“So once someone talked to Jessica, they’d know it was a stunt.”
“Right.”
“What about the forty-odd people out there who didn’t see Jessica. Who only knew there were armed men at the door?”
Konrad’s jaw worked but nothing intelligible emitted. “Wha…well, they, uh...”
Catriona held up a hand to silence him. “Let me help you with this one. They’d be in a blind state of panic.”
“It was supposed to be thrilling.”
“There’s a difference between thrilling and terrifying.”
Konrad shrugged. “Not always. Especially now when people are so desensitized—”
“Please, spare me the commentary. We’ve got a room full of guests and a killer on the loose. I’ll read your dissertation later.”
Her face hot with anger, Catriona was about to launch into her own diatribe about how Konrad’s tendencies toward irresponsible party games were why Parasol Pictures had sent her and Broch in the first place, but she managed to stop herself. She needed to stick to the crisis at hand. Two women were god-knows-where having who-knew-what done to them. They had to move.
“Okay. Think. Jessica would have gone through here, right?” She hooked a thumb toward the dark hall behind her.
Konrad nodded.
Catriona took a step farther into the hall and tapped a wire spiraling down the wall. Feeling a prick, she gasped, whirling to face Konrad.
“You hired men with fake guns to force your half-drunk party guests through a maze covered in razor wire?”
Upper lip lifting with what looked like genuine horror and surprise, Konrad stepped over the dead man’s feet to tap the point of one of the barbs. His jaw dropped open.
“These were fake.”
Mason leaned forward to feel the wire, his expression resembling Konrad’s surprise. “It was fake. All through shooting. It was never real.”
“Is it mibbee yer faither is alive?” asked Broch.
Catriona looked at him. That’s it. The odd tickle in the back of her brain. Broch had put it into words.
Could Pinky still be alive?
Mason shook his head. “No. That’s impossible. Soto shot him dead. They took him away.” Mason’s voice fell to a whisper. “I had him cremated to be sure.”
Konrad put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Mason. This is just some copycat sicko.”
Catriona glanced at her phone. “I’ve got no reception. Does anyone?”
Konrad shook his head. “It’s not just this hallway. It’s the whole place. There’s no reception on the lot.”
“Is there a landline?”
“Outside in my trailer, I have a sat phone.”
Catriona’s eyes fell to the body at her feet.
“Did you get any threats during production? Any crazy letters?”
Konrad barked a laugh. “I could paper the walls of the grand hall with the insane stuff that showed up during production. Pinky had quite the following.”
“Great. What about the guests? Who are they? Anyone we should suspect?”
Konrad shrugged. “The cast, some press, some industry people I wanted to impress—”
Broch leaned down to whisper in Catriona’s ear. “We need tae git the fowk oot.”
Catriona snorted a laugh. “No kidding. I’d like to get the f—”
“Fowk.” He repeated. “We need tae get the people oot o’ ’ere.”
“Oh, folk. You’re right. Yes. First things first.” Catriona clapped her hands together. “Konrad, you and Mason get everyone out of here in a calm and orderly fashion. Use your sat phone to call the police. Call Sean too—the studio’s going to want to stay ahead of this publicity disaster.”
“Um...” By the glow of the phone, Catriona watched Konrad squint one eye as if he’d just suffered a gas pain. By now, she knew that meant he’d done something else stupid, yet to be revealed.
“What now?”
“They chained the front doors. It was part of the storyline.”
“What?”
“This guy...” He motioned to the man on the floor. “He locked the door behind the other two and then came through the maze backwards to get here.”
Catriona gaped. “Did it not occur to you at any point what a terrible idea that was? The fire hazard alone—”
Konrad pouted. “In hindsight...”
She turned and flashed her light in the direction of the razor-wire-covered hall. It continued for as far as the beam could travel.
“You’re telling me through here is the only way out?”
Konrad nodded. “The place is like a fortress. The real building only had two doors and we wanted to keep it that way for security.”
Security. That’s rich coming from you.
Catriona put her hand over her mouth, thinking. She took a deep breath and expelled it slowly.
This is bad. At least one of them would have to go through the maze and open the doors from the outside, while the rest of them kept the guests from wandering or, heaven forbid, trying the doors. If someone tried to leave and discovered they were locked in, the whole place would erupt in panic.
“We’ve got a real dead guy and real razor wire. Two women are missing. What other things might have become real in the belly of this mess?”
Konrad scratched his head as if it helped him think. “Not much. I mean, the real Minotaur in this maze was Pinky.”
Broch motioned to the man on the floor. “Someone is deid. Thare micht aye be a Minotaur.”
Catriona looked to Mason for input.
“Dad didn’t build a bunch of elaborate traps. There were some false doors, a couple access hatches like the one he used to cut Soto, but nothing super sneaky.”
Dad. Catriona sniffed at the use of such an endearing term to describe a notorious serial killer. Dad, who happily mutilated women the way other Dads played golf.
And Pinky loved golf, too.
It was all too weird.
