Authors: Tara McTiernan
She'd left multiple voicemail and text messages for all of the girls except Bianca, messages pleading for a return call, it was urgent. Only Bianca had received a plain-vanilla message, please call. Sharon's instincts told her that saying anything more would be a dangerous thing to do.
Those same instincts were telling her to call Dean, but her brain kept overriding them. She had picked a fight with him. He was angry. And besides, what could he do?
As she made another circuit beside her car where it sat in the parking lot that was growing darker by the moment, the last rays of sun snuffed out, a message from deep within her pulsed again: call Dean!
"Okay, okay!" Sharon said, stopping in her tracks and pressing his programmed number quickly before her common sense started arguing its case again.
"Sharon," Dean said, his voice on the other end of the line uncharacteristically cool and guarded.
"Hi."
"What's up?"
"I...I'm sorry."
There was a pause and then Dean let out a little laugh. "Me, too. I shouldn't have made such a big deal out of it."
"I'm the one who made a big deal out of nothing."
"No," Dean said. "We
have
been spending every second together, at least when we're not at work. We've been a little extreme, especially at our age. I just..."
"Wanted to hang out with me?"
"Yes. Exactly."
"Me, too," Sharon said, realizing how close they were coming to saying the love words that they danced around but never uttered. They scared her, the need they implied. She rushed to change the subject, not wanting to tell him about Bianca but feeling compelled to. "Anyway, guess what?"
"What?"
"I was doing a little research on the Internet and I found-"
"The nude photos! Shit! I swear, I only had those taken to pay the bills while I was working my way through college! The devil made me do it!"
"What?"
"Where did you find them? You did, didn't you?"
"Photos?"
"Seriously now, I was drunk. It was spring break! What was I supposed to do?"
"Okay, hold on. I wasn't talking about any nude photos of you, but I have to admit that I'm curious now. I'm definitely looking those up."
"Shit! I knew I shouldn't have said anything!"
She heard him take a slurping sip of something. "Are you drinking?"
"Just a beer. I'm out on the boat. I needed to cool off after our fight and it's impossible to stay mad out on the water. It's beautiful tonight."
Sharon's eyes widened, an idea taking form in her head. "You're out on the boat?"
"Yeah? Is that a problem?"
"No! It's...perfect! Where are you? Can you meet me? I need a small favor. Actually, it's huge, a huge favor."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm sorry, but I can't waste a minute. It's really urgent. I'll tell you on the way."
"On the way where?"
"Bianca's house, it's on the water."
"Bianca's? What's going on?"
"I promise I'll tell you everything. Just hurry!"
Dean grudgingly gave in and they made arrangements to meet at the public dock in Greenwich Harbor. He was only a few inlets away in Riverside. She begged him again to hurry before she said goodbye, hung up, and jumped in her car.
As she sped out of the lot trying to remember Chelsea's description of Bianca and John's unique dock, the warning sirens in her head rose to a shriek.
Mojito
Bianca, for the first time in her life, was frozen by confusion. She stood like a statue, staring at the doorway that Kate and Grant had vacated, hearing Kate's words and then Grant's over and over, an echoing chattering staccato that, instead of fading, only grew louder.
"You don't exist."
"You were making me want to throw up."
"You don't exist!"
"You were making me want to throw up!"
At that moment, a beetle crawled in Bianca's ear and her hand flew up to the side of her head and started batting at her ear, trying to knock it out before she remembered. They weren't real. There were no bugs in her ears or her nose or climbing up her throat. She had to remember that, remind herself every day.
As a young girl she had started experiencing a terror of bugs. Their family doctor called it "entomophobia" and assured her parents it would pass. It hadn't. Then fuel was poured on the fire. While she was incarcerated at the convent when she was seventeen she misbehaved several times, failing to do her assigned chores and once ignoring the rule about a single serving of dessert. For that she received the standard punishment: a day in the "cottage".
The cheap plywood shed that was so quaintly named bore little resemblance to a real house: it had a dirt floor and no windows and its door was padlocked. Sitting in the darkness for hours, the beetles and millipedes that favored the cool damp shed crawled out of their hiding places and all over Bianca. No matter how loudly she screamed and pleaded, none of the nuns would unlock the door and release her. By the end of each day's punishment, she would be hysterically squealing while dancing around on the packed earth in the dark, trying to keep the bugs off of her. But they crawled, somehow finding their way into her ears, nose, and throat.
Even now, especially when things didn't go her way, they appeared again, black and shiny, their many legs tickling. Bianca forced herself to stop smacking at her ear, even though she could still feel its little legs moving there. "Now," she chided herself. She had to get it together. But...
It was impossible that Grant didn't want her.
Every
man wanted her. But he said-
His voice echoed, "You were making me want to throw up."
