The Siren by KATHERINE JOHN (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

Before I can chicken out, I kick the door to the spa shut, lower my head, and sprint toward the main building. The wind pushes so hard I’m leaning at nearly a forty-five-degree angle as I fight my way through sheets of rain and flying detritus. A gust throws me into the muddy tangled roots of the oak, terrifyingly pinning me there for a moment before it changes directions. When it lets up, I run like hell around the corner of the building, narrowly missing being nailed by a falling branch before I yank open the staff door with all my might and dive into the relative safety of the locker room.

I click on my flashlight to creep toward the door, where I extinguish the light before softly pushing it open and slipping into the hallway like a ghost. I pause, listening intently for any human sounds, then grope my way back toward the lobby, where the complete blackout lessens to the darkest gloom. Though the high-beamed ceiling is still intact, a steady breeze buffets the leaves and sand now strewn about the tiled floor as a result of the compromised roof of the restaurant. I can’t make out much in the dark, but I note an overturned chair, a smashed lamp. No sign of Jackson and Cole, or Stella.

I steal across the lobby in the direction the breeze is coming from but don’t make it halfway before I trip over something and tumble to the floor with a clamor that would wake the dead. My knee throbs where it struck the tile.

Footsteps.

I have to hide fast, but where, when I can’t see? Recalling the overturned chair, I scuttle backward toward where it should be, fumbling as noiselessly as I can. My reaching hands land on soft upholstery, and I tuck myself behind the seat of the chair just as a shaft of light cuts through the darkness. I huddle in the shadows and hold my breath while Cole prowls the room, shining the light around the space. I’m nearly sure he can hear my heart thumping as the seconds drag on, but finally he must decide there’s no one here because he turns and stalks briskly out the side door.

A whoosh of air sweeps in as the door shuts behind him. What has he done with Jackson and Stella? An image of my mother, her eyes fixed, her skin ashen, flashes before my eyes. I can’t let the same thing happen to them.

As I unfurl my limbs, my hand strikes what feels like a wet tennis shoe. I tentatively trace my fingers over it. It’s definitely a shoe. A woman’s running shoe soaked in water and mud. A shoe that can only belong to one person. I grab it and creep blindly toward the hallway where Cole came from, fear driving me forward.

When I reach the hall that connects the lobby to the restaurant, I can feel the wind from above rushing through the splintered ceiling, blasting the branches of the fallen tree into a dangerous frenzy of bark and leaves. I drag my hand along the wall until I find the stairwell that leads down to the wine cellar, and gripping the handrail, carefully descend the steps. Once I’m safely around the bend in the stairs, I click on my flashlight. My breath catches in my throat as the beam illuminates the shoe in my hands. It’s one of Stella’s white tennis shoes, streaked with mud. On the toe is a single drop of blood.

I tear down the remaining steps to the basement, where a hallway lined with movie posters featuring Cole’s face leads to a giant steel door that I can only imagine opens into the fabled wine room. “Jackson?” I call. “Stella? Hello?”

I grasp the long steel bar that holds the door in place and slide it back in its track, then pull the heavy door open and shine my light into the room. Jackson squints up at me from where he sits on the floor, filthy and wet. Thank God. “Are you hurt?” I ask, rushing over to him.

“I’m fine,” he breathes. “Just glad you’re okay.”

As I kneel beside him, I bump into the stack of framed posters that leans against the wall next to him, sending one of them clattering to the floor. I right it, noting it’s a framed poster of The Gentleman Gangster 2, featuring Cole in front of a bank vault with a hatch not dissimilar to the door I opened to enter this room.

“What happened?” I ask.

“He found me, told me you and Stella were—”

“I heard that part. I was in the linen closet listening. I never slept—the caffeine pills kept me awake. How’d you end up here?”

“He said it was the best place to ride out the storm, but when we got here, he pulled a gun on me and told me he was locking me in for my own good.”

“At least we know he doesn’t want to kill you.”

“He doesn’t know I’m on your side,” he returns.

Cole’s face taunts me from the poster behind Jackson’s shoulder, and all of a sudden it hits me. “He locked you in here just like he locked the tellers in the bank vault so they wouldn’t get caught in the shoot-out in Gentleman Gangster 2,” I say. Something inside me clicks, like a crucial puzzle piece that, when it snaps into place, makes the rest of the picture clear. “Stella said the drugged lemonade was his idea too. It was from the fourth movie in the series,” I add, realizing. “Only it was tea, used to put the guards of a museum to sleep while he lifted a painting.”

Jackson stares at me, baffled. “What are you talking about?”

“Do you notice everything he does is from a movie he’s been in? It’s like he’s taken pieces of his characters with him and is acting out the plotlines