“Those were gunshots!” I say, springing out of bed and searching frantically for my clothes. There isn’t much to find—a T-shirt, my robe, underwear—but it’s dark in here and I don’t remember where they fell.
“Wait,” Oliver says. “Eleanor, it’s not safe.”
I find my underwear and put it on, struggling on unsteady legs. “But it was on this floor! What if Harper is…” My throat closes and I can’t get the words out. I sink to the ground.
He swings his legs around and picks up the bedside phone as I hear a door close with a thick thud. It sounds like it’s next door, but it’s hard to tell.
“I’m calling the front desk. They’ll call the police.”
“And what, we just wait?”
“We have to. Someone’s wandering around with a gun. It’s not time to play the hero.”
“Call them. Please.”
Oliver dials reception. “Ciao. Questo è Oliver Forrest. I’m in room 206. I just heard gunshots. Sì, due. Per favore, chiami subito la polizia.” He listens for a moment. “Grazie. Sì.”
He hangs up. “They said to stay in our room. They’re calling the police.”
I hug my knees to my chest. The carpeting is scratchy beneath me. “I can’t just … I—”
I stop because there are footsteps in the hall, maybe on the stairs, and some above us, too. Heavy footfalls.
“Is that upstairs?” I ask.
“It’s hard to tell. But it doesn’t … I’m sure those shots woke everyone up.”
“But then they’ll come out of their rooms…”
Oliver steps off the bed and pulls me up next to him, then wraps his arms around me. “I know this sounds terrible, but there’s nothing we can do. We have to wait. It’s too dangerous.”
I lean back against him, wanting him to be right. But every fiber in my body is telling me to move my feet and get out of this room.
I listen to the noises around me. Everything seems heightened, ominous. The footsteps up and down, a murmur of voices, and then—a scream. Again.
“It’s Harper!”
I wrench myself away from Oliver and grab my robe off the floor, throwing it on as I open the door. She screams again, and it sounds like death to me, but I have to charge toward it anyway.
When I’m in the hall, I realize the screams are coming from inside my room. I fish in my bathrobe pocket for my key and fumble to open the door as quickly as I can. It takes two tries to scan the key right, but then the lights turn to green and I wrench open the door.
Harper’s on the floor, in the threshold of the connecting door, a dim light illuminating her from behind. She’s staring fixedly at my bed, which is just a dark shape in the half-light.
But as my eyes adjust, it looks like someone is lying there. A large lump covered by the comforter.
I feel sick. Is it possible that someone … Wait, no. It’s just the way I left my pillows when I left the room to go to Oliver’s.
I rush to Harper and wrap my arms around her. “I’m here. I’m okay.”
“Eleanor?”
“Yes, I’m fine. It wasn’t me.” I hold her tearstained cheek to mine. Her lashes tickle my face.
“Someone … shot you.”
“No, no, they didn’t. I’m okay. I’m right here.”
She pulls away, scanning my face. Her eyes are large and frightened. “I didn’t see. I couldn’t get the door open…”
“It’s okay, Harper. It’s okay. I’m here. No one’s hurt.”
The light snaps on. I look back over my shoulder. Oliver’s surveying the room in his boxers, his hands on his hips. I follow his gaze back to my bed. There are two bullet holes in the covers, and a gun wrapped in a cloth on the floor.
Oh my God.
Someone was shooting at me.
I feel bile rise up my throat and I choke it down.
“What happened?” Allison says from behind Oliver. She’s wearing the same green flowing robe she was wearing the other night, and I have a flash of that scene from Murder on the Orient Express—a bright robe with a dragon on it. But there’s nothing on the back of Allison’s robe and my mind is playing tricks on me.
“Someone tried to kill Eleanor,” Oliver says.
“What?”
She looks from me and Harper to the obvious holes in my bed to the gun that’s lying on the floor. She takes a step forward. “Is that—”
“Don’t touch that,” Oliver says. “It’s evidence.”
She takes a step closer anyway. “Is that Guy’s gun?”
