Then I’ll find Hugh. I’ll get him and Cameron and Shelly and we’ll all get out.
She ran forward, hating that dark, and she pulled out her phone. She had a flashlight app, too, and she swiped her phone over the screen, turning it on so that she could see—
A man in a tux. A man in a white Mardi Gras mask.
Her breath left her lungs in a startled whoosh. She stepped back.
Her light still hit his mask.
“Hello…” His voice was deep, seeming to surround her.
She shook her head. In the middle of a fire—in the middle of mad panic—you didn’t just stop to tell someone “Hello”.
“You saw me,” he continued in that deep voice.
Ivy backed up a step. Oh, hell, oh, hell…
“And I saw you.”
It’s the killer! He had been watching her when she’d been on the float, screaming to get that poor woman help.
She forced her body to relax. If he was about to attack her, he’d find that she wasn’t the prey he’d thought. He was bigger than she was, stronger, but that didn’t mean he was a better fighter.
“I also saw your brother,” he told her. “Such a shame…”
Icy tendrils of fear wrapped around her heart. He knows about my brother? “What did you do?”
He turned away from her and began walking back down the hallway. Her light hit the back of his head. He had dark hair, hair that contrasted sharply with the white elastic of his mask’s straps.
“What did you do?” Ivy yelled. She raced after him. She grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. When she did, he hit her, hard, slamming her against the wall. Her phone fell from her fingers and crashed into the floor.
His fingers locked around her throat. She felt the slide of gloved fingers tightening around her neck.
Oh, hell, no.
She drove her knee into his groin, hitting him as hard as she could. He swore and his hold eased. That’s right. Then Ivy whacked him with her elbow, slamming it into his stomach. When he bowled over, she zipped around him. She took a few frantic steps down that hallway—
And then she tripped. Ivy fell over something—something warm and soft.
Not something…someone.
“No,” Ivy whispered even as the masked man’s words rang in her head. “Such a shame…”
Her hands touched something sticky and wet and she shuddered. Blood. She knew exactly what blood felt like in the dark.
She was touching a man’s body. A man who was wearing a tux and who’d been attacked.
Laughter floated around her. “You’re going to be far more fun that I realized.”
The hell she was. “This isn’t a game!” She backed away from the body. She needed to get away and get help. Don’t be Hugh on the floor. Please, not Hugh. “The cops are here! They’re going to get you—”
“I know they’re here.” He didn’t sound worried. “I saw them and you, sweet Ivy.”
He knows my name.
“I can be good to you,” he said.
She was on her feet now. Her hands pressed to the wall. Did he brush by her? It was pitch black in there, but she thought she’d felt him. He’d been heading toward the body.
So I need to move the other way. She needed to head back out the way she’d come.
If she couldn’t see, then neither could he. Maybe he thought she was down there next to the body. She inched away. She’d get out. She’d go back the way she came and escape. Everything would be okay.
I touched blood…that means he has a knife. Or some kind of weapon.
“I’m going to learn your secrets,” he told her. “Your desires. I’m going to give you everything that you ever wanted.”
You’ll give me nothing. She didn’t say those words. Talking would give away her location. She wasn’t going to do that. His voice told her that he wasn’t close to her. She just needed to keep going. She had to move silently.
“I can be good to you,” the killer said. “Or, Ivy, my dear…I can be very, very bad…”
All you can be is crazy. She crept down the corridor. Surely she was close to the ballroom again. She would get away, find the cops—find Bennett—and then this guy would be done.
Only…she stilled. He’d stopped talking, so she didn’t know where he was. He could be right behind me now.
There was no time to waste. She ran for the ballroom. Forget being quiet—she raced forward.
And the lights flashed on. So bright and glaring after the darkness. She blinked, trying to adjust to that glare, and then she spun around, frantically searching behind her.
He wasn’t close to her. He was on the other side of that corridor, near the exit that led to the escalators.
He shoved open the door—
“No!” Ivy screamed.
But he was gone.
And he’d left her…left her with…
Her gaze fell to the floor of that corridor.
A white mask lay near the fallen man’s hand.
He left me with a dead man.
***