Blake Crouch: Serial Uncut

His face was fuller than the author photograph on his latest book jacket, and he had a few days' stubble shadowing his face, but he was undeniably…Andrew.

She'd never heard his voice, and it didn't sound anything like she imagined. He was more soft-spoken, and he had an accent. A southern accent. He was talking to a man seated to the right of him, but there were countless people eavesdropping.

"…so they show me the mock-up for the book cover, and I say, 'Guys, I know you've been really working on this thing, and I appreciate that, but you've just put a penis on the cover of my book."

The hovering crowd broke into laughter.

"They said, 'It's not a penis, Andy, it's a minaret.' I said, 'It's flesh colored, it has a shaft, and a bulbous head that appears to be ejaculating the title of my book! Could I please have a new fucking cover without a cock on it?"

While everyone laughed, Andrew tossed back a shot of something.

The man standing behind him said, "Another shot, Andrew?"

"I buy you shots, Billy. Everyone in for a shot of tequila? Bartender! We need…" Andy counted the people around him. "…thirteen shots of Patron Silver."

Lucy stood watching him, mesmerized, trying to wrap her brain around the idea that the man whose words and stories she'd fallen in love with at twelve was sitting ten feet away from her, under the same roof, breathing the same air. She'd suspected it before, but last night with Mark Darling confirmed it: Andrew could read her thoughts. She knew he must have killed before because the way he described what it felt like for the killers in his books had been her experience exactly. She wanted to be closer to him, but his crowd had effectively cloistered him off from the rest of the bar.

Something was coming apart inside of her, this dark, mad need to connect with him, and for a moment the sound of the crowd dropped away. She stared at him, willing his eyes to meet hers, willing them to give her just a single slash of attention as the bartender lined up thirteen shotglasses and began to fill them from two bottles of Patron.

Andrew never looked at her. She watched the bartender bring the tray of shots, watched Andrew pass them around, heard the shotglasses clinking, heard the "cheers."

And she was crying, invisible again.

She pushed her way back through the crowd into the lobby, moving quickly toward the elevators at the other end and telling herself there was still tomorrow. Andrew's book signing. Anything could happen.

When she walked into her hotel room, she stopped, lingering for a moment in the doorway, wondering if by some chance her room service food could have spoiled so quickly. No. It wasn't that. Of course.

She opened the bathroom and the waft hit her. Mark did not smell so pretty anymore.

She grabbed a towel off the rack and closed the door and tucked it against the crack between the door and the carpet. Lucy walked to the bed, kicked off her Chuck T's, and crawled under the covers. She hit the light. Closed her eyes. Opened them. The stink was still there. Potent and getting stronger every second. She turned on the light and sat up against the headboard. This was bad. First of all, because she couldn't sleep with the smell, and it would only get worse. But more importantly, when she brought Andrew Thomas up here tomorrow, the smell would totally gross him out, make a bad impression.

She hopped out of bed and walked into the bathroom. Opened one of the mini-bottles of shampoo and squirted the entire thing over Mark, who now looked purple and swollen. She cranked up the shower. As the hot water beat down on the corpse, she saw that it was leaking, and the heat only made the smell more intense.

She turned off the shower, grabbed the trashbag out of the waste basket beside the sink, and headed for the door.

Her bare feet tracked down the carpet toward the alcove where the vending machines hummed. Down in the lobby, a hundred and fifty feet below, she could hear Irish drinking songs lilting up out of the bar.

She held the plastic bag open while cubes of ice rattled down out of the ice machine. Carried it back to 1428 and into the bathroom, where she plugged the shower drain and dumped the ice over Mark Darling. Her heart sank. The bag of ice had barely covered him. She was going to need a lot more.

After five trips, the ice was beginning to look substantial piled on top of the dead writer's chest.

After ten, she stepped into the shower and spread them around, felt a glimmer of relief as they nearly covered him. One more trip, maybe two, and she'd be done.

Lucy reached down and grabbed the bag off the floor.

As she started toward the bathroom door, it swung open.

She froze.

A man stood in the threshold, and for a fleeting second, she thought it was Andrew Thomas, but he was wearing different clothes-a white tee-shirt and blue jeans. And his hair was messy, eyes still squinting like he'd just woken up.

He was staring at the blood spatters on the bathroom floor, and at the trash bag in Lucy's hand, and now at Lucy.

It seemed like an entire minute passed without either of them speaking, Lucy thinking about the straight razor in the bedside table drawer. Useless now. Her eyes moved around the bathroom, looking for something with heft, or with an edge.

It surprised her when the man smiled. He said, "Who you got in there?"

She didn't answer. She made fists to stop her hands from shaking but all it did was give her shaking fists.

"Quite a mess," he said. "You've been a naughty little girl, haven't you?"

He took a step forward, glanced in the shower.

Lucy's eyes welled up. A sob escaped.

"No," the man said. "No, no, no. Don't cry."

He knelt down in front of Lucy.

The eyes. She was going to have to blind him. Jam her thumbs in as far as they would go and run like hell.

"You don't have to be afraid. What's your name?"

"Lucy."

Her hands had been at her sides. Now, she slowly raised them.

"Lucy, did that man in the shower hurt you?"

She nodded.

"What did he do?"

"He tried to rape me."

She shot her thumbs at his eyes, but he parried right and jumped back, laughing. Lucy ran for the open door. The man grabbed her and pulled her into his chest.

"Shhh," he whispered as she struggled. "Don't scream, Lucy."

She kicked her legs and tried to head-butt him as he carried her out of the bathroom into the hotel room and threw her onto the bed.

"Relax!" he said. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to get you in trouble."

Lucy glared at him.

"You should be more careful, you know. Ten trips with an ice bucket in the middle of the night is bound to get somebody's attention. Particularly if their room is next to the ice machine."

"Mark was starting to smell."

"Yeah, I noticed. But a few cubes of ice isn't going to fix it. You here by yourself?"

She nodded.

"He didn't try to rape you, did he?"

She just watched him, said nothing.

"That's a nice piece of work in there," he said. "That man must be double your weight, at least. How'd you pull it off?"

"I want you to leave."

"Why?"

"Go!"

"Lucy, please. I know you don't know me, but you can trust me."

She stuck her chin out and fought back the tremor in her bottom lip.

"How'd you overpower that man?" he asked again.

"Straight razor." She said it proudly.

"He flailed around a bunch, didn't he?"

Lucy couldn't help but smile. "Yeah. It was funny. But loud and messy, too."

The man eased down onto the edge of the bed. "Why'd you kill him?"

"They wouldn't give me a room. I drove six hundred miles to come to this conference, and then they wouldn't even give me a room."

"'Cause of your age."

"Yeah."

"You ever done anything like this before, Lucy?"