Her eyes shifted to the gun in his hand. She scooted back on the sofa, feeling the EpiPen against her backside. She had to make it work. Had to. As much as he promised otherwise, his only intention was to murder them. He could be crazy as a shithouse rat and still realize that taking her and Evan hostage was going to land him in prison if they told anyone. His only way out was to kill them both. And his wife. That was what he wanted her here for. He meant to kill all three of them. And then what? He’ll kill himself too. At the end of it all, his exit plan was to save a bullet for himself. How many times had she heard men say, “If I go, I’m taking as many people with me as I can!” as if it was somehow more tolerable to die a mass murderer than by oneself? She’d heard it enough not to believe it when this man promised to release her.
The fog that clouded her mind was drifting away.
The intruder’s wife had walled off her ex-husband, and he couldn’t find a way to break back through to her. If he’d come to Nelle for help getting in touch with her, he’d run aground with every other option. That meant her distance was the only thing keeping her and Evan alive. If she was successful in getting his ex to come to the house, they were all dead. The thing was, if she didn’t help lure her to the house, they were still dead. He wanted to use Nelle as bait to lure his ex into a trap. Murdering his ex-wife was the man’s endgame. And if he killed her, there was no getting away. If he got what he wanted, he was dead too.
There was no point in trying to find common ground. For one of them to win, the other had to lose.
She wanted to cry. Not the little sobs she hadn’t been able to control when he pulled her hair or hit her. A long, soul-racking cry. The need was there, like a pressure building in her chest. Eventually, she wouldn’t be able to hold it back, and she’d sob. And then he would know something about her. That she had no more fight left in her.
Not yet. Don’t cry. Don’t be a fucking weakling. Don’t cry.
She took a shuddering breath and said, “You could have asked me to c-call her b-before. I w-would have helped you if you’d just asked. You didn’t have to do . . . all this.”
He let out a snorting laugh through his nose. “No, you wouldn’t’ve. Females aren’t like that. You can’t just ask; you have to convince them.” He hit the butt of the gun against his thigh. Nelle prayed to all the gods she’d ever heard of that he’d accidentally pull the trigger and shoot himself. He didn’t have to blow his head off. In the leg was good enough. He’d focus on the wound in his thigh and she could swing around with the needle and stick him in the neck. A dose of epinephrine in a muscle wouldn’t hurt him, but a shot of it right in a vein would stop his heart. At least she hoped the neck would do it.
But he didn’t shoot himself. He remained focused intently on her.
“What . . . what do you want me to say?”
“What I told you, stupid. Tell her you don’t know how to reset the heater in the sunroom and you need her to come over to show you. Be convincing. Play dumb. Shouldn’t be hard.” He looked down at her phone and tried to unlock it again, but seemed to have trouble remembering the code. She started to repeat it to him, but he barked at her. “I know. Shut up.” It took him two tries. His hands were shaking.
While he was focused on her phone, she reached behind herself with one hand and opened the cap on her EpiPen cylinder. She tilted the container, letting the device slide out. The scrape of plastic on plastic seemed so loud to her, her heart beat faster and it felt like she couldn’t get a breath. The room swam a little, and a thought appeared in her mind like it had been spoken by someone else: You’re going to die of fright; that’s what this is. She wanted to silence that voice, but it lingered in her head, like the scraping of the autoinjector sliding out of its case. A ringing in her mind couldn’t be silenced.
Die of fright. Die of fright.
But he didn’t hear. She jammed the empty tube into the gap between the seat cushion and the back of the sofa and held on to the device, waiting.
The man’s face relaxed as he opened her phone app. He looked up at her. Her palms were sweating. Not doing anything here. No sir. Just waiting for you to figure out how to dial a fucking phone. That’s all I’m up to. Tears stung her eyes. She wasn’t crying yet, but close. Stress was eating at her resolve like decay. Soon, she’d have none, and the corpse of her will would presage her own cadaver.
He held the phone out in front of her. “Can I hold it?” she asked. He was just out of reach. Come a little closer. Take your medicine.
“Fuck no, you can’t hold it. You keep your arms right there at your sides. I’m going to put it on speaker, so I can hear too.”
“It’ll sound weird to her on speaker. I just want to be able to hold the phone so it sounds right.”
“And I don’t want you to have it. What’s so fuckin’ hard to understand?”
“What can I do with a cell phone?”
“What can you do? You can throw it at me, try to hit me in the face with it.” He pointed to the long scrapes under his eye that she’d given him earlier in that very room. His face grew redder, and he took a step back. “You think you’re smarter than me, but you aren’t. With your fucking snooty wines and your big city bullshit. You get tired of living in the city, so you sell your fancy-ass condo and buy a quiet place in the suburbs, and you think all the bumpkins out here are going to kiss your ass and bring you cookies because you’re classing up the neighborhood.”
“That’s not it at all. I’m not trying to trick you. I want to help.”
“Oh, really?” he said through clenched teeth. “Well, Miss Pereira”—he said, drawing it out, daring her to correct him—“I’ll just do whatever you say, then.” Nelle shrank down, waiting for him to hit her. His back straightened as she cowered. In a low voice full of venom, he said, “I hate all you entitled, rich cunts. You get everything handed to you along with a participation trophy, and you think you just won the game.” He stepped closer and stuck the gun up under her chin. “You want to help me.”
The muscles in her shoulder tightened, ready to swing. If she hit him now, all he had to do was pull the trigger. She froze again. Her resolve from earlier had dissipated.
