Page 136 of Nowhere To Hide
“What can you tell me about the blood thing?” he asked, brows furrowing.
“It happened about a week after I arrived at BHU,” I said. “Basically, I woke up covered in blood, and someone had painted ‘stop asking questions’ on my wall. And then…” I trailed off, frowning. “Hang on, I thought you’d already know about that, seeing as you had a camera in my room.”
He nodded. “I knew someone poured blood on your bed, but I didn’t know all the details. Like the message on the wall. The camera didn’t catch that, because it’s mounted in the light above your bed, so the view is limited to the space around the bed and desk,” he said. “I assumed it was the Club behind it. Figured they’d sent someone to intimidate you into leaving BHU, as a double measure in case my surveillance didn’t turn up anything useful.”
“Right,” I muttered.
“I was fucking pissed about it, because I saw how much it scared you.” He pulled out his phone, scrolled, then turned it toward me. “See?”
My chest tightened as I read the messages between Julian and his brother on the 9thof October.
Julian:Really don’t need any of the Club’s bullshit theatrics re. Violet. I can handle the assignment entirely on my own.
Roman:Understood.
“I took his response to mean that the Clubwasresponsible for the blood incident,” Julian said. “But looking back at it now… he might’ve thought I was saying that stuff to him in a general sense, and his reply was just a basic acknowledgement.”
“Or maybe the Club actually did do it?”
Julian shook his head. “If it was them, they would’ve stopped after I sent that message to Roman. But whoever it was kept going with the intimidation by sending you those anonymous texts.”
“True.” My heart was thudding again. “Hold on… back to the camera. It would’ve captured the person, right? Because they had to come close to my bed to pour the blood over me while I slept.”
His lips pressed into a firm line. “It’s worth taking another look. But from what I remember seeing at the time, I couldn’t tell much about the person, because it was dark, and it’s a top-down view of the room. So unless they lay down on the bed at some point, or stretched an arm or leg out, it’s almost impossible to tell their height, or any other important details.”
“It’s still worth a look, like you said, because you assumed it was a fellow Club member at the time, so you might not have looked as closely as you would have otherwise.”
“That’s right.” His fingers flew over his phone keyboard again. “I’ll get Roman to bring my laptop up here so we can look. We can also get him to confirm whether or not the Club was responsible for it. But right now, I’m leaning toward ‘no’ being the answer.”
Roman arrived a few minutes later, a laptop tucked under one arm. “Here’s your stuff,” he said as he stepped inside. He took one look at Julian, then me, and something sharpened behind his eyes. “What’s going on?”
“I need to know something,” Julian said, rising to his feet. “Did you, or anyone else in the Club, ever arrange for someone to intimidate Violet? Threatening texts, or blood poured on her while she slept? A message saying, ‘stop asking questions’ painted on her wall?”
Roman frowned. “No. You were the only one on her assignment. Why?”
“Someone did all that stuff several weeks ago. Violet assumed it was me. But it wasn’t.”
“Holy shit.” Roman’s eyes widened. “It could’ve been Calista’s killer.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” I said, nodding. “I mean, ‘stop asking questions’ is a pretty obvious reference to my investigation into her death, right?”
“For sure. Can we track the messages?”
“No, they were from an anonymous messaging service, and they self-destructed not long after I read them.”
“Fuck.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck.”
“Wait…” I slowly stood up, one hand fluttering near my chest. “I just remembered something else. They didn’t just send threats. They also messaged me the night I sneaked into the Club’s initiation ritual. They said, ‘I saw you’.”
“And you assumed it was me again,” Julian said. “Seeing as I spotted you in the ritual chamber that night.”
I nodded. “It made sense at the time.”
“But it wasn’t him, and that means someone else spotted you there too,” Roman interjected. He lifted a palm. “It wasn’t me, by the way.”
“I believe you,” I said, even though dread was beginning to settle low in my stomach. “But this means it has to be a Club member.”
Julian looked at his brother. “Go and find out the names of every single member who shared a BHU class or club with Calista at some point. If they knew her—”
