The Girl on the Stairs

by V. J. Chambers

  She writhed.

  He kissed higher. He kissed her breasts. He kissed her lips. He lay himself over her, against her. He pulled his shirt over his head.

  “You asked me to save you,” he said.

  “You were supposed to think I needed saving.” She brushed her fingers over his chest.

  He took hold of her wrist and urged her hands lower.

  She settled on the buttons of his pants. “Is that what you thought, because it seemed like—”

  “You asked me to,” he said.

  She unbuttoned him.

  He reached down to free his cock. He pressed it against her.

  She wrapped her legs around him. Her voice went breathy and confident. “What is it you want to me to say, Sam? That you did it? That I wouldn’t have managed without you?”

  He pushed inside her. He grunted at the sheer sweetness, the snug slickness of her.

  Her eyes rolled back in her head. She gasped.

  “Let me save you, Lola. You want it, now let me save you.” And he began to thrust.

  *

  Sam lay on the floor in Hannah’s bedroom, Lola’s head on his chest. He gazed at the ceiling while she feathered her fingers over his bare chest. Her skin was warm against his, and he let his hand wander over the soft place that her waist curved into her hip.

  He felt more peaceful than he had in years.

  “Tell me about it,” she said.

  He licked his lips. There were cracks in the ceiling. “I strangled him. Hannah was lying on the floor, burning, and I didn’t notice, because all I could do was tighten my grip around his neck.”

  “Did you look in his eyes when you killed him?”

  “Of course.”

  “How did it feel?”

  He turned to look at her. Her eyes were shining. She was drinking this up. He flicked his gaze away. “It didn’t feel like anything.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  She shifted next to him, her palm flat against his stomach. “I don’t believe you.”

  “He deserved to die,” said Sam. “Some people do. Some people don’t fit in the world right. They only take things. They hurt things. That was all he did. He wanted to control everything. That was what drove him the craziest about Hannah. The fact that he couldn’t control her.”

  “I think you felt something.”

  He turned onto his side so that he could look into her eyes. He stroked her cheek with his knuckles. “How did you feel when Nick killed your parents?” He could call him Nick now, not Todd. There was something intimate about killing someone. It meant that first names were required. Anything else would have been disrespectful.

  Her gaze darted away. She bit down on her lip.

  He kissed her.

  She pressed close to him, her breasts flattening against his chest.

  He stroked her back.

  She broke the kiss. “You were angry at yourself for not saving her, though. I didn’t get that wrong.”

  He sighed. He rolled back onto his back. “I wanted to save her. I did. But… she was broken. Like you are.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know when it started,” said Sam. “When my father started abusing her. But I think she was pretty young. Because it did something to her. She had to adjust, contort herself in ways that destroyed her.” He paused. “She liked it.”

  “Liked what?”

  He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “She got so that she liked it. She used it to her advantage. I remember when we were kids. It was a few years before the fire, and I think it was already going on by then. Something was going on, anyway. Anyhow, I’d done well at church. I’d memorized the most Bible verses or something. And so my father said that we could go out to dinner to celebrate. And he said I could choose between pizza and the Chinese buffet. I wanted pizza, but Hannah wanted the Chinese buffet. And she told me that she was going to get her way, even though it was my reward and my choice. So she went off with him somewhere. I don’t know what she did to him, or what she let him do. But when he came back, he said we were going to the Chinese buffet, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”

  It was quiet. He could hear Lola breathing.

  “It was such a little thing,” said Sam. “Just the food we were going to eat. But she was so insistent on getting her way, she was willing to do that. I’ll never understand that. I’ll never understand her. She used the fact that he was abusing her to win tiny little victories. And she rewrote the whole story so that it was her idea. When I saw them, when I confronted her about it, she laughed and laughed. She said it was her little secret. Her way of making everything go better for her. I think my father even believed her. He believed that somehow the whole thing had been her idea. As if a little girl could have an idea like that.”

  “Why couldn’t she?”

  Sam buried his face against her neck. “Because that’s not what little girls think.”

  “How do you know?”

  He kissed her clavicle. He kissed her shoulder. “I know.”

  “You don’t, though.” She pushed him away.

  “Lola, you don’t have to let what happened to you screw you up.”

  She furrowed her brow.

  “It doesn’t add up,” he said. “If you were planning the perfect murder, you wouldn’t have let so many people see you with Nick. You wouldn’t have told all your friends about him. You would have kept him a deep, dark secret. And you never would have run away with him. You would have gotten him caught right away.”

  “I told you,” she said. “I was young and stupid. I made mistakes.”

  “It’s okay, Lola. It doesn’t make you weak to admit that Nick took advantage of you. That he was a crazy person who ruined your life. That you were just a curious girl. That you wanted a grown-up boyfriend, and that you got all messed up in something bigger than yourself. You don’t have to be a criminal mastermind to get past this.”

  Lola laughed. “I did win you over, didn’t I? You really don’t think I did it.”

