whatever it is. My boyfriend, Matthew, was pre-med at Tufts. He delivered the baby, a little boy like Sean, right here. We had agreed to leave the baby at a hospital after it was born. But the baby, the little boy died. Right here at the Fálcon. Can you imagine what that was like? I let my baby die, Michael! I saw my baby die, my little boy.”

  Now it’s Michael’s turn to look and wonder if he knows who I am. It’s a dilemma I’ve been facing myself, for three years.

  “We have to go,” he says.

  I stare back into his eyes, if only because I can’t bear to look anywhere else in the room. Not at blown-away Stephen, not at Penley — definitely not at Penley.

  He really did it. He killed her.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” he says as we head for the door. “We’re done here.”

  But not by my count. Not even close.

  All along I’ve been seeing four gurneys. Stephen and Penley only make two. Two dead. So we’re not quite done here, are we?

  “Wait,” I say, stopping. “What was that noise?”

  Make that one dead.

  Chapter 104

  “SURPRISE, YOU BASTARD!”

  I spin around to see a knife plunging into Michael’s neck. Once, twice, Penley stabs him before he even knows what’s happened.

  Payback, that’s what.

  Michael grabs for his throat with both hands as a red river gushes down past his collar, soaking his shirt in an instant. His mouth opens, but the only sound I hear is the gurgling of his blood.

  She keeps stabbing him. Three, four times. This isn’t Penley; it’s a killer possessed. Again and again, the silver of the blade disappears into Michael’s flesh — the neck, the chest, the shoulders — he can barely lift a hand to try and stop her.

  And she’s not about to stop on her own.

  I lunge at Penley, desperately reaching for her pumping arm. She’s so much smaller than me — she’s been shot, for Christ’s sake! — and still she pushes me away as if I’m nothing. Of course, that’s what I’ve always been to her.

  Am I next? I wonder.

  I turn and see Stephen’s bloody and bare-assed body sprawled on the carpet. My eyes move from his shattered head down to his arm, until I arrive at his outstretched hand.

  The gun!

  I’m scrambling now, making this up as I go along. Just
trying to survive is all it is. I’m half running, half crawling, anything to get me to that gun.

  Behind me, Michael’s body crashes to the floor with a resounding thud! He’s wheezing and gasping for air, and I realize that I still love him, and that he’s dying.

  As my fingers stretch for the gun, I hear Penley’s voice over my shoulder.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!”

  I yank the gun out of Stephen’s cold grip and whip around, fumbling for the trigger. Penley is charging right at me.

  “YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” she yells, and she doesn’t sound anything like her old self. Strange, but in a way, I like the new Penley a little better.

  She raises her arm high, her elbow cocked and ready to pounce, that is, stab. The blade is covered with Michael’s blood, and now she wants mine on it too.

  I close my eyes.

  Then immediately open them again.

  Don’t think, just shoot.

  Chapter 105

  PFFTT.

  Pfftt.

  Those sounds may be strange, but they’re deadly.

  Penley folds in two and collapses right in front of me. The knife in her hand slices down inches from my face. The first bullet struck her in the chest; the second, the right side of her forehead.

  I look at the knife, wondering how she would have one in her possession.

  She didn’t.

  It’s a letter opener. Suffice to say, the kind they would never let you bring on an airplane. Long and sharp. On the sleek silver handle I can see engraved lettering: “The Fálcon Hotel.”

  Nice touch.

  I struggle fiercely to rise to my feet, emptying my lungs with just about the deepest exhale of my life. But the relief is short. I look at Michael, then hurry over to him. He’s facedown. His breath is coming in short gasps that seem very painful.

  “Michael, can you hear me?”

  He blinks slowly, his eyes searching. “Kris?”

  His voice is so weak, and he’s coughing blood onto the rug.

  “I’m right here,” I say. “I’m going to get help for you.”

  But I think we both know he’s beyond that. Michael’s neck and chest are shredded, a gory multitude of stab wounds. He’s lost so much blood already, it’s a wonder he can speak.

  “You have to get out of here,” he says. “The police . . .”

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  He’s fading on me, struggling to talk. “No, you need to hurry. Run. Get away from here.”

  Where? Where do I go?

  Michael spells it out with his last breath, his final words to me.

  “The kids,” he whispers.

  His eyes go wide.

  “Michael!” I yell. “Michael!”

  But he’s gone.

  Michael’s dead.

  And instantly I realize — that makes three bodies.

  Chapter 106

  I STAND UP SLOWLY, taking one last look at Michael, and it hits me — what I’m seeing right now.

  It’s the picture of Michael from my camera. The shot of him sprawled dead on a floor somewhere.

  The one I never took.

  Yet here it is. Here I am. How could this happen?

  It feels as if I’ve been hit with a stun gun. Time has stopped completely. The world has stopped. All that continues is the deadly — really, truly deadly — silence.

  Then it’s broken.

  The phone by the bed rings, then rings a second time, snapping me out of it. I need to get out of here. To get away!

  I bolt from the room and head toward the back stairs. I know the way out of here. I’m halfway to the stairwell when I hear footsteps pounding behind me.

  The kids!

  Could it be? Dakota? If not — then who? I’m almost afraid to find out.

  But I stop and spin around to look. And it’s not her.

