Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Immortal Mask Is Broken

I didn’t know whether the police would follow me. If they did, they wouldn’t get there in time to do anything. This was a movie after all. I was sure that the cops would probably get there just in time to deal with the dead bodies.

The walk between the stadium and the frat house had been five to seven minutes if memory serves. The electric golf cart got me there in two minutes max. I rolled it right up to the front porch and parked it next to Ruck’s orange farm truck which was still in the driveway from the night before.

As I arrived, I surveyed the house. The front door was open. At first, I didn’t know how I was going to find my friends, but that part turned out to be easy. They were upstairs in the room that led off to the balcony where the mascot outfit had been hung from.

Kimberly had her back to the window. Antoine and Anna were pressed up against the door, trying to keep it shut. They must not have figured out the whole motive yet.

They didn’t see me.

I could hear something upstairs. Wood cracking. Loud footsteps. Muffled talking. They were stuck in that room. Who knows how long they had been fighting? Kimberly was alive. She had the lowest Plot Armor of them. If she was still around, I wasn’t too late.

How could I get to them?

It was the final battle so Ranger Danger could kill any of us now. That should mean he would target me when I got close.

After all, I was down to what? Three Plot Armor? Four maybe?

No sunglasses.

No hood.

To get Oblivious Bystander to work this time, I needed to play a very specific character. I needed to be someone in the throes of such raw delirium that they wouldn’t even notice the killer.

Luckily, I had a huge advantage in that department courtesy of Ranger Danger himself: I had an ambiguous abdominal wound.

It was bad, but I needed to pretend like it was very bad. I needed to pretend that I was on death’s doorstep using the last of my life to get to my friends.

I put one hand on the temporary bandage that the medics had installed on my stomach. The other I used to catch myself on every door frame and stair rail that I came across on my way upstairs.

I needed the “audience” to see how out of it I was as I laboriously tried to climb the stairs.

The whole time I would be screaming out everything I knew. Getting the truth out there was all that mattered now.

Anna had all of the important clues. She must not have put it together. Can’t blame her.

“Anna!” I screamed. “Anna, is that you? I figured out who the killer is.”

It felt weird to be talking so loudly while trying to be oblivious.

I held my wound and I bent over in pain. I dressed every word with anguish.

“I know what happened!”

I never let my eyes focus on anything, not the ceiling, not the floor. They mostly stayed closed wincing with my pain. I only opened them to see the stairs in front of me as I clung to the rail.

It was time to give a summation. A hallmark of the mystery genre. Time to put all the pieces into place for the audience.

“It was Nathan!”

They might have already figured that part out just by process of elimination, but seeing as they were still trapped upstairs, I figured that they didn’t know why Nathan had done it, why he had killed Ruck, why he had killed Camden and Evan.

Why he was going to kill them.

Specifically, why he was going to kill Anna. If my theory was right, Antoine and Kimberly weren’t on the hit list. They were only in danger because this was the final battle and Ranger Danger was finally allowed to kill anyone, even people he didn’t have the motive to kill.

“Here’s what happened,” I said. I climbed the stairs slowly, struggling with each step. Some of the struggle was my real Incapacitation status flaring up constantly, but I held firm against the railing.

I was getting all of my Moxie’s worth with this one.

“Yesterday afternoon Nathan was driving Ruck’s truck. He often drove it around in fact, he did it so often that Mark called him Ruck’s chauffeur.” I took a moment to struggle with my ascent up the stairs.

“What kind of description of a friendship is that? A chauffeur? But Ruck needed Nathan to drive him. Ruck had a suspended driver’s license and drunk driving arrests. Ruck wasn’t allowed to drive himself around. Remember how surprised Evan had been to see Ruck driving drunk? He didn’t do that every day. Not anymore, at least.”

I took a moment to breathe. I held myself up against the railing.

“Detective Blackwell said that none of Ruck’s charges were recent. I think that was because Nathan was driving him. The only reason Ruck drove to the party was that Nathan was too drunk to drive that night.

“Nathan killed Nelly Birch while driving Ruck’s truck. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe getting drunk was just an excuse to get Ruck to drive. I don’t even know if Ruck was even in the car.

“Nathan had a problem. If he was ever connected to the crime his chances of getting into medical school were out the window, he had to act fast. He got Ruck to drive him to the party.

“Nathan knew that Ruck could tie him to the hit-and-run. Either Ruck witnessed it, or he was at least aware that Nathan had been driving his truck and would tell the police that whenever they questioned him. Nathan did what he thought he had to for his future. He grabbed the Ranger Danger costume and killed Ruck at the first opportunity.

“I don’t know how real his drunkenness was at the party; he may have just been pretending, but we could never know for sure. At some point, he remembered something Ruck had said when they arrived, something I wasn’t around to hear.

“But you were around to hear it, Anna. You and Camden.” My voice cracked when I said Camden’s name. That wasn’t acting. “You, Camden, Evan, and Mark. You were all around Ruck’s truck when they showed up. It was the only time that all the victims were in the same place while I wasn’t with them.

“Nathan had to cover his tracks. Ruck had said something to you all that would have put Nathan in the driver’s seat at the time of the hit-and-run.

“Anna, you said it earlier. When we were in Town Square. You said Nathan was too drunk to drive anymore. You didn’t say he was too drunk to drive at all. The difference is crucial. That’s what Ruck told you, isn’t it? That Nathan had been driving earlier that day. That Ruck took over because Nathan couldn’t anymore. The four of you could lead the police to Nathan. It may not be enough to prove that Nathan had killed Nelly, but it would be a cloud over him forever.

“That’s why he killed Camden and Evan. He may have even killed Mark already. That’s why he’s here tonight to kill you. Because you can tie him to the hit-and-run, even if you don’t know it. That’s why he didn’t kill me because I wasn’t around for that conversation, he had no motive to kill me.

“That’s what this has all been about; Nathan is trying to save his future. Don’t you remember what he said outside when they were taking Ruck’s body away? He said if I didn’t drink this wouldn’t have happened. He confessed right to our faces!”

I stood at the landing at the top of the stairs. That was it—that was everything I knew. if I was right about everything, then that meant Ranger Danger was vulnerable now. If I was wrong. We were screwed.

Either way, I had drained everything going up the stairs. I staggered back to the railing over the landing to support myself.

I kept my eyes down the same as ever. I heard the footsteps again. They didn’t echo as they had under the tunnel. Instead, they creaked on the floorboards of the house. It was Ranger Danger. I didn’t know if I could continue to pretend that I didn’t see him. I had no sunglasses, no cover.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t matter. Anna and the others had surely heard me. My part was done.

With his shoes in my view, I was certain that Oblivious Bystander was broken. How could I claim not to have seen him now?

I lifted my head.

His hollow eyes stared back at me.

What happened now? Did he kill me? Did he monologue?

For a moment there was silence.

And then he spoke.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Nathan said. I could hear his anger and frustration in every word.

He reached up to grab the bandana that surrounded the rubber mask and pulled the entire thing off, hat and all.

The Immortal Mask was broken.

Now the real fight begins.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep