House (20 page)

Leslie could rot in the grave as far as Stephanie was concerned. And judging by the look in Pete's eyes at the dinner table, she was probably already doing that.

Listen to her!

She decided in the last few minutes that she liked the new Stephanie, freed of her denial, of her always-all-right philosophy. Never again. She'd quenched her denial with a deep well of rage that now made her feel as alive as she could remember feeling in years. She could write songs about this for eons. She felt enough spunk at this moment to hit any man or woman who got in her way, and she wasn't sure she'd ever felt that way. Good-bye, sunshine.

She entered a long concrete hall and noticed the water leaking down the wall for the first time.

Water. She stopped. The water was pooling along the floor. The house groaned. Her resolve slipped a little. Maybe she shouldn't have come down. But it was a little too late now. She spied a door near the puddle. Open.

She walked to the door, looked into what looked like a root cellar, and stepped in.

The door slammed. She whirled. A draft must have pulled it shut. She wasn't about to consider anything else. The door to her right gaped wide. Someone had passed this way recently.

Stephanie hesitated, then walked though the door into another much narrower hall. The door at the end was open.

She'd taken three steps when a
bang
from behind startled her.

The door had blown shut. Two in a row.

She spun and ran toward the open door.

Jack dropped to the floor of the medium-sized boiler room and examined it in silence. Leslie stood to his right, taking in a dozen iron pipes that rose out of two large boilers on either side and disappeared into chases at the ceiling. A single clear bulb burned above, as in most rooms down here. Two doors stood opposite the boilers.

He saw it all without taking note. His mind was on Susan. It had taken every ounce of resolve on his part not to rush back through Pete's room to find out if she'd survived. He couldn't wrap his mind around what she'd done. He held tenaciously to a whisper of hope that her claims might be true. Maybe the inbreds would keep her alive as leverage. Maybe they knew something that he didn't.

Either way, he'd lost her. He'd promised never to leave her, and although he hadn't exactly, she was gone, maybe dead, maybe just locked up.

Maybe escaped again.

For a moment neither he nor Leslie seemed capable of moving. Not on account of the room but because of what had just happened.

Beside him, Leslie put one hand on her hip, buried her face in her other hand, and silently wept. He lifted a hand to comfort her but thought it might be inappropriate. She turned from him, started to walk away, then returned.

Leslie didn't look at him; she only leaned against him and lowered her forehead into his neck. He swallowed a knot in his throat and held her with one arm.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm so sorry.”

She put her arms around him and pulled him close, then seemed to cry harder.

“Leslie . . .” His arms were trembling, but she couldn't have noticed because her whole body was shaking.

He was suddenly eager to comfort her. His need came from more than desire, maybe not desire at all. It came from hours of raw nerves. It came from the dark halls and sickness of the basement. It came from the memory of her lying on Pete's bed.

It came from being trapped in the killer's game.

Jack squeezed her tighter. “I'm sorry . . .”

She caught her sob in her throat and kissed his neck. “No, no, don't be.” She kissed his neck again, then his cheek, clinging. “Don't be sorry. Thank you, thank you.” Her hands grabbed his shirt, and she kissed him on the cheek again.

She lowered her face into his neck and started to cry again.

They were two lost souls who had escaped death together only to believe that they would still probably die before the night was over. Leslie, the intelligent professor of psychology, and Jack, the bitter writer who'd saved her.

Now both lost again. And alone in this boiler room while the house creaked around them.

For the moment he held on to her as if she were life itself. For the first time in many long months, Jack recalled what it was like to love someone besides his daughter. They were both victims—his daughter of Stephanie's carelessness, and Leslie of a sadistic maniac.

Leslie took his face in both hands and kissed him on the lips. She pressed her lips to his until they hurt. Then she kissed him frantically on the cheek and neck again.

“I love you, Jack. I love you.”

Jack blinked. He pushed her gently away. “Shh, shh, shh.”

“I love you . . .”

She resisted him, and he gently pried her arms from his neck. “No, it's okay; it's okay. You can't mean that.”

That settled her.

She dropped her arms, turned away, and lowered her face into her hands.

“I understand,” he said. “I know how you feel—”

“You have no clue how I feel!” she said, spinning back. She thrust her arm up at the vent they'd crawled through. “Do you have any idea what I've been through?”

“Which is why you are so distressed right now. I can't use you like that!”

She stared at him hard, searching his eyes. Then her face softened, and she looked away. “I'm sorry.”

In that moment the complete failure of his own marriage came into such sharp focus that Jack lost sight of anything he and Stephanie might have once had together. How long had it been since Stephanie had shown such passion, such a backbone? His bitterness toward her was fueled by her own retreat into denial. He wasn't sure why he'd stuck beside her all this time.

“No, it's okay.” He put his hand on her back. “I don't—”

“What on earth do you think you're doing?”

They spun. A man, wet from head to foot, holding a shotgun over one shoulder and a spade over the other, glared at them from an open doorway.

“Randy?” Leslie said.

He walked in and kicked the steel door shut with the back of his heel. “Answer me! For crying out loud!”

“You're alive,” Jack said. Randy looked like he'd walked through a sewer. His hair was wet and matted, his color-coordinated green shirts were brown, and the rivets on his crisp new jeans had been torn off, leaving jagged holes near the pockets.

“Disappointed?” Randy said. “I knew it.” He slogged toward them and stopped in the middle of the room. Threw the spade down. “I'm gone for an hour, scraping for my life, and I come home to this?”

“Randy . . .” Leslie stepped away from Jack.

