Let Me Go by Chelsea Cain Page B

salary. The valets had stopped parking cars. The gates at the end of the bridge were closed. None of the guests seemed to mind that they were all essentially now trapped on the island.
    Archie hovered near the house, scanning for signs of Leo. Some people had given up on their masks, abandoning them for the sake of comfort or conversation, or maybe because they were tired of looking like idiots, but Archie kept his mask firmly in place. He liked it. For the first time in three years, he could move among a crowd without worrying about someone recognizing him as the man who survived ten days with Gretchen Lowell.
    A bar was set up near a hedge maze in the left quadrant of the front yard, and people waited in line for drinks. Others streamed in and out of the house. The music had transitioned from instrumental to electronic dance music. It pounded through speakers erected in the trees, and vibrated the leaves on the branches.
    The main house was three stories of winsome Tudor architecture. Archie could see lights on throughout the house. The exterior walls were either stone, or stucco crossed with decorative half-timbering. The roof was pitched and accounted for two-thirds of the house’s surface. Getting an idea of the interior layout from looking at it was impossible. It looked like someone had taken fifteen storybook cottages and smashed them together.
    Archie grabbed a new drink off a server’s passing tray and headed for the front door. The first floor of the house was technically open to guests, except for a few rooms, like Jack’s office, which were locked. Most people who came inside to look around quickly left. Archie didn’t have a reason to be there. There wasn’t a bar or a table of food, so he did what people trying to get away with poking around had done for millennia—he pretended to look for a bathroom.
    He was within a yard of the bottom stair when he felt a hand tighten on his shoulder. Archie turned around and found himself face-to-face with another one of Jack Reynolds’s private security detail. This one didn’t have the same military bearing as the others, and his suit was cheaper. He was wearing a black mask like Archie’s, probably given to him by the same person. Archie could see the tiny pricks of razor burn where he’d shaved with a dull blade or rushed the job. You could tell a lot about a man by how he shaved: if he cared about using the right tools; if he lacked patience. “Upstairs is closed,” Razor Burn said.
    â€œI’m looking for a bathroom,” Archie said.
    Razor Burn scratched at his sideburn. “Didn’t you just use that bathroom a half hour ago?”
    For someone with a bad shave, he was very observant.
    â€œProstate issues,” Archie said.
    Razor Burn lifted his hand off Archie’s shoulder and jabbed a finger down the hallway to the left of the stairs. “Second door down the hallway to your left,” he said. “Same place it was thirty minutes ago.”
    â€œThanks so much,” Archie said.
    Archie backed away and headed down the hall where Razor Burn had directed him. A very young-looking woman had her ear against the bathroom door. She was skinny in an unformed way, like she’d just had a growth spurt and hadn’t gotten used to her longer limbs yet. She looked like she should be wearing jeans and a backpack, on her way to high school, but instead she was wearing a royal blue slip dress and carrying a pair of stiletto heels in her hand. A mask coated in purple glitter was pushed up on her forehead in a tangle of blond hair. When Archie got close, she looked up at him and laughed. Her face was pink. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot. She reeked of alcohol. Most cops didn’t need a sobriety test to tell if someone was drunk. The sobriety test was for the courts. Cops could tell the moment you rolled down the window. It was all in the eyes.
    â€œAre you okay?” Archie asked.
    â€œMy