Seductive Suspect

Laura set her fork down and adjusted her glasses. “I suppose we should go investigate.” Behind the thick lenses, worry darkened her eyes, and her voice held a slight waver.

Isabel wrung her napkin in her lap. “I guess we have to.”

I would have preferred to stay in the dining room and pretend nothing happened, but I knew they were right. Rising from my chair, I waited for everyone to reach the door and joined the back of the huddle. Unease rippled through me again, and I feared what we would find in the foyer.

Laura stopped in the doorway and gasped. I inched forward to peek around her and did the same. Across the foyer, one of the massive bronze statues had fallen near the front door. A hand and arm stuck out from beneath the metallic moose’s giant antlers.

Adam rushed across the room and knelt next to the toppled statue. “Paul!” he shouted.

I predicted there would be no response.

The rest of us joined him. I tried to keep my eyes averted since I had no desire to see what effect the weight of the statue had had on Paul’s body. “This is crazy,” I murmured. “How did this even happen?”

Laura bent over and picked up a leg that had broken off themoose. Her brow furrowed when she held it closer to her face. “This appears too smooth to be a natural break. And there’s something attached to it.” With two fingers, she stretched out a thin wire so fine, it was practically invisible.

Adam crawled around to the opposite side of the statue, near the door. “Looks like the other end was attached over here.” He stood and stared at the gory scene on the floor. “This is quite the elaborate trap. Someone put a lot of effort into setting this up.”

Isabel twisted her fingers in front of her. “It could have been any one of us to walk into it.”

I remembered Paul’s advice from earlier in the morning and shivered. “And now we’re not even safe if we stay together. Who knows what other dangers this place is hiding?”

No one answered. When the silence became unbearable, Adam cleared his throat and gestured toward the statue. “Well, let’s get this cleaned up, and we’ll take Paul back to his room. Dylan, can you give me a hand?”

“All right.”

Each stood on one side and grabbed an antler. “Shit, this thing is heavy,” Dylan muttered.

Grunting, they managed to shift the statue enough to free Paul’s body. I glanced away when they picked him up off the floor. Since we’d arrived, Paul had appeared so strong, so confident…and even he was no match for the killer. Once again, any lingering wisps of hope I’d had disappeared with the latest victim Adam and Dylan dragged away.

The three of us women waited in the foyer for their return without speaking. Adam descended the stairs, his shirt rumpled, and wiped a few beads of sweat off his brow. “I’m going to head outside and pick up where Paul left off,” he said. “Maybe something’s changed, or I’ll come back with good news.”

“We’ll all stay here,” Laura said.

“Be careful,” I called after him as he stepped around thestatue and opened the front door.

With few other options, I trudged back into the library behind everyone else. I kicked off my shoes and curled up on the end of one of the couches, hugging my knees to my chest. Another day of nothing but waiting to see if I’d live past sunset seemed unbearable, but little else held my focus.

Dylan collapsed into an armchair and pulled out his phone to resume playing his games. Isabel and Laura started a new game of billiards, the clacking of the balls the sole sound in the room. Not long ago, the library had been filled with people. Now its vast size highlighted our dwindling numbers.

A tall figure darkened the doorway. I froze, but it was only Adam.

Isabel glanced up and rested her pool cue against the table. “Any luck?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Still can’t get a cell signal. And from what I saw, the bridge hasn’t been repaired yet.”

“Ugh.”

The billiards game resumed. Adam sat on the opposite end of the couch from me, yet said nothing, staring straight ahead. I rested my chin on my knees and tried to hide a yawn with my forearm. No matter how tired I was, I needed to remain alert.

Dylan’s phone beeped from where he sat to my left. “I need my charger,” he said, standing. We watched him leave the room and then resumed our activity—or lack of activity, in some cases.

I braced myself for something bad to happen while he was gone. Every noise startled me, anxiety gripping my limbs like it held them in a vise. Dylan returned without incident, however, and slid his chair closer to the wall to plug his phone into an outlet.

Time passed at an excruciating pace. I occupied my mind with fantasies of a rescue team bursting in, saving us all, and somehow outing the killer. Although I accepted we were stuckuntil further notice, not every flicker of hope in my heart had been extinguished. Yet.

Laura shot the last ball into the corner pocket and laid her cue on the table. “I’m going to get another cup of coffee from the kitchen. Anyone want anything? I promise I won’t poison it.”

We all murmured some form of polite refusal.