  It’s him.

  The Ponytail.

  How could he be here? How does he fit into this? I want to ask him. But not now!

  Oh, dear God! Oh, no!

  As in — that’s no camera he’s wielding.

  “Freeze!” he yells, taking aim at me.

  I thrust out my hands in a panic — Don’t shoot! — only to realize immediately I’ve made a mistake. There’s one thing I forgot to do back in the hotel room, before I charged out of there on my getaway run.

  Let go of the gun.

  Chapter 107

  THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS in the next instant — I die.

  I don’t feel the bullet as it rips through my body. I’m not even sure I’m shot until I look down and see the bloodstain.

  Slowly, I rub the palm of my hand across my shirt. It feels warm, sticky, unreal.

  He thought I was going to shoot him. Ridiculous! Except I just shot Penley, didn’t I?

  I stumble back a step before my legs give out. Now I’m spinning — at least that’s the feeling I have. I fall hard to the floor, but I don’t feel the impact.

  I don’t feel anything, really, and in some ways that’s an improvement.

  I’m lying faceup, gazing at the hallway ceiling. A shiny “Exit” sign points to the stairs I never reached. Other than that, it’s a blank picture.

  Then a face appears.

  The Ponytail hovers over me. He looks at the gun clenched in my hand and ruefully shakes his head. Bending down, he presses two fingers against the side of my neck. What’s he doing? Oh, I see, he’s feeling for a pulse.

  “I’m still alive,” I say.

  He doesn’t respond in any way. Nothing.

  “Hey, did you hear me? Who are you, anyway?” I ask.

  He stands there and takes out a cell phone, dialing 911. I get my answer.

  “I’m a private investigator,” he tells the operator after reporting there’s been a shooting. “Multiple shootings,” he corrects himself.

  The police arrive, followed by EMS. Lots of hustle and bustle all around me. A paramedic checks my pulse again.

  I fade in and out for a while, then I hear the Ponytail explain to a cop that he was hired by “one of the deceased.” Mrs. Penley Turnbull was his client.

  “She suspected her husband was having an affair,” he says. “Apparently the husband suspected the same thing about her.”

  “Hope you got paid up-front,” jokes the cop.

  “You think this is funny?” I say.

  He doesn’t hear me. No one does.

  “So, who’s the girl?”

  The cop is pointing at me. When is this strangeness going to stop? Actually, when I think about it, I don’t want it to stop, do I?

  “The nanny,” answers the Ponytail. “That’s who I discovered the husband was involved with.”

  “So you were following her? If I’m following you so far?”

  “Yeah, you got it right. Mrs. Turnbull wanted to see if I could dig up any dirt on her, I guess for the divorce. I kind of felt sorry for her, though. Kristin’s her name. She was young, in way over her head. I even tried scaring the shit out of her, hoping she’d back off the relationship with the husband, who’s a real scumbag.”

  “Instead, here she is with a gun,” says the cop. “She had to be in on it with the husband, right?”

  “I’m not so sure,” says the Ponytail. “I lost her at first when she entered the hotel, but the way she ran here, I think maybe she was trying to stop this from happening.”

  The cop sighs. “Damn shame either way. There’s two little kids now with no mommy and daddy.”

  “Or even a nanny. I could tell the kids liked her a lot.”

  “That would explain it,” the cop says with a nod and a shrug.

  “What’s that?”

  “We sent a patrol car over to their school to get them, and the daughter was missing. Seven years old. I got word a minute ago, though, that they found her.”

  “Alive?”

  “Oh, yeah. She’s fine. In a manner of speaking.”

  “Where was she?”

  “Home. The little girl said she ditche
d school because she was worried about the nanny. She wanted to be with her.”

  “Her name’s Dakota. Did she know something?”

  “She claims she didn’t. Just had a bad feeling. Of course, when she arrived home, no one was there. They were all here.”

  As the two of them walk away, all I can think about is Dakota and Sean. I need to be with them. Someone does. Little Sean’s going to have so many questions.

  I scream out again to no avail. Why can’t anyone hear me? I continue to scream, just like in the dream.

  Am I already dead? I wonder.

  But I can see. I can hear.

  What the hell’s going on?

  “Exactly,” comes a voice that I recognize.

  Chapter 108

  I SEE HIS WARPED reflection in the exit sign, and it makes me shudder. He’s standing in the doorway right next to me. Looking like the creep of all creeps.

  Frank Delmonico.

  He steps into the hallway. Behind him, in the room he came out of, is nothing but darkness.

  And the music from my dream.

  It’s the same room! The one I was banging on the door of yesterday.

  But nobody answered.

  The music engulfs me now, it’s so intense. And for the first time since the song took root in my head like a horrible weed, there’s something more.

  Words.

  And the seasons they go round and round,

  And the painted ponies go up and down.

  We’re captive on the carousel of time.

  Delmonico stands directly over me, wearing the same gray suit. Cops walk by, but they don’t seem to notice him.

  “Hello, Kristin,” he says. “I know, I know, you’re innocent. You didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

  “This is impossible,” I blurt out. “You’re dead.”

  “So they say. I’ve been sent to look after you anyway. To talk to you. Kind of an interview. What do they call them in the business world — exit interviews?” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

  And go round and round and round, I hear the music continue.