  “Admit that you didn’t.”

  She smiled. “Why?”

  “Because we both know it’s the truth.”

  “If that’s the truth,” she said. “Then how do you explain everything else I’ve done? Getting Nick out of jail, seducing you, getting you both here, and getting you to kill him? Of course, it’s not as great of an accomplishment since you’re already a murderer. I wanted you to be someone who’d never killed before. You were supposed to be a challenge. My best work.”

  He put a hand on her thigh. He dragged his fingers slowly from her knee up to her hip. “I’m not saying that you didn’t try it this time. But really, Lola, picking Nick as the victim? You have such a clear motive against him. Sociopaths don’t kill people they hate. They kill people that they want to love.”

  “Maybe I want to love Nick.”

  “Hanging onto this warped view of yourself is only going to make things worse.”

  She kissed his nose. “Is this the theory you’re going to publish in your book? That I’m pure and innocent, and it’s all Nick’s fault?”

  “I’m going to publish the truth.”

  She giggled. “I think you just can’t handle being sexually attracted to a woman who’s not a victim, Sam.”

  *

  The smell of smoke filled his nostrils. He stirred, thinking that it was a dream. After all, he was back in this house. Dreaming about the fire would only be natural.

  But then he realized he was awake. He sat straight up.

  Lola was gone. Lying next to him was a pile of his clothes, folded up. His shoes were there too.

  Staying low, he hurried to dress himself.

  He crawled to the door and opened it.

  The flames were the first thing he saw.

  The entire house was ablaze.

  “Lola!” he yelled.

  No sound except the crackle and pop of the burning.

  He coughed.r />
  He crawled out into the hallway.

  The living room wasn’t that bad yet. It was full of smoke, but it hadn’t caught fire. She must have started it further back in the house.

  Huh.

  He was already convinced that Lola had started this fire, wasn’t he?

  Maybe Nick had started it. Maybe Nick wasn’t dead, and he’d decided to burn them.

  Or maybe it had started on its own.

  “Lola!” he yelled again.

  No answer.

  He kept crawling until he reached the front door. He unlocked it and opened it, getting to his feet.

  “Lola!”

  He waited for a second, listening for her voice. But he didn’t hear anything.

  So he stepped out of the burning house into the morning snow.

  Outside, the snow was anything but pristine. It was blunted and windswept, but Sam could still see furrows and ruts. Some of them were pink—stained with blood. Sam’s blood. Nick’s blood.

  Sam turned and saw that Nick’s body was still where he’d left it. The snow around him was soaked red.

  Sam took a few more steps away and then turned to look at the house.

  Flames were coming out of the windows. They were working their way up the roof.

  He threw back his head. “Lola!” he tried one more time.

  His voice echoed.

  There was no response.

  She had to have started the fire. Had she done it to burn him alive?

  He chuckled to himself. Maybe.

  But she’d left him some clothes.

  Although not his coat, which sucked. It had been warm near the fire, but the further he moved away from it, the colder he got.

  He felt a shiver go through him. He turned away from the house. He was glad it was burning up. He didn’t have any good memories about that place. He wanted it to be gone, to close that chapter of his life entirely.

  The fire ended it. It brought things full circle.

  Hannah may have died in the fire, but Lola was free.

  At least he hoped so.

  He turned back to look at the house. She couldn’t still be in there, could she?

  No. No way. She was too smart for that.

  He began to trudge down the driveway. By now, the roads had probably been cleared, at least enough that people might be traveling. He’d flag down a car, and this madness would be over.

  He sincerely hoped that he would never see Lola Ward ever again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  a year and a half later…

  Carl Levinson, late-night talk show host, was holding up Sam’s book, grinning at the camera. “So, this all really happened to you?”

  Sam sat next to him, his leg crossed over his knee. He couldn’t help but laugh. “Yes, it all really happened.”

  “Really?” said Carl. “Because this is crazy stuff, Sam. I gotta tell you.” He looked out at the studio audience. “You guys read this? What am I saying? Of course you’ve read it. Everyone’s read this. This is… how many weeks at the number one spot on The New York Times best seller list?”

  Sam flashed a self-effacing grin. “Ten.”

  “Ten?” said Carl. “That’s… that’s months, Sam.”

  “It is, yes.”

  “So, you must be feeling pretty good, then.”

  “Yeah, I’m doing all right.”

  “Especially for a guy that almost got killed.”

  The audience laughed.

  Sam spread his hands. “Well, it is good to be alive.”

  “So, you were locked in this house in a snowstorm, with no contact with the outside world, and you basically had to fight for your life against, uh, Nicholas Todd.”

  “True.”

  “But you survived. And you wrote this book, and it’s doing well. Everyone says it reads like fiction. I don’t read a lot, but this is…” He looked out at the audience. “Let me tell you, if you haven’t read this book, you have to pick it up. Because it’s good. And because Sam here needs the money, right?”

