Curtain rod spear in hand, I slipped out into the dark hallway and pressed myself against the wall, sliding my way to the edge of the balcony that overlooked the living room. I peeked around the corner of the wall. From that angle, the back of the couch obscured my view of Marcus, but I could see the French doors and out onto the deck fairly well. There was no one out there.
Which meant he was inside.
I considered yelling to Marcus, but it would give away my presence and position, as well his. There was a chance that Palmer hadn’t even realized Marcus was down there. I couldn’t risk it. No, I was going to have to go downstairs and try to sneak up on Palmer before he set the house on fire, or whatever devious thing he was up to. The guy was a pyro, a bigot, and a coward, so it really could be anything. I certainly wouldn’t mind sticking a curtain rod straight through him like a stick through a marshmallow. There was a time when I’d shown the man some mercy, but that time was over.
Mustering up every ounce of courage I had, I stepped to the opposite wall and got ready to round the corner to the stairwell.
I heard movement downstairs, footfalls scuffing against the Italian tile of the kitchen floor.
He was on the move.
Shit.
He was coming up the stairs. Fast.
I braced myself, stiffening my arm for the thrust, and lunged around the corner of the wall at the top of the stairs right before he crested them.
The curtain rod went through his shirt and his chest like a knife through butter. There was no resistance. None at all. And my hand followed right through the hole the rod had made, into Marcus’s chest cavity, straight up to my elbow and out the other side.
His mouth and eyes held a question he never got to ask as the light and life faded from them and he began to fall backwards.
“No!” I screamed, bending my spear arm and throwing myself back against the stairs. Getting skewered wouldn’t kill Marcus for good, but falling down the stairs might kill us both.
When he fell on me, he fell hard, my butt and back slamming against the unrelenting corners of the carpeted steps. And then we began to slide, bumping our way down each one. Thud. Thud. Thud, thud, thud, thud. I tried to keep my weapon arm ready, even with my boyfriend impaled on it and lying on top of me, even through the pain. Mike Palmer was still down there, and now that Marcus was down for the count, I was definitely on my own. Hopefully not for long though, because the racket we’d made would have woken the dead, and I was hoping it had woken Passion and the guys. Now. Like, right now. ‘Cause I really needed them.
Marcus and I arrived at the bottom of the stairwell, and I struggled to push his body off my arm without letting go of the curtain rod, which didn’t work at all. In a panic, I let the rod clatter to the floor, but even then, my elbow got stuck in the torn fabric of his t-shirt and I wrestled to extract it.
When Passion came hurtling down the stairs in her pajamas, her Walther in her bandaged hand, I had finally gotten my arm out of my boyfriend and picked up the rod again.
“Thank God you have your gun. Mike Palmer is in the house,” I said, as she stared down at Marcus, horror in her eyes.
“Is he dead?” she asked, her eyes still glued on Marcus.
“Yeah. But he’ll be fine. Passion,” I said firmly, grabbing her arm and making her look at me. “You need to let the guys know we have an intruder. I’ll stay here with Marcus.”
“But how did he—”
Footsteps pounded up the stairs from the basement, and I heard the door slam open, Jason and Nose spilling out into the foyer, their guns trained in two different directions. Neither was wearing a shirt, and Jason’s hair was a tousled mess, but he had the AR15 strapped across his back.
“Mike Palmer is in the house,” I told them softly. “On this floor or the basement.”
Jason eyed the makeshift spear in my hand, glanced at Passion, and then looked down at Marcus, dead on the floor.
“It was an accident,” I said. “I thought he was Palmer. Where’s Yale?”
“Still downstairs,” Nose said, looking to Jason for instructions.
“You and Passion go and get him,” Jason told Nose, “and search every crack and crevice down there. If you see anything or anyone, shoot it. If you don’t, come back up and bring Yale with you.”
“Got it,” Nose said, grinning out of his ski mask. He wore it, even when he slept, because the glow of his PSS nose kept him awake otherwise.
