Page 55 of Hide And Seek

In front of us, there was a small sitting area with a couch and a coffee table with a neatly stacked pile of books. On the other side of the space, there were two closed doors.

Rhys shifted the ax in his grip, moving slightly in front of me as we stepped forward. He stopped at the door on the left and slowly opened it.

“Bathroom,” he said after a quick glance. “Empty.”

He crossed to the other door and opened it, leaning in slightly to switch on the light. Then his free hand shot up, clamping over his mouth. “Oh, fuck,” he muttered, voice muffled.

My stomach dropped.

Rhys turned to me. “Don’t come any closer. I don’t think you want to see this.”

Cold dread curled low in my gut, but I stepped past him and looked anyway.

My imagination had spent years feeding on slasher movies, true crime documentaries, and every nightmare scenario it could invent... but nothing could’ve prepared me for what I saw next.

14

The bedroom was drenchedin blood.

Not just a little. Not contained to one side. It waseverywhere. The walls were spattered in dark, uneven arcs, and the floor was slick with it, smeared into footprints and dragged streaks. Even the curtain by the window was dotted and streaked.

Reid was on the bed.

Or at least… parts of him were.

His naked body had been hacked up with a force that spoke of either furious frenzy or complete, terrifying detachment. Maybe both. One arm hung off the mattress, fingers curled like they’d locked there, and his torso was split open in places. The bed beneath him had gone almost entirely red, saturated in a way that made the sheets look almost black in patches.

And his head…

My gaze snagged on it before I could stop it. It had rolled off the side of the bed and come to rest on the floor, face turned toward the door. Eyes still open. Mouth slack.

Sloane’s body was closer to the door, just a few feet from where I stood.

She was on her back, one leg bent awkwardly under her, the other stretched out. She was wearing the cream-colored sweater I'd seen her in earlier and nothing below the waist but blue panties. Her black leggings were in a bunched heap near her left foot, along with a crumpled pile of men’s clothing.

Her head was tilted slightly to the side, in a way that would've looked almost peaceful if not for the deep, savage slice that went all the way across her throat. There were dark arterial sprays across the floorboards, and across the lower wall, a fine mist was mixed with thicker streaks where it had hit and run down.

The front of her sweater was drenched, most of the cream knit turned a heavy, rusted red that spread down her chest and pooled beneath her shoulders. There was even more blood on the floor beneath her legs. My eyes dragged lower and caught a second wound; a deep gash high on her thigh.

The floor suddenly lurched, or at least it felt like it did. I shot one hand out against the doorframe and bent forward, my whole body seizing with a single violent retch that brought nothing up. I gasped and retched again, stomach clenching hard.

“Hey.” Rhys’s hand landed between my shoulder blades, firm and steady. “Just breathe.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on the pressure of his hand and the air going in and out of my lungs. The nausea rolled in waves, cresting and slowly pulling back.

After a long moment, I straightened up. My legs still felt weak, so I kept one hand on the doorframe. “We… we have to get the others,” I managed to choke out, voice raw.

“Wait.” Rhys’s hand shifted to my shoulder, grip tightening slightly. “We should take photos for the cops like we did with Delia. Before everyone else comes and tramples all over everything.”

I swallowed hard. He was right.

“It’s okay,” he went on. “I can do it. You can just wait out in the sitting room.”

For a second, I almost said yes. Almost turned away. Then I shook my head and forced myself to turn back to the horror. “It’ll go faster if we both do it,” I said.

“Are you sure?” he asked, eyes flashing with concern.

I swallowed again. Then I nodded. “I’ll take this side,” I said, weakly gesturing to the left. “You take the other.”