  Sam laughed again.

  “I’m sorry,” said Carl. “I joke. So, if we can kind of fast-forward a little bit here and, uh, talk about what happened after the book ended?”

  “Sure.”

  “So, no one knows what happened to Lola Ward?”

  Sam shook his head. “No one knows.”

  “She just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “That’s about where it is,” said Sam.

  “And she hasn’t contacted you?”

  “No.”

  “But you depicted her fairly kindly. I mean, the book is called Little Girl Lost, and you basically say that she was manipulated by Nicholas Todd.”

  “Well, but I also said that she helped him escape from jail and that she was manipulating me to kill him.”

  “Which you did.”

  “In self-defense.”

  “Of course, of course.” Carl laid his hands flat on the desk. “And you think that’s a pretty accurate depiction of her? That she was a normal girl, but this horrific experience sort of turned her into a… a crazy person?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that ‘normal’ word.” Sam leaned forward. “I think we all have this idea of what little girls should be like, and I don’t think Lola ever was that. I think she always felt different, like she didn’t quite fit. I think she pursued Nicholas Todd because she was trying to find someplace to fit. But then, yeah, he messed up her head.”

  “So, if they do find her, if the FBI or the CIA or whatever brings her in, what? You think she should go free? You don’t think she should go to jail?”

  Sam leaned back in his chair. “Well, that wouldn’t be my call.”

  “What? You’re not going to say what you think?”

  Sam shrugged. “Look, Lola admitted to me that she helped Todd escape, but that’s far from proving it happened. I believe it, and I think that if they did prove that, she should be punished for that. But I can’t really speak to the idea of whether or not she’s a murderer. She’s never physically killed anyone, so I wouldn’t be the person to determine whether or not that’s a crime she’s guilty of.”

  Carl nodded at him, raising his eyebrows. “Okay.”

  “I’m not going to say yes or no to that,” Sam said. “It’s not my decision.”

  “Well, you know this next question’s coming.”

  Sam winced. “Oh, come on. You’re not gonna…”

  “Did you have an affair with her?”

  Sam put his hands on top of his head. “Why does everybody ask me this?”

  “You have your ex-wife to blame for that, I think, right? Didn’t she say something to the press during the whole divorce hoopla?”

  “Leave Daphne out of it,” said Sam.

  “You have an amicable split, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Carl laughed. “As long as you don’t talk about her on national television.”

  The studio audience laughed.

  Sam could tell he was blushing. “Look, look, the answer to your question is no, I was not… there was nothing between Lola and me. I just wrote about her, that’s all.”

  “Mmm,” said Carl. “You’re awfully red there, Sam.”

  Sam put a hand over his eyes.

  “All right, all right. I’ve tortured you enough,” said Carl. “Again, the book is Little Girl Lost. For the twelve people out there who haven’t read it, pick it up now. Thank you, Samson Black.” He offered him his hand.

  *

  “They always ask you that question.” Josie was sitting back in the green room, twisting the diamond ring on her finger.

  Sam sat down beside her and kissed her on the temple. “I know they do.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said.

  He put his arm around her. “It’s just publicity stuff, baby.”

  “But it makes me look bad.”

  “It has nothing to do with you,” he said. “And it’s just a stupid rumor.”

/>   “Sam, you and I are getting married, and you’re writing a damned book about me. And you married the next-to-last woman you wrote a book about, and with everyone saying that you and Lola—”

  “Sweetie, that doesn’t make you look bad, it makes me look bad.” He patted her thigh.

  She sucked in a breath. “It makes me look stupid. It makes me look like I can’t see that you have a pattern or something.”

  “But you know that’s not true.” He stroked her cheek. “You know that what we have is real and special, and that we’re going to be together forever. Because I didn’t understand what love even was until I met you.”

  She melted. “Oh, sometimes you’re so sweet.”

  He kissed her forehead. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  They stood up together. Josie had been captured by a group of men who’d been planning to put her on a boat and sell her as a sex slave. But she’d gotten free, found a gun, and shot them all to death. The book about her was half-drafted, and Sam was sure it was going to be a hit.

  And it was true. He’d never loved anyone quite the way he loved Josie. She was strong and gorgeous, and she sometimes got nightmares. When she woke up, she’d snuggle into his arms and tell him that she couldn’t handle waking up without him.

  She told him that he’d saved her.

  Hearing that… well, it always did something to Sam.

  *

  What’s next?

  1-Write a review.

  2-Try the contemporary mystery series Blond Noir.

  She’s tough. She solves mysteries. And she’s certifiably unable to keep her legs closed.

  Or if you’re in the mood for something a bit different, try the very dark paranormal romance, The Killing Moon.

  Agent Dana Gray can’t help but be drawn to the werewolf serial killer she helped put away.

  3-If you’d like to find out the minute my next book is available, plus get information about all my new releases…

  Join my email list.

  vjchambers.com

  More THRILLERS by V. J. Chambers