“Okay,” Passion said, crossing to the basement stairs and following Nose stealthily down them.
“Here, take this,” Jason said, handing me his hunting rifle.
I set my curtain rod on the floor and took it as he pulled the assault rifle off his back.
“It’s loaded and the safety is off,” he said nodding at the gun in my hands. “How the fuck did Palmer get in?”
“He disarmed the alarm and came in the French doors.”
“Okay, we search this floor together,” Jason said, gesturing for me to head into the living room.
“We can’t leave Marcus.”
“No one’s going to kill him while he’s dead.”
“No, but they could take him.”
“Fine. Then I’ll secure this floor by myself, and you stay with your boyfriend,” Jason said snidely, skirting around the corner of the wall into the living room area, his gun out in front of him.
And then I felt silly and useless, standing there over Marcus. I could at least search the kitchen and check the garage while keeping him in my line of sight. I moved silently into the kitchen. It had an open floor plan and was obviously empty, but I still checked behind the butcher block and under the bar. Then I crossed to the garage door and slowly opened it, the rifle ready. I flipped on the lights, but that wasn’t going to help me see behind the cars, especially the van. It was a huge garage, and there were a lot of places someone could hide. I’d have to wait for Jason or some downstairs backup.
“What the—” I heard Marcus moan. I turned to see him sitting up against the stairs, looking down at the hole in his shirt, and I gave an internal sigh of relief. It was one thing to know intellectually that he could reboot his PSS and come back to life. It was another thing entirely to have to count on that fact when you’re the one who’s accidentally killed him.
“Shhhh,” I called softly as I headed back to him. “We have an intruder.”
“What? Who?” he said, looking around in confusion, his eyes finding the curtain rod on the floor next to him. “You stabbed me,” he said, bewilderment written all over his face.
“I know. Sorry. I thought you were Palmer. He broke into the house.” I knelt at Marcus’s side, wanting so badly to set down my gun and put my hands on him, to touch his chest, his face, his arms, and make sure he was really all back in one piece the way I needed him to be. But I couldn’t do that until we were all safe and Palmer was captured or eliminated.
“What the hell is going on?” Marcus asked, staring at me.
“You fell asleep,” I said gently, trying not to make it sound like an accusation. “No one was on duty for hours.”
“Oh shit,” he said, his face growing pale. “I thought it was only a few minutes.” He would beat himself up over this. I knew he would. He was only human, but he didn’t like to admit that, even to himself.
There was pounding on the stairs again, and Nose, Passion and Yale emerged from the basement.
“No one down there,” Nose said, looking between Marcus and me, unsure who he was reporting to.
“And no one on this floor,” Jason said, coming around the corner from the direction of the dining room. “It’s all clear.”
“I looked in the garage,” I said, nodding toward it. “But I didn’t search the whole thing.”
Jason stared at me, and I stared back, and I knew we were both remembering the last time we’d had a discussion about searching a garage. Did he think this was a set-up? If I was a CAMFer spy, what better way to exact my revenge on Jason than to send him into
an ambush in a garage, just the way he’d sent me? Marcus was convinced that Jason was a changed man, that he wasn’t paranoid anymore because I’d pulled the bullet of fear from his soul and freed him. I wasn’t so sure about that. Yes, Jason had stopped threatening me on a regular basis. He’d even begun to show me a small measure of respect, but I still seriously doubted he trusted me.
“Me and Nose will check it,” he said, heading through the kitchen to the garage door, Nose following after him.
I was almost disappointed. I had come to think of Jason’s treatment of me as the one steady, constant thing in my life. Something I could always count on. Plus, now Marcus had one more piece of proof that using my ghost hand to pull things out of people was a good idea.
“Where did Palmer come in? What was the entry point?” Marcus asked me.
“The French doors.”
“Maybe that’s what woke me up,” he said, glancing at the doors in question. “I thought it was just the wind rattling them. And then I decided to go check the camera feeds to be sure.”