Bianca shook her head, trying to shake the words off, but they clung. He had to have been lying, for Kate's sake. But why had he sounded so sincere, so genuinely disgusted?
A bug, this one long, a slimy millipede, filled Bianca's throat, choking her. She coughed violently, pounding repeatedly at her chest.
She couldn't get air! She couldn't breathe! Stop!
Then it was gone and swiftly taking its place was rage, blowing hot. She was supposed to win! Tonight was
her
night! She and Grant should've been on the bed next to where she stood right now, arching and moaning with pleasure, Grant's constraints tossed away recklessly in the heat of the moment, his hands going everywhere, grabbing what he wanted at last.
Instead, the bed beside her was only slightly rumpled, her mission incomplete. Staring at it, teeth clenched, Bianca made her decision. If she couldn't complete her original plan, she would complete the other. She had seen Chelsea's date, Aaron, pulling away in his silver Lamborghini Murcielago as she'd passed a window overlooking the driveway on her way upstairs. Lucie had to have left by now, driving off in her ugly rental van. Only Chelsea and John remained.
Better, the jealousy that would unleash Chelsea's previously unknown violent side would be more easily explained: John had told everyone at the dinner table that he would be buying his wife an extremely expensive emerald necklace for Christmas. For a mistress expecting an imminent divorce, Christmas was a long way off in June, eons away. And such a romantic and luxurious gift for a woman he claimed not to love! Perfectly understandable grounds for a bitter confrontation.
Back in control, the bugs retreated. Bianca squared her shoulders before crossing back over to her closet. In a shoe box in the corner of the closet she found the gun and silencer she'd placed there and crouched on the floor to load the gun and attach the silencer. As she did, she decided she would still shoot John first, who was most likely to put up a fight. Then Chelsea, making sure to be at close range and angle the gun. To get Chelsea to stand still long enough, Bianca would tell her the true story about Jenna Butler's death: that would give her enough of a shock to hold her in place.
But, before Bianca did anything, she needed to get back her mojo, charge up the old power-battery that had been depleted by Kate and Grant, so instead of a quick one-two shot, she'd pull John and Chelsea's strings a little first, see them dance. That would be fun.
Tightening the silencer on the gun, Bianca decided she'd stay dressed in her negligee. After all, she'd saved it for tonight and she'd look even more innocent if it appeared that she'd already retired for the evening, changing into her nightie in her bedroom, completely unaware of the jealousy-fueled and deadly scene about to unfold between her husband and her best friend downstairs.
Strawberry Daiquiri
Chelsea straightened up and strolled down the hallway from the bathroom near the kitchen, heading back to the dining room and hoping no one would comment on her rude dash from the room. Well, she had also faintly heard Aaron excusing himself as she exited the room, so perhaps they would simply remember her as politely excusing herself, too.
But she hadn't had time. Had barely made it to the closest bathroom before all hell broke loose. It had lasted twenty-five agonizing minutes and then there was nothing left in her stomach and she stopped heaving. She wondered if she'd caught the flu and how. Being alone all the time had its benefits: you weren't exposed to viruses that were being passed around. Had John given it to her? But no, he hadn't been sick any time recently.
Approaching the dining room, she finished chewing the breath mint she'd found in her purse, swallowed it, and plastered on a nonchalant look. Then she noticed the silence. Were they waiting for her? She took two more steps and was presented with the empty dining room, chairs pushed back haphazardly, only a few with napkins folded, candles still flickering next to the squat flower arrangements that lined the table. There were no plates on the table, only a small one with an empty ramekin at Bianca's seat.
Chelsea blinked. Where was everyone?
She listened but all she heard was an occasional small noise coming from the kitchen. For a moment she considered going to the kitchen and asking Lucie where everyone was, but she didn't want to bother Lucie while she was working. Instead, Chelsea wandered into the living room, out onto the terrace and then back toward the front of the house seeking but not finding the others. Then she heard someone moving in the library, which was also John's home office.
Walking hesitantly into the library, Chelsea found John reclining on the antique brown leather sofa in the corner, his hands on his stomach. His swarthy face was unusually pale and he looked exhausted.
He looked up," Oh, hi. Tell Bianca I'll be right back. Just need a minute."
"Are you okay?" Chelsea said and crossed over to him, putting her hand on his shoulder.
John shrugged, briefly looked up at her and then away. "No. I think I've got some kind of bug. Listen, we can't talk here. Just go tell Bianca."
"I can't find Bianca. Or anyone?"
John looked back up at her, suddenly alert. "What?"
Just then Chelsea heard footsteps behind her, someone in the doorway, and turned. It was Bianca, wearing a red lace negligee. And holding a gun. It was pointed at both of them, its barrel capped by a long black metal tube of some sort.