Page 18 of Tourist Season
“I’m not up to no good,” I say.Two.“I’m just having a little look around.”
“A look aroundwhere, exactly?”
“Capeside Inn. I’m in a tourist’s room.”
“And where is he?”
“Out for a run.” I look down at my watch. Something about the way he favored one leg sets me on edge. If it starts to bother him on the steep hills that snake through the town, I might not have long. I run these streets too. I know how hard it can be without persistent pain, especially in the cool mist that feels like it climbs into your bones to chill you from the inside out. “I’m nearly done,” I say, more to myself than to Arthur. “I just need to get a read on how likely it is that this particular tourist will wind up in the jaws of the Cookie Monster.”
I press the last button on the safe’s combination lock.Three.
“And what is your determination?” The lock clicks as the bolts slide free. The door swings open. I pull a leather-bound book from the shadows and rest its weight on my left hand as I flip to the page that’s saved by a bookmark. “Harper …?”
“Pretty fucking likely,” I whisper. The page is some kind of scrapbook. “Trevor Fisher,” the headline says. There’s a map on the left side. AnXnext to a river, drawn in red pen. Beneath the name is a list of dates and crimes. Some of them relatively minor. Theft from an electronics store, disorderly conduct. Some of them serious. An assault in a bar. A firearms charge. More than one arrest for domestic violence. On the right side of the page are photos of a man, taken at a distance. And then some taken up close. The man’s face, twisted in terror. Spattered with blood. And near the bottom of the page, something that looks like leather. Preserved, dried, and crinkled—and glued to the page. But I can see the fine hairs lodged in the tissue. I can make out the warped script still written in the desiccated skin.
Memento mori.
“What is it, Harper?” Arthur asks. A thread of worry is woven through his voice. “What do you see?”
I shut the book and clutch it to my chest, sliding the phone off the safe before striding into the room. “We’ve got someone very bad here.”
“How bad?”
I could say “someone like us.” But the truth is, even if we have similar … extracurriculars … Nolan Rhodes and I could not be more different. But I know others like him. I’vesurvivedothers like him. And so has Arthur. “He’s like La Plume,” I say.
There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the line as I stuff the scrapbook into the empty laptop compartment of the backpack and zip it up. And I know it’s not because Arthur is struggling to remember. La Plume is the last name he’ll ever forget. It’s the name that will haunt him until his dying breath.
Arthur’s voice has dropped an octave when he says, “You need to leave there immediately. Get out.”
“I’m already on it,” I grit out, hanging up before Arthur has a chance to say anything more.
I stop at the nightstand and take a photo of his pill bottle, making sure to capture the details and location of the pharmacy that filled the prescription. Then I stare down at the paper and pen. I should be terrified of the trophy I saw in that book. Nolan knows where I live. He’s murdered someone on my property without me even knowing. He’s toying with me.
I should be running as fast and as far as I can from Cape Carnage.
But running is not enough. I’ve run before and been caught. I’ve already died once and started over. I’m not going to do it again.
I scrawl a note across the paper, my smile stretching with every word.
I fold it and put it where I know he’ll find it.
And then I leave the Capeside Inn with a backpack slung across my shoulder, my thoughts taken up by war.
Irene is still asleep when I stride through the lobby and pause at the door, taking my time to survey the parking lot. It’s raining, misty. There are only a few cars parked here, and aside from Irene’s old Hyundai, which I’m ninety-nine percent positive she can’t legally drive, the others seem to be mostly rentals. A nondescript SUV. A silver sedan. There’s an Escalade with a personalized license plate, so I discount that one. With a menacing smile, I run into the rain, headed straight for the black SUV.
When I get to the vehicle, I huddle next to the passenger side front tire, drop the backpack from my shoulder, then retrieve a sheathed knife from its depths. A heartbeat later, the blade is lodged to the hilt in the tire, and I give it enough of a twist that it will slowly leak air. Then I rise, putting the backpack on and tightening the straps. With a quiet laugh, I turn and run, leaving my gift of his weapon behind.
I’m soaking wet when I make it into my cottage, my bra and panties slick against my skin, water sloshing in my boots with every step as I march to the kitchen table and drop the bag on its surface. Fear and excitement and anticipation sear my veins and tremble in my fingers. I grip the zipper and open the main compartment to pull out the weapons hidden inside. Knives. Screwdrivers. A Glock and two magazines of ammunition. There are cutters. A folding saw. Even a cheese slicer, which makes my skin crawl when I think about Nolan’s book. His bag contains everything a psychopathic killer could ever dream of for a holiday pack.
Even his trophies.
I stuff everything except the gun and ammunition back into the main compartment, and then I unzip the laptop section, withdrawing the book to set it on the table as I lower myself onto a chair. I take a deep breath and flip to the page I saw in his room.
“Trevor Fisher,” I whisper. I trace the name written at the top of the left side, letting my fingers drift across the paper to what is surely preserved human skin. “Who were you?”
I don’t recognize anything about him. Not his crimes, or the place marked on a map, or thememento moritattoo affixed to the scrapbook. I flip to the previous page, where there’s a similar layout of petty crimes and a map and a desiccated piece of human skin, anothermemento moritattoo imprinted in the leathery slice. Dylan Jacobs is the name at the top of the parchment above photos of the unfamiliar man. He was a tattoo artist, judging by the candid shots of him working in a tattoo parlor. And he must have died a similar torturous death to Trevor Fisher’s. His face was twisted in pain in the second set of photos, his terror frozen in time. The photo that interests me most is one of Nolan standing next to Dylan in the shop, the ouroboros tattoo fresh on his forearm. Dylan smiles with pride at his work. Nolan smiles too, but there’s an edge hidden in its sharp borders. He’s not just happy with the ink on his skin. He’s basking in the humor of a joke that’s only funny to him. He’s a hunter toying with his prey.
I might not know who Nolan Rhodes is. But I know his kind, and not just because we’re similar creatures on different branches of the same evolutionary tree. He’s not the first serial killer I’ve crossed paths with, after all. But he’s the first who has come to hunt me down specifically. I’m not just a random opportunity to seize. I’m the prize he’s been waiting for.
