is skeptical. “I thought it sounded more like Elliot’s. It’d be just like him to have some kind of superlong-charge battery.”
My stomach flips. Of course. Of course she’s right. She knows these people. And now I realize I’m trapped. I can’t suggest we split up and I check Elliot’s room, when I already said I think the sound came from Miranda’s. I will have to go along with her suggestion.
“Should we… go and check?” I try to look doubtful. “It seems a bit disrespectful. Maybe we should rule out the other rooms first?”
Liz swings the other leg out of bed. She looks decisive.
“I think it’s more important that we get to the phone while it still has reception,” she says, reasonably, and I can’t find a way of contradicting her because the thing is, she’s right. That’s exactly what I’d be saying too, if I hadn’t sent that fucking text. “I understand if you don’t want to come,” she adds.
I waver. It’s tempting. But I can’t let her go up there alone. That would be worse. There may be some way I can get to the phone before she does, delete Danny’s reply.
“Of course,” I say instead, like I’m steeling myself to do something necessary. “Of course, you’re right, I was just being squeamish. It’s more important to get word out. Anyway, the door will be locked. You’ll need my key.”
“Of course,” she echoes, and for a second, just a second, her hand strays towards her pocket, where the missing passkey must have been hidden, in a totally involuntary gesture that I would have missed if I hadn’t been watching her every move. She catches herself before her hand makes contact, so that it just looks like she’s adjusting her ski suit. But I know what she was thinking.
As we make our way up the stairs, I have a sharp, piercing sense of déjà vu, the number of times we have crept up these stairs in daylight or in darkness, to some horrible discovery. Only this time, I know what lies at the top of them, and I am the one who is fearing exposure.
My heart is racing as we approach Elliot’s door, and when I reach into my pocket for the passkey, I find my hand is shaking.
“Are you okay?” Liz says. She has put her glasses back on, and they glitter in the darkness. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want.”
“I’m fine,” I say, through gritted teeth. “Just cold.”
And then I turn the key and we are inside Elliot’s room, the stench of death somehow even worse than before, though I know, logically, that cannot be the case, not in the few hours since I was last here.
Liz gags, and puts her hand over her mouth, and her action gives me an excuse.
The battery block is down the side of the desk, hidden from the door. If I can get her to concentrate on the far side of the room…
“The smell’s pretty bad,” I say. “If you want to concentrate on the bed side of the room, I can take the desk.”
She nods, and moves over to the other side of the room. I am busy going through the motions, opening drawers, pretending to search for a phone I know full well is just out of sight, when I hear something.
And then—
“Erin.”
I look up, look towards the bed, but she’s not there. She has come up behind me. And she has found the phone.
My heart starts beating so loudly I am sure that Liz will be able to hear.
Run, run, run, a voice in my ear is screaming. But I don’t. I hold very still. Maybe I can still talk my way out of this. What does it say. What does it say?
I wish I could see the lock screen, but I can’t. Liz is holding the phone in her hand, angling it towards her, so that all I can see is the light from the screen reflecting off her glasses.
“That sound…,” she says, very slowly. She looks up at me, a frown furrowed between the lenses of her spectacles. “It was a text message. And it was to you.”
LIZ
Snoop ID: ANON101
Listening to: Offline
Snoopers: 0
Snoopscribers: 1
I stare down at the screen, and then up at Erin’s blank face.
This doesn’t make sense. Or does it?
Messages: reads the lock screen, and then a little preview pane showing the first line of the message. Fuck. Erin is that you?