Page 103 of Romance Is Dead

“Oh, I was just curious.” She laughed, a high, trill sound. “I was shocked you didn’t figure it out right away. I left all those notes. At first I just wanted to scare you off from calling the police, which seemed to work. But if I was going to psychoanalyze myself, I’d say maybe I wanted to be found. I’ve been dying to talk to you about this.”

I’d known it was Chloe since seeing her in the photo, but it wasn’t until that moment—hearing her say it—that it sunk in. “You pretended to be my friend. Why bother? I never suspected you.”

Chloe stood, holding something she’d fished from the duffle. “As much as I’d like to start my big villain monologue where I tell you why I did it, we’re going to need to relocate first.”

My heart accelerated. “Why is that?”

“You’ll see.” Chloe was positively vibrating with glee. “You’ll see very soon.”

“Why the hell should we follow you anywhere?”

“This is why.” Chloe held out the object in her hand: a gun, small but powerful-looking. “You’re going to help him out of that chair and do exactly what I say.”

My blood chilled. It was possible that it was a prop gun—there was all manner of fake weapons in the prop trailer. But it was also entirely possible that it was real, and after killing two people on set, Chloe wasn’t someone I wanted to test.

I rushed to help Teddy out of the chair.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice squeaking as I bent over to grab his arms and help him stand up. “I should have believed you. I shouldn’t have pushed you away.”

“It’s ok.” His voice was low, his eyes never leaving Chloe as he got to his feet. “We’ll figure this out.”

I really wanted to believe him.

“Alright, you two.” Chloe pointed the gun at both of us. “March.”

Teddy and I leaned on each other as we slowly made our way across the attic and down the stairs. I ached to hold him close and explain all the ways I was sorry, to ask him if we could forget everything and start over. But there would be time for that later. I needed to believe that.

“How the hell did this happen?” I whispered. “I mean, you. Here. With her.” I glanced over my shoulder, trying to judge if Chloe could hear.

She was smirking.

“Go ahead!” she sang out. “Tell her.”

Teddy took a shuddering breath. “After you left, I was worried about you. We already knew the killer wasn’t just after you, but also had a key to your hotel room.”

“Those receptionists are so helpful,” Chloe said.

Teddy ignored her. “So I went down to the desk and explained that they’d given a key to someone they shouldn’t have and that person had broken in and if they didn’t want us to sue them, they’d tell us who they gave the key to.”

“Could we really sue them for that?”

“Doesn’t matter. They were able to give me a description and the only person it matched was Chloe. Which confused me at first, because she’d finished filming. She was gone. But then I remembered—”

“What Brent said,” I breathed.

Teddy nodded. “He told you we shouldn’t be looking in the hotel, and then made a comment later that day that he didn’t want to be in this ‘freak show’ house. It made me wonder if we’d been right all along, that something in the house was the key to everything.”

“Me!” Chloe cried out happily.

“Exactly.” Teddy’s voice was grim. “I figured if Chloe’s scenes were over but she was still sneaking around, sabotaging the tree and breaking into your room to wait for you, she had to have a different place to stay. And maybe it was here in the house. So I came over this morning, ready to look for her.”

“But he couldn’t bring himself to hurt a delicate little woman like me,” Chloe said, her voice babyish. “My mother swore all those self-defense lessons she signed me up for would come in handy, and I guess she was right.”

“Fuck you,” I spat.

“Enough.” Chloe pressed the gun into my back as she steered us into the kitchen. “We’re almost there.”

“Where now?” I glanced around at the cabinets and counters, at a loss for where we were going.

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