She quickly scanned the room, preparing herself for another body.
But she found something else entirely. Against the back wall, beside a gigantic bookshelf, was a huge opening, lined with stones.
Another passage into the catacombs.
Dru stepped back, shocked.
“…so thanks for joining us for another great episode of Ghost Getters,” a familiar voice on the TV said.
She glanced over, taking a minute to realize what she was seeing.
Tyler had been playing an episode of the old show.
Feeling more than a little creeped out, she headed over to turn the TV down. But when she arrived at the dresser, something else caught her eye.
Tyler’s messenger bag was open on the floor.
And a copy of The Haunting of Hemlock House was poking out.
Dru staggered backward as the pieces came together.
Tyler Park was part of her chat group.
ActionPark. Tyler Park. It was right there. How had she missed that?
Dru had always assumed the user name was a reference to that death trap water park in New Jersey.
Tyler was here for the treasure, not for snowboarding.
And he had been following her.
He had probably been the one that had used the tunnels to get into her room.
Dru fished around in her pocket until she come up with the drink receipt she’d found in the corridor behind the secret door in her room - A slice of lemon cake and an iced soy peppermint mocha. It hit her that it sounded an awful lot like Hailey’s order. But that didn’t make sense. Why would Hailey be sneaking into her room?
Dru noticed an indentation on the paper she hadn’t seen before, and turned it over. As soon as she did, it all made perfect sense. There, on the back, was a phone number she recognized, right below where Hailey had scrawled her name in big, loopy letters. She must have used the receipt to give Tyler her number.
So Tyler had been the one in the passage.
Dru had a fleeting memory of running into him when she was headed for the catacombs with Viktor the other day.
Tyler had been coming from the opposite direction. He hadn’t wanted to make eye contact. She assumed he was just trying to avoid Hailey.
But there had been a tear on the shoulder of his otherwise pristine coat - right in the same place Dru had caught her own jacket when she discovered the tunnel in the catacombs that led back to her room.
She turned to the door, determined to run, but froze in her tracks instead.
The noise of the television must have drowned out the sound of Tyler returning.
He stood in the doorway that led out to the hall, blocking her path of escape.
Dru stepped back, half stumbling on his messenger bag, her back to the TV, her voice caught in her throat.
Tyler stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
11
Dru stood paralyzed, her heart pounding.
Tyler stared her down, his eyes burning with intensity.
Viktor was downstairs, just out of earshot.
Her only defense was a good offense. She doubted she could take Tyler in a fight, but she could at least let him know how she felt about him.
“You’re ActionPark,” she said accusingly, pleased that her voice rang out with righteous anger instead of fear.
He only kept glaring at her.
“You snuck into my room while I was asleep,” she went on, furious now that she was actually confronting him. “You stole my grandmother’s journal.”
To her surprise, his shoulders dropped and he sighed, breaking eye contact.
“Listen, Dru,” he said without much conviction. “The info about the passage into your room was in the history book, it’s not some big secret.”
“So you think that makes it okay to come into my room without my permission and steal something from me?” she snapped.
“We should work together,” he told her. “You have the journal again, and I have The Haunting of Hemlock House. Together, we can find the treasure.”
“You came here, knowing who I was, and you didn’t bother to tell me who you really were,” Dru said. “You’re a total creep, and there’s no way I would ever work with you.”
“Look, I’ve been digging into this for over a year,” Tyler said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “There’s more to it than you know. There’s a quiet listing on this little commercial real estate site. I think they’re selling this place to a developer. He’s going to knock it down to put a ski lodge up here. I just couldn’t stand by and watch it happen, knowing the treasure is hidden somewhere in this building.”
So this must be why all these people were here. The pieces began to click together in Dru’s head.
If Tyler was here because he heard the place was being torn down soon, then the mob guys were here for the same reason. If the place got bulldozed, they would never have another chance to find the treasure. Brian must have known it was a risk coming back to his old haunts, but he also knew he was running out of time.
“What would you even have done with it?” Dru asked him. “You don’t look like you’re hurting for anything.”
The room was peppered with high end electronics and name brand clothing.
“Well, it started out because I was interested in the ghosts,” Tyler explained. “But the more I researched, the more I realized the ghost stories were made up.”
Dru resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course the stories were made up. They were about ghosts.
But I’m in love with a vampire.
Dru shook her head to clear the crazy thought.
She wasn’t really in love with Viktor, was she?
And why was that the most unbelievable part of it?
“I think the mob started those ghost stories,” Tyler was saying, unaware of Dru’s mental gymnastics. “They wanted to keep people away from the hotel while they searched for the lost jewels.”
“Seems like it backfired on them,” Dru pointed out.
“Yeah,” Tyler agreed. “The ghost stories definitely made this place more popular. According to The Haunting of Hemlock House, the place was so popular for a while that the mob had to stop using it. Too many people were here searching the place with a fine-tooth comb for ghosts and lost treasure. It wasn’t a great place to stash drugs or cash anymore.”
“I guess the Ghost Getters episode was the nail in their coffin,” Dru said.
“Well, by then the mob was long gone,” Tyler said. “But yeah, it would have been.”
Dru nodded.
“Dru, I know I don’t have any right to ask you this, but what really happened this morning? Were those guys really in the mob?”
This morning.
Had it really only been this morning that she’d been held at gunpoint?
It felt like Viktor had feasted on her blood and showed her his true self a hundred years ago.
“I’m sorry,” Tyler said. “I’m sure you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Yes, they’re mob guys,” Dru told him. “The victim was in witness protection. The murderer was here to look for treasure, but he recognized the victim and killed him for turning on the mob. It’s pretty cut and dried.”
“Then why was one of them going to kill you?” Tyler asked.
“I figured out that the killer was Johnny Sullivan,” she said. “But he caught me before I could tell anyone. He held me at gunpoint, but I’m fine now.”