“Where’s your gun?” I asked. Marcus hadn’t had his gun when I’d met him on the stairs. I was pretty thankful for that, or things could have turned out much worse than they had, but it was still odd.
“I had it when I sat down on the couch,” he said, sounding confused, “but when I woke up, it wasn’t there. I must have left it upstairs.”
I hadn’t seen Marcus’s gun anywhere upstairs.
“The garage is clear,” Jason said, emerging into the kitchen with Nose behind him. “No signs of a breakin or intruder.”
“Okay,” I said, looking around at the group. “Maybe he snuck out again. Marcus and I made a lot of noise coming down the stairs. It could have scared him off.”
“Are you sure he didn’t sneak past you upstairs?” Yale asked.
“No. I was watching him on the camera feed the whole time, except when I stopped to grab the curtain rod in the bedroom.”
“How long did that take?” Marcus asked. “Because it doesn’t take that long to sneak up one flight of stairs.”
“I don’t know. A couple of minutes. Shit. Yeah. He could have gotten past me.”
“But I was up there asleep,” Passion said, her eyes widening to giant pools of liquid fear.
“You’re safe now,” I said, touching her arm until she looked at me. “It’s okay.”
“He may still be up there,” Marcus said, standing up and looking meaningfully at Jason.
“Here, take this,” I said, handing the rifle to Marcus. “Passion, Yale and I will stay down here in case he tries to sneak past you and back out.”
“You don’t have a gun,” Marcus pointed out.
“I know. But Passion is a better shot than me anyway. We’ll be fine.”
“No,” he insisted. “Jason and I will go up and leave Nose with you.”
“Okay.” I grabbed the front of his torn t-shirt, pulling him toward me. “Be safe,” I commanded.
“I will,” he promised, those intense brown eyes looking down at me.
Then he stepped away, and I had to let go of his shirt.
Jason moved to the upstairs stairwell, gun out, and Marcus followed him. They both disappeared silently, step by step, up into the darkness where Palmer might be hiding, and I suddenly realized that I would never feel safe, no matter where I was, until that man was thoroughly and absolutely dead.
7
A MESS OR A MESSAGE?
There was no one upstairs. No sign of Mike Palmer in the entire house.
When Jason and Marcus came back down, they wanted to search outside, but Passion and I made them wait until we could get our shoes and put them on.
A few minutes later, we all stood at the French doors: Yale and Passion, Marcus and Jason, me and Nose.
“Don’t turn on the deck lights,” Jason instructed, “and let me go first.”
As soon as Marcus opened the doors, the wind whipped in and Jason stepped out, gun ready, eyes trained on the perimeter of the deck and yard.
I was immediately hit by a whiff of gasoline so strong it made me gag, but the memories were even worse. Last time I’d encountered that smell, my house had just been burned to the ground around me.
Mike Palmer had been here. There was no question about that. From where I stood, I could now see the huge pool of slick liquid spilled across the deck, a large red gas can lying on its side, the nozzle still dripping.
Jason and Marcus exchanged a look.
“You, Nose, and I will go,” Marcus said to him. “Don’t step in or near the gas. The rest of you wait until we give the all clear.”
So, Yale, Passion and I waited. I don’t know how long it took, ten minutes maybe, until Nose came back and said that they’d scoured the entire perimeter of the grounds and it was safe to come out. But Jason still didn’t want the outer lights on, as it might draw the attention of the neighbors.
As I moved out through the doors into the battering wind, I heard something flapping near my head and looked up to see a black plastic bag tangled over the deck camera.
Marcus came over, reached up, and pulled it off, letting the wind carry it away.
“He was here,” I said, feeling myself begin to shake.
“But he didn’t get in,” Marcus said, wrapping his arms around me. “No thanks to me, but still, he didn’t.”
“Why didn’t he light the gas?” I asked. “The way the wind is gusting, the deck and the house would have gone up like an inferno.” As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Then I caught a glimpse of a small dark square in the middle of the gas puddle. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing it out to Marcus.