“I don’t—”
“It must be,” Guy says, arriving fully dressed—black pants, black T-shirt, like a villain. “Mine’s missing.”
“Missing?” Oliver says. “Since when?”
“I had it when I went to sleep,” Guy says. “It was on the nightstand next to my bed.”
“Can you tell if that’s it?”
Guy walks into the room and stands over the gun. I turn my body away from Harper, still holding her close so I can watch him. My hands are shaking.
Guy crouches down, getting close to the gun. “It’s mine. But Oliver … It’s got your handkerchief around it.”
“What?”
Oliver walks to Guy with Allison right behind. They form a little triangle around the weapon, staring at it.
I haul Harper up to her feet. She’s steadier now, and we walk together toward them.
They widen the circle so we can see, too. Guy’s right. His gun is wrapped in a white handkerchief that has Oliver’s initials on it.
And also a drop of blood.
The next thirty minutes are a blur.
Hotel security arrives and secures the room.
They usher us out and tell us that the police will be arriving shortly. Without discussion, Harper, Oliver, Guy, Allison, and I go downstairs to the library and are soon joined by Emily, who says she didn’t hear the shots, but was awoken by the commotion.
It’s after six now, the sun rising across the water, and someone is nice enough to bring us tea and some Italian pastries, and it all feels so civilized except for the riot in my brain.
If I hadn’t gotten up and gone to Oliver’s room, I’d be dead right now.
Dead.
Finito.
I can’t make any jokes about that.
Would I even know what had happened? Would I be watching all this unfold like some movie I couldn’t reach through? Or would I be in some black oblivion, nothing, all that’s left of me on a page somewhere?
I’ve never thought about death this much before, despite what I do for a living.
The people who die in my books aren’t real. They’re pieces of a puzzle I’ve invented. It always surprises me when fans speak to me as if they’re alive.
But now that I’m in the middle of my own murder investigation, I wish I’d shown more compassion to the people I killed on the page. Because even if you’re a liar and a bad person, dying before your time isn’t something I’d wish on anyone.
“Did you want some tea, Eleanor?” Oliver asks me.
I blink against the light. It feels like I’m coming out of a fog, but it’s still there, right in front of me.
“Yes, thank you.”
Harper squeezes my hand, and I realize that we’re back on our couch. The easel with our Allison accusations is still here, all the other squares blank, a series of missed opportunities.
Oliver hands me a cup of tea and I take a sip. It’s full of sugar and cream, and the English know what they’re about, thinking tea is the cure for everything, because a couple of sips and I do start to feel better.
All things considered.
“Well, we know one thing,” Allison says sitting on the settee across from me. “Eleanor didn’t kill Shek.”
“She could’ve shot at her own bed,” Emily says next to her.
“No,” Oliver says, standing behind them. “She was in my room when the shots occurred.”
I can feel everyone’s eyes staring at me, but I’m not embarrassed. The only good thing to happen last night was me and Oliver.
“Yes. We were together.”
Harper squeezes my hand again, a show of approval. “So that leaves you two out of it.”
“How did they get your gun, Guy?” I ask. “I thought you always slept with one eye open?”
He shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. “I think I was drugged.”
“Drugged? Come on. How many glasses of wine did you have at dinner?”
“Several, I admit. But this feels like more than that.” He taps the side of his head. “It feels like a sleeping pill.”
My eyes dart to Harper’s and then away.
“How could you have taken a sleeping pill without knowing it?” Allison asks.
“Someone could’ve dosed me over dinner,” Guy says. “We were all there in the dining room. Easy enough to intercept a glass going to my table. And if I recall, a few of you came to talk to us at various points. It would be the work of a moment.”
“Okay, maybe,” Oliver says. “But wouldn’t you taste it when you drank it?”
“Depends on what they used. But I know when I’ve been drugged.”
I’m going to leave that there.
No point in asking him about the other times he’s been drugged.
“But how did they get into Eleanor’s room?” Allison says. “Those doors lock automatically when you close them.”
“The key,” Harper says in a small voice. “The master key.”
