Page 87 of The Death Row Club
The flashlight’s still on, and light spills across the name at the top of the list: AUDREY BANERJEE. “A girl’s been injured in the woods, near Foxcroft Lane.”
“What’s your name?”
I hang up, take my keys out of my pocket, and snap open the knife attached to the lanyard. Drive the blade straight through STEFFANI. Wood chips shatter to the ground as, one by one, the letters disappear. “I don’t want it,” I mutter to myself, destroying the last traces of who I used to be. I don’t want to go back to being Steffani Arnosti, alone and unloved.
I want to stay Greer Woods forever.
But as soon as Tom discovers what I’ve done, that I was the one who reported him, things will never be the same.
The walk back to the cabin feels like the longest of my life. I try to keep that soft focus, to not think about anything that’s already happened,anything that’s still to come. But then, a sharp snap detonates, followed by a keening yowl—the sound of a hunted animal.
Fuck. Oh, fuck.
I start running.
Back home, I lock the door and pause to catch my breath, then climb the stairs, change into my pajamas with shaking hands, and crawl under the comforter. Opening my bedside table drawer, I dig through the paper clips and cartoon Band-Aids and notepads that only have writing on the first pages. My shit drawer, I realize. I finally have a shit drawer of my very own. Tears sting my eyes as I take out a blister pack of sleeping pills, dry-swallowing two before switching off the lights. A police siren, somewhere in the distance, rips through the stillness, but by that time, I’m already drifting off. In my dreams, I’m coasting down I-94, curled up in the passenger seat of Tom’s car, lulled to sleep by the dips and rises in the pavement. For once, feeling completely safe.
36NICOLA
WE’RE JOSTLED OUTof our reverie by the cell phone on the floor. The screen illuminates with a notification that the battery’s getting low. Greer switches it off. Greer.Steffani. I still can’t believe that, for all these years, she’s lied about who she really was—not Tom Woods’s daughter, but one of his victims. Hidden under all those tattoos are the scars her real father inflicted on her. When I’d swept my fingertips across them, I’d attributed each one to a childhood misadventure. What else could she be hiding? If I can’t even trust her to be honest about her name, can I really be certain she had nothing to do with Zach’s murder, or with Audrey’s disappearance?
“What about Audrey?” I ask. “Where do you know her from?”
I’m expecting Greer to tell me that she’s a reporter, that the two of them met outside a courthouse or on the press junket forTo Catch a Killer. Instead, she shocks me speechless by saying, “She was Tom Woods’s final victim, the one that escaped.”
Everything starts falling into place. Those scars on Audrey’s ankle were from the trap she got caught in, then freed herself from moments before the car slammed into her; the ones on her rib cage were from where she rolled across the hood before fleeing into the forest. No wonder Greer looked ill when she turned up at the retreat.
“What did she want?” I ask.
“The same thing you did—an explanation. She wanted to know why I’d agreed to serve as Tom Woods’s counsel, if he’d somehow threatened me from behind bars to ensure my compliance. She seemed convinced that I was under duress.”
“I’m guessing she didn’t take it well when she found out you weren’t.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“What about those?” I motion to the cell phone and the murder weapon. “I found them under the floorboards.”
“I took the cell phone from Connor’s room that first night. He doesn’t know anything about my past, and that’s how I want it to stay. He disabled Audrey’s passcode, so I knew I needed to act fast, before he could read through her emails. As for the statue, I found that downstairs in the foyer the morning after Audrey disappeared.”
“There was a Post-it note stuck in one of Zach’s notebooks. He was supposed to be meeting up with an Audrey Banerjee at the end of the retreat.”
Greer doesn’t seem surprised. “She was probably going to turn over that research folder—an exclusive for his book.”
“Do you thinkshekilled him?”
“Yes.”
Audrey might’ve been scrawny, but adrenaline can give you the strength to do all kinds of things. She pried that trap off her ankle as a teenager; she could’ve figured out a way to lug Zach into the trunk of a car. If that’s what happened, whatever arrangement they had must’ve gone very,verywrong. What could have driven her to kill him?
That question quickly gives way to a far more important one.
“Why didn’t you tell the others?”
If she suspected someone else was guilty, why did she stand bywhile they accused me of murder? Why didn’t she set them straight instead of letting them exile me from the lodge?
Greer looks away, clearly ashamed. “I owed her. She knocked on our door the night she escaped. I decided not to answer.”
“You called the police, though. You’re the reason why she’s still alive.”