“I don’t know.” He guided me around the edge of the gas pool to the far side, near the gas can, where we could see it better. It was a matchbook, soaked and glistening. “I think he must have dropped it before he could light anything,” Marcus said.
One matchbook? Mike Palmer knew a lot about fires. If he had meant to burn us out, he would have. No, this was a message. Some kind of warning. Palmer wanted us to know that he’d been here, and that he’d chosen not to set this fire. But why would he do that?
There was a huge gas grill in the corner of the deck, a pair of tongs hanging on it and clanging in the wind. I went over, grabbed them, and used them to extract the soggy matchbook from the gasoline.
Marcus and I looked down at it. On the front there was an American flag with the words “Freedom Lights the Way” under it, but on the back someone had written something in messy hurried handwriting.
“Don’t go to Shades,” I read it aloud and looked at Marcus. “What does that mean?”
“Shade is another word for ghost,” Marcus speculated.
“But it says ‘don’t go there.’ So, it’s probably a place.”
“Could be anything. A bar maybe, or a restaurant?”
“I can look it up on the internet,” I offered. “See if it’s someplace local.”
“Good idea,” he said. “Take it inside. We need to get this gas cleaned up before sunrise.”
I looked up to see Nose wielding a hose, ready to spray down the deck right where we were standing.
I nodded at Marcus and took the matchbook into the house, wrapping it in paper towels from the kitchen and squeezing it dry.
Passion came and stood next to me, and we watched, silently, as the guys cleaned up the mess Mike Palmer had left us.
8
LET THE PARANOIA BEGIN
“Play it again,” I said. “It has to be there.”
“We’ve played it five times already,” Yale said, looking over his shoulder at the others. “There’s no one there.”
“I saw him,” I said, pushing Yale’s hands aside and clicking the replay button of the feed for monitor twenty myself. “I clearly saw his face.”
The shadowed deck and the outside of the French doors appeared on the screen once again, blurred but visible, as the wind shook the camera. At the edge of the frame, the dark hump of th
e gas grill loomed, the red boxy gas can sitting at its feet. Then a huge gust of wind kicked up, blacking the camera out for a minute. When it flicked back on, there was the gas can on its side, gas pouring from its spout and pooling across the deck. Two seconds later, something tiny flitted from the upper shelf of the grill like a butterfly, landing in the middle of the pool, right where we’d found the matchbook—because it was the matchbook. And then, as I watched for the fifth time, something dark swirled up the steps of the deck, rising on the wind to about shoulder level, then higher, and right as it hit the camera, it became obvious what it was: a black plastic bag. But there was no man this time. Or any of the other times. No arms, or torso, or face. No Mike Palmer.
Yale hit the button to stop the feed, and the silence behind us grew. We could play that recording a hundred more times and it was still not going to show what I knew I’d seen. I had seen Mike Palmer. I had not imagined that. Which meant someone had changed the camera feed in the hour since I’d seen it. Someone inside the house with access to the footage. Someone, one of us, was working with Mike Palmer and the CAMFers.
I looked at Yale. He had the technical know-how to do it, and he’d been in the security suite while the rest of us had been downstairs or cleaning the deck. Marcus had sent him up to work on wiring the intercom system, with additional instructions to hook up an alarm button so the entire house could be alerted next time we had a security breach. But I saw no evidence that Yale had done either of those things. Maybe he’d been too busy tampering with the feed.
“What about camera nineteen?” I said, hoping he hadn’t had time to cover all his bases. “I saw him on that one too.”
“Um, okay,” Yale said, tapping a button and calling it up, then rewinding the footage to the timeframe we needed.
He pressed play, and there was the camera, shuddering in the wind, an angled shadow crossing beneath it.
“Stop right there. See, he’s pressed up against the wall,” I said, pointing at the corner of the screen. “That’s his elbow.”
Yale looked at me, something like pity in his eyes.
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