“You still have a master key?” I say.
Her hands flutter by her sides. “They gave it to me when we checked in.”
“What do you mean?” Emily asks. “You have a key to everyone’s room?”
“I always have one.”
“Why?”
Harper shakes her head slowly. “I don’t know … I never questioned it. The first tour we did, they gave me one because the master booking was in my name, and it seemed easier. With packing Eleanor’s things and…” She looks at me with an apology in her eyes, and I’m not sure what she’s excusing herself for. “Anyway, every time we go on tour, I have one.”
“I get it for Eleanor’s room, but why the rest of us?”
“I don’t know.”
Emily crosses her arms over her chest. She’s in a cute romper, her hair in a messy ponytail. She looks younger and more vulnerable than I’ve seen her since we met. “You expect us to believe that someone just gave you a key to all of our rooms without your asking for it?”
This doesn’t extend to her tone, obviously.
“What are you implying, Emily?” I ask.
“Seems pretty clear to me.”
“Why don’t you make it clear for the room?”
“That’s how they got the gun. With the master room key.”
Allison nods slowly. “And then that handkerchief around the gun. That’s yours, right, Oliver? You gave one to me yesterday for the salve, but it didn’t have that stain on it.”
“What stain?” Harper asks.
“There was a bloodstain on … Oh! The ruins. When Harper tackled me … She cut her head and she used your handkerchief to wipe the blood.”
“I took that back,” Oliver says. “I put it in my laundry bag to clean when I got back to the States.”
“Are you sure?”
His brow creases, and though I have a distinct memory of him taking the handkerchief back and putting it in his pocket, now I’m not sure either. “I can check.”
“I’m sure the police will do that,” Emily says.
“Where’s the master room key now?” Allison asks Harper.
Harper pats herself down, like she might find it on her person. “It was in my purse…”
Guy holds up his hand and counts off on his fingers. “The room key, the gun, the handkerchief…”
“And she has sleeping pills,” Emily says.
There are two bright spots of color on Harper’s cheeks. “Yes, I have sleeping pills. But I didn’t use them to drug anyone. I wasn’t even sitting at Guy’s table.”
“You went to the bathroom, though, and stopped to talk to them,” Emily says. “I saw you.”
“Wh … I … I was just returning Isabella’s lipstick. She left it in the bathroom.”
“What is your problem, Emily?” I say. “Do you honestly think that Harper tried to kill me? Or killed Shek? Or tried to kill Connor?”
Emily shrugs. “Yeah, I can kind of believe all of that. She told me that she didn’t want you to stop writing your books. That she was mad at you about it. And she inherits everything if you die.”
“What about Shek?”
“Shek probably saw something he shouldn’t and couldn’t keep his big mouth shut,” Guy says.
I follow their logic and then reject it. “If Harper wanted me dead, why do it on this tour? We live together. She has plenty of opportunity to do away with me.”
“But then she’d be the prime suspect,” Guy says. “Whereas here…”
“There are plenty of suspects to go around…” Allison says. “Isn’t that what we’ve been proving with this?” She points to the easel.
“Okay, I’ll give you that. But why would she try to frame me for Shek’s death?”
“Someone tried to frame you for Shek’s death?” Oliver says.
“That has to be what happened. That device that was used to kill Shek, it was in my backpack, and the other master key was in my purse, the one from Rome. I found it the other day. That’s what made the police think I did it. But I didn’t. Which means someone is trying to frame me. Why would Harper do that?”
Emily shrugs again. “I’m not saying I have it all worked out. But do I believe she’s a viable suspect? Definitely. Means, motive, opportunity. She has all of it. And especially if you aren’t going to write anymore, now’s the time to strike. When’s the next time that she might have this kind of chance?”
“Harper,” Allison says, “aren’t you going to defend yourself?”
Harper is completely still next to me.
But I know that doesn’t mean anything. She’s always taken a moment to process.
“See, she doesn’t even deny it,” Emily says. “And then there’s the Connor stuff.”