“It's not what you think,” Jack snapped, feeding on his building resentment toward this man.

“You don't say.” His eyes were glazed. “I oughta show you what I do think.”

“I was violated, Randy,” Leslie said.

“Raped?”

She balked at his offhand tone. “Just as bad.”

“I've got news for you. The whole world thinks their uncle violated them. It gives us all an excuse to live like victims.”

“Randy!” For a moment Jack thought she might fly at the man and slap his face. When she spoke her lips were trembling. “You're sick.”

“You never did take down Uncle Robby, now did you, Leslie? No. But guess what? I have. Only it wasn't Uncle Robby, it was Uncle Stewart, and I can guaran-freaken- tee you he's deader than any man deserves to be.” Randy grinned.

“Stewart's dead?” Jack asked.

Jack hadn't taken much notice of the doors opposite each boiler. The second swung in abruptly, and Stephanie ran through and pulled up, panting.

The door slammed shut behind her on its own. She looked back with wide eyes, then turned back to face them.

“Did you see that?”

Jack's mind scrambled. Stephanie, here. Stewart, dead. Randy, soaked.

Sweat made Stephanie's lacy blue top cling to her, and her long blonde hair was a stringy mess, but she'd looked the same an hour ago.

“A draft,” Leslie said, eyes fixed on the door.

“Not unless a draft has been following me all the way here,” Stephanie said. She strode forward, glaring at Jack. “I've been in that closet forever!”

“Settle down—”

“Don't you dare tell me to settle down!” Her face was red and her arms were rigid. “You said you'd be right back! You swore you'd be back. That was an hour ago!”

He blinked, surprised by her forcefulness. Then irritated. “I've been just a tad busy.”

Stephanie glanced at Leslie. “I'm sure you have.”

“I caught them red-handed,” Randy said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it seems Jack and Leslie here evidently have more than the big bad wolf on their minds.”

“Shut up!” Jack snapped. “Look, Stephanie, things down here are a little complicated, okay? I've only been gone for—” He checked his watch. That couldn't be. He shook it. Still ticked. Must have busted when he got sucked into the black tunnel. “Does anyone know what time it is?”

Leslie looked. “Almost 3:15.”

The four let this sink in.

“That's impossible,” said Randy. “We've been here thirty, forty minutes tops.”

“My watch says 3:15 too.”

Stephanie put a palm on her forehead, started pacing. “I was in the closet for
four hours
? I can't believe you'd do that to me, Jack. I can't believe—”

“‘I can't believe,'” Randy mimicked, voice pitched high and free palm on his forehead. Then he got in her face. “Listen to you, Barbie. You think you've had it worse than any of us? Huh? Well, believe this: we've got less than three hours to get ourselves out of this pit or we
die.
Have you completely forgotten that?”

Stephanie sagged against the door, scowling.

Jack glared at her, picked up his explanation for Randy. “Pete . . .” He stopped, reticent to justify himself at Leslie's expense.

“Pete what?” Randy asked.

“I'm okay,” Leslie said, glancing at Jack.

“Sure you are,” Stephanie said. “Who wouldn't be okay with dear Jack to the rescue?”

“Will you please shut your mouth?” Jack said. Both Randy and Stephanie knew what had been on Pete's mind when he eyed Leslie in the dining room. Maybe the truth was slowly seeping past Randy's thick skull. Stephanie, on the other hand, knew and didn't seem to care.

Jack walked over to the door that Stephanie had come through and locked it. “We're all alive,” he said, heading for the second door. As far as he could see, this was the only way in or out besides the shaft.

“For the record, Leslie and I were just expressing common human emotions of survival. If either of you have a problem with that, save it for tomorrow.”

He locked the second door and turned back to them.

“Right now we have to figure out how to survive the next three hours.”

22
3:43 am

IT TOOK THEM HALF AN HOUR OF ARGU-ment and speculation to figure out what
might
have happened in the last several hours. At least they nailed the critical details—or so Jack hoped, although he doubted Randy was as forthcoming as he made himself out to be.

Even after grasping what had supposedly happened to each of them, they still really didn't know
what
was happening.

What had sucked Jack into the black hall?

What had crawled up Stephanie's leg?

What had happened to Stewart's body?

Who was Susan, and what had happened to her?

The whys were even worse. Why were doors opening and closing on their own? Why couldn't any of them see their reflections in the mirrors? Why hadn't the killer come after them in the basement?

“I can tell you that,” Randy said. “He has. You just don't know it.”

Leslie frowned. “Okay, so he has some psychological grip—”

“I'm not talking psychological. I'm talking physical. I saw him come in.”

“You what?” Jack said.

Randy sat on a fifty-five-gallon drum with the shotgun across his lap, staring at Jack, who'd stopped his pacing to face him. Leslie and Stephanie each sat on a plate of steel that stuck out from the boilers.

“The back door,” Randy said. “I saw him step in out of the rain.”

“What back door? Why didn't you tell us about this?”

“He padlocked the door. And it's not as if I could tell you where it is. But he's in here.”

“And you just happened to forget this little detail?” Leslie demanded.

Randy sneered at her. “It's not important. We have other problems.”

“Like what?”

“Like getting out.”

“You mean getting out alive, don't you?” Leslie asked. “Which means we have to know who our enemies are and where they are.”

“Then like I said, we have a lot more to worry about than White,” Randy said. He grabbed the shotgun by the pump action and chambered a shell with one hand. “White's one guy. We can take one guy. But you have to ask yourself why Stewart disappeared.”