I stare at the crackling blue fire strip.
So this is how she’d done it. No chloroform, no bashing over the head with a baseball bat. She’d simply shown up at Beth’s door, and then later, at Bobby’s, stunned them, then shoved their limp bodies down the elevator shaft. What could be simpler?
And Detective Canavan had said killers were dumb. Rachel isn’t dumb. What kind of doofus would have the savvy to pull off this kind of crime? Because so many young people kill themselves doing stupid stunts like elevator surfing, no one would ever think that the girls had actually been murdered, not when there was no hint of suspiciousness to their deaths.
No one except a freak like me.
No, Rachel isn’t dumb.
And she isn’t crazy, either. She’d thought up the perfect way to get rid of her romantic rivals. No one would have suspected a thing if it hadn’t been for me and my big mouth.
If it hadn’t been for me and my big mouth, Sarah and I wouldn’t be about to become Rachel’s third and fourth victims.
“But this isn’t the only thing that qualifies me to be in charge around here, you know,” Rachel assures me, casually gesturing with the stun gun to emphasize her point. “I have a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. Did you know that, Heather?”
I shake my head. Maybe one of the RAs will key in to the office to pick up his mail. Yeah. Or maybe Cooper will have gotten that message I’d left on his cell phone….
“It’s amazing what one can do with a bachelor’s in chemical engineering. One can, for instance, learn to build small incendiary devices—so simple, yet so effective. Do you know what an incendiary device is, Heather? No, I would imagine that you don’t. After all, you were far too busy twitching your ass at the local mall to finish high school, weren’t you? Let me see if you know this one. What do you get when you stand a bunch of blonds next to each other, shoulder to shoulder?”
I look at Sarah. She’s still sobbing, but she’s trying to do it quietly, so Rachel won’t slap her again.
I shake my head.
Rachel laughs humorlessly and says, “A wind tunnel, Heather! A wind tunnel!”
“Oh, wow, Rachel,” I say, amending my previous thought. She’s definitely crazy. Nuts, even. “That’s really funny. But you know what? I have to go now. Cooper’s waiting by the guard’s desk. If I’m gone too long, he’s bound to come back here, looking for me.”
“He can look all he wants,” Rachel says with a shrug. “He doesn’t have a key. And we aren’t going to let him in. We’re working, Heather. We have a lot of important work to do.”
“Well, you know what, Rachel?” I say. “If we don’t open the door, Cooper’ll just have Pete call one of the RAs to let him in—”
“But the RAs don’t have keys to the office anymore. I had the lock changed.” Rachel’s cheeks have twin spots of color in them now, and her eyes sparkle every bit as brightly as the thin volt of electricity that leaps from the prongs of the weapon clenched in her hand.
“That’s right,” she says happily. “I had the lock changed yesterday, while you were in the hospital, and I’m the only one with a key.” Then she turns those too-bright eyes on me and says, “You understand, don’t you, Heather? I mean, this isn’t a career for you. This is just a job. Assistant director to Fischer Hall. It’s just a rest stop between gigs, isn’t it? A steady paycheck until you get the guts to go on the road again after your little dispute with your record company. That’s all this position is to you. Not like me. Higher education is my life. My life, Heather. Or at least it was. Until—”
She stops speaking suddenly, her gaze, which had become a little unfocused, fastening on me like a vise. “Until him,” she says, simply.
I want to sit down. My knees shake every time I glance at the weapon in Rachel’s hand.
But I don’t dare. Seated, I’m an even easier target. No, somehow I have to distract her from whatever it is she intends to do to Sarah and me—and I have a pretty good idea what that is.
“Him, Rachel?” I ask, trying to sound friendly, like we’re just chatting over cups of coffee in the cafeteria, something we’d actually done, once or twice, before the killing had begun. “You mean Christopher, don’t you?”
She laughs bitterly, and that laugh makes me more afraid than anything so far, even the stun gun.
“Christopher,” she says, rolling the word on her tongue like it’s a piece of chocolate—something Rachel never allowed herself to enjoy. Too fattening. “Yes. Chris. You wouldn’t understand about Christopher, Heather. You see, I love him. You’ve never loved anyone before, Heather, except yourself, so you can’t know what it’s like. No, you can’t know what it’s like to feel that all your happiness in life is dependent on one single individual, and then—and then to have that individual turn around and reject you—”
The look she gives me could have frozen a hot buttered bagel. I think about mentioning that I know exactly what she’s talking about…that this is how I’d felt about Jordan, who is at this very moment probably playing Mad Libs with Tania Trace in his hospital bed.
But somehow I don’t think she’d listen.
“No, you wouldn’t understand that,” Rachel says. “You’ve always had everything you’ve ever wanted, haven’t you, Heather? Handed to you on a silver platter. Some of us have had to work for what we want, you know. Take me, for example. You think I always looked this good?” Rachel runs a hand up and down her lean, hard, thousand-crunches-a-day abs. “Hell, no. I used to be fat. A real lard ass. Kind of like you are now, actually. A size twelve.” She laughs. “I drowned my sorrows in candy bars, never worked out, like you. Do you know I never got asked out—never, not once, until I turned thirty? While you were strutting around like a little slut for Cartwright Records, I had my nose buried in my books, studying as hard as I could, because I knew no one was going to swoop down and offer me a recording contract. I knew if I wanted out of my hellhole of a life, I was going to have to use my head.”
I glance at Sarah. She’s looking out the window, desperately hoping, I can tell, that someone will walk by and notice what’s going on inside.
But it’s raining so hard, no one is on the street. And the few people who are out hurry past with their heads tucked beneath umbrellas.