“What Connor stuff?” I say, dread building inside of me.
“Her and Connor.”
“There is no her and Connor.”
Emily tilts her head to the side. “Not anymore. That’s the problem. He broke her heart when he ended their affair.”
Wait, what?
“Harper, is that true?”
“Why would I make that up? Besides, Connor told me all about it when we hooked up at Books by the Banks. How he’d bedded both sisters.” She looks around. “Come on. Remember at dinner a couple of nights ago when Allison asked if he’d slept with every woman at the table and he said yes?”
Ugh. I do remember that. I hadn’t thought through what it meant because I didn’t want to know.
I still don’t.
“I thought you knew,” Emily said.
“I hadn’t made the connection,” I say, but as I say it, I’m not even sure that’s true.
I’ve been worried something was going on between them for a while, all the hints I tried to ignore. The way she was around him, the way he looked at her, those moments between them in the church in Rome. And then …
“That’s why you let him read your pages,” I say to Harper. “That’s why you trusted him with your work? Why his opinion meant so much to you?”
She nods her head slowly, coming out of whatever haze she’s been in. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“For trying to kill you, obviously.”
“Shut up, Emily!”
“No! I didn’t try to kill anyone. I didn’t do that to Shek. I don’t know who got Guy’s gun or how, or when they got my master key, or any of it.”
Emily scoffs, turning to me. “How can you trust her if she didn’t even confide in you?”
“That’s between us. And you’re one to talk. If having your heart broken by Connor is a motive, you probably want to kill him, too. Or was it just some stupid one-night stand that didn’t mean anything to you?”
“Shove it.”
“That’s the best you can come up with? ‘Shove it’? No wonder you have to steal plots to get published.”
Emily lifts her chin. “The New York Times called my book ‘brilliant and satisfying with a twist you won’t see coming.’”
“So you can’t be a murderer if you get an endorsement from the New York Times?189 Come on. I saw you cuddling up to Harper in Pompeii and then again in Capri. Was it all some trick to get her to confide in you? Maybe you were looking for dirt about me? Or maybe … You could’ve taken the room key then. And you also went to Guy’s table last night, didn’t you?”
I’m bluffing about this last part because I only had eyes for Oliver, but sometimes that’s how you get through life.
You take a shot in the dark, and it hits the bull’s-eye.
“So what?”
“So, you could’ve spiked Guy’s drink. Assuming it was spiked.”
“What does that mean?”
I glance at Guy. “We don’t have tox results. We only have your word for it. Inspector Tucci was right, we need to stop speculating and go with the facts.”
“I grant you that I’ve thought about killing Connor over the years, but what possible reason could I have for killing you?”
“Cover.”
“Please. I’m not a sociopath. And if I did it, no one would even know he was dead. He’d just disappear.”
“Sounds like a confession.”
“Speaking of disappearing,” Oliver says, “where’s Connor?”
Oh, shit.
Connor.
Somehow in all of this, I forgot about him.
We all did.
I stand. “What if the shots in my room were just a diversion? Something to keep us looking away from Connor long enough for someone to do away with him?”
“You may have a point.”
“We should check on him.”
I nod to Oliver and we make for the door.
Out in the lobby, the staff are rushing around and the phones are ringing. We’re not the only guests in this hotel, and others have been disturbed by our drama. There’s a heavyset American man with a deep Southern accent demanding a refund from a harried-looking woman behind the check-in counter.
“What do we do if Connor’s dead?” I say to Oliver.
“It’ll be okay.”
“But they might think we planned it together…”
He puts his hand on my arm. “Don’t worry about that now. Come on, let’s take the stairs.”
We walk toward the grand staircase that winds down into the lobby.
And there he is, walking down the stairs arm in arm with Isabella, looking refreshed.
“What’s all the commotion?” Connor asks. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“You didn’t hear? It didn’t wake you?”
“I had a wonderful sleep courtesy of Mr. Ambien.” He looks around. “Has something happened?”
“Harper tried to kill Eleanor,” Guy says behind me. “Welcome to breakfast.”