Page 44 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
Jake ran his hands through his hair again. “Let me help. If nothing else, I can try to keep you from getting us both in more trouble.”
“I will let you help me,” Kate said imperiously, “if you happen to have a paperclip or a bobby pin on you.”
“Why would I have either one of those things?” Jake asked.
“Fine, something small and pointy?”
Jake regarded her for a moment longer, but eventually he relented and pulled a wallet out of his back pocket, flipping it open and pulling a slim object out of the folds.
“I want to be on the record again as saying this is a bad idea,” Jake said, holding out the object. “But, this ought to do the trick.”
Kate looked at it in confusion. “What is that?”
“A toothpick,” Jake said, motioning for her to take it.
But Kate just kept staring. “Why do you have a toothpick?”
“For emergencies, obviously,” he said.
“What kind of toothpick-related emergencies are you having?”
“You’d be surprised. Now, do you want to try it or should we just keep discussing it here in the hall until someone comes round to catch us?”
“Fair point,” Kate said, taking the toothpick and crouching before the door handle. “But I want to hear more about these toothpick emergencies later.”
Kate felt around with the toothpick until she found something she could push in. The lock clicked, the door handle turning freely. It creaked as she pushed it open, and she tried to time it to a low roll of thunder to hide the sound.
“What are we looking for?” Jake asked as she crept in.
“Evidence,” Kate said, pressing the door closed.
“Of course,” Jake whispered, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Evidence, I should have known.”
“Anything suspicious,” Kate whispered, throwing him an annoyed look. The room was pretty small, just a bed-and-dresser set with a smallerdoor on the back wall. “Something linking her to Kennedy’s poisoning, preferably.”
“A glass bottle with a skull and crossbones. Got it.”
“Just look over there, on the opposite side of the room from me,” Kate muttered, half because she was annoyed and half because his skin smelled so warm and inviting.
The bed was full size at most, the covers still neatly tucked under the mattress. Wherever Serena had slept last night, it wasn’t in here. Still, her suitcase was on a rack in the corner, the contents spilling out like a vintage dress shop gone mad, as well as a glass of water and a prescription bottle on the nightstand that unfortunately seemed to be filled with ordinary sleeping pills. No rosary peas in sight.
Jake seemed to be coming up similarly empty-handed, giving Kate a shrug from the opposite side of the room, when the door handle gave a warning creak. Someone was coming.
“Hide!” Kate hissed, stumbling across the room toward the door on the opposite wall, grabbing Jake by the arm and dragging him along. The room door swung wide open just as they slipped inside what seemed to be a closet.
“… heartless bastards wouldn’t know a decent cause if it slapped them in the face,” came Serena’s distinctive voice, breathy and self-important. “If only the others had shown up, we’d have given them a real show. Cowards.”
“We did nearly capsize twice trying to get out here,” came another voice, reedy and pinched. One of Spencer’s more literary authors whose name Kate could never remember. But he’d been among the protesting authors.
“You made it here in one piece, didn’t you?” Serena said. “Meanwhile, I was the one waiting out in the rain past midnight, miserable and sopping wet, holding out the signal so you knew where to land. I was the real martyr in all of this.”
“Still, staging our protest on a private island during a wedding with a press ban probably wasn’t our best idea, was it?”
“Don’t be shortsighted,” Serena snapped. Her voice had drawn closer to their hiding spot, and Kate desperately pushed through what she hoped to all the gods in all the various religions was just a wall of clothes. “This is only phase one. The little chippy needed to know we could get to her anytime, anyplace, no matter how secluded she thinks she is. We won’t be ignored! I’ve already contacted every major news outlet in Seattle, we’ll be on the six o’clock news by Monday, mark my words. They’ll hear our lion’s roar, and they won’t be able to deny our contracts then.”
Kate pressed on until she hit what felt like the back wall. There were other things in there, things that tugged at her shirt and scratched along her legs, things that made her want to yelp in terror. It was only Jake’s solid presence behind her that kept her from screaming out.
A light flicked on from the far side of the closet door, stretching searching fingers toward her as it swung open. Kate bit down on her lip hard enough that the pain cut through the panic, grabbing Jake’s hand and pressing into the deepest corner of the closet. There was something heavy and solid on the floor blocking her way, and as she pushed it out of the way, a breath of stale air puffed in her face. The closet door had opened wide enough now, light spilling in at uneven angles, that she could see a small opening had appeared. A secret passage.