“I’m sorry. I’ll make . . . the c-call however you want me to!” Nelle tried to calm her voice. “Let me t-talk to your wife. You can hold the phone. I’ll say anything you want. Just put the g-gun away and let me d-do it.” She tried to give him a sense of retreat and surrender with her body. She hunched her shoulders and tilted her head back to seem smaller, more vulnerable. Not a threat.
The man’s face went slack. He pulled the gun away from her chin, dialed the number, and then activated the speakerphone. He held the device in front of Nelle’s face—it shone brightly into her eyes, the phone app keeping the glassy surface of the smartphone from being reflective. She was happy not to be able to see herself. It would only remind her how frightened she was—how slim her chances of living were. Getting slimmer.
While the signal upstairs was much better than in the cellar, it still wasn’t great. The phone had two bars. The sound of ringing on the other end was faint and distorted. Her impulse to lean closer to be heard better warred with her repulsion at the thought of being nearer to the man. She felt like a drunk sitting there, wavering like she couldn’t stay upright without effort.
After a few rings, a woman’s voice declared, “You’ve reached Samantha’s Studio.”
Samantha! That’s her name!
“It’s her voicemail,” Nelle whispered. “What do I do?”
The frustration on his face lingered a second before he returned to his inscrutable baseline. This was a guy who, when people told him to smile for a picture, believed he was smiling and would defend his flat mien despite everyone else around him looking different. She didn’t want to get to know this man, even as little as how to read him.
“Leave her a message,” he mouthed. She looked a question at him; he bugged his eyes out in response. She could see that he wanted to say some
thing mean, but didn’t want to get picked up by the device—even though it hadn’t started recording yet. He widened his eyes at her again. She was suddenly glad to be on speaker if it kept him from threatening her.
She felt a new panic rising. What the hell was her name? She just said it. Why can’t I remember? Sa Sa Sarah . . . no! Samantha. Like the TV witch. Samantha Roarke. And he’s . . . he’s . . . Malcolm!
The voice on the phone said, “At the tone you know what to do.” A second passed, and a sharp beep crackled from the speaker. Nelle tried to keep her voice steady as she spoke. “Uh, hi, Samantha. This is Nelle . . . Eleonora Pereira. My husband and I . . . uh, bought your house . . .” She glanced up at the man—Malcolm. One of his widened eyes twitched at the words your house. She continued. “If you could give me a call when you get this message, we’re having trouble with the uh, heater in the family room, and we really need your help. Trying to get it ready for fall, you know, and it won’t . . . work. Anyway, we really need your help because we’re in, uh, kind of a tough situation, and a little help would be great. You probably, uh, have it in your caller ID, but my cell number is 617-555-4671. Thanks.” She nodded at him. The man—she didn’t want to think of him as Malcolm. He probably didn’t go by that name, anyway. It was too soft for a man like him, she guessed. He’d fight it. Use his last name for everything. It’d sound stronger, like something military. The man, Roarke, stabbed the button to end the call. She thought she heard something in her phone pop. His fingers gripping the device were turning white.
“The fuck was that?”
“I was . . . trying to make it sound . . . urgent. Like you said.”
“You were sending her a code. Need. Help.”
“I swear, I wasn’t. I just wanted it to sound like it wasn’t just a little thing, you know? Urgent. I didn’t know what else to say.”
His hand whipped out and she felt her phone against her face before she realized what was coming. She cried out, and he hit her again, harder. “All you had to do was say what I fucking told you! You were trying to signal, you cunt—”
Nelle screamed, “No! I swear!” She let go of the EpiPen and held her hands up to ward off another blow.
“Shut up,” he shouted. He put the barrel of the gun to her head.
She couldn’t get a breath.
Die of fright!
“Stop! I’m only doing what you said. I’m trying to get her here, I swear. Please! Don’t!”
“Liar! You took my house, and now you’re trying to warn Sam. I’ll show you how to ruin a marriage. I’ll fucking end yours.” He threw her phone on the sofa and grabbed her by the elbow. She grasped at the EpiPen behind her with her free hand and barely caught it before he dragged her to her feet and away toward the cellar.
He marched her down, gun jammed into her back. She stuffed the autoinjector into the front of her sweats as discreetly as she could on the way down, hoping the stretchy waistband would hold it in place until she got a chance to use it.
At the bottom of the stairs, he spun her around and hit her hard in the stomach with a closed fist. Her legs dropped out from under her and she crumpled to the floor, gasping for air and retching. He snatched a bottle of wine off the rack and reared back with it like a club, ready to swing at her head.
Though it was muffled through the cloth and tape, Evan unmistakably grunted, “Leave her alone,” from the other end of the room. Roarke’s head whipped around, his face finally finding a new steady expression: enraged. He threw the bottle. It tumbled end over end as it flew, and smashed into the concrete foundation behind the weight bench. The room filled with the aroma of pinot noir, and the sound of tinkling glass echoed through the air as shards scattered across the floor. He’d missed. Roarke roared his frustration and stomped toward Evan, glass crunching under his boots. He jammed the muzzle of his gun hard into Evan’s chest and shouted, “Is this what you want?” He turned to look at Nelle, still in a ball on the floor. “I can take everything away from you. EVERYTHING!”
Nelle choked on her saliva as she tried to get a breath. Coughing and sputtering, she couldn’t plead aloud, so she shook her head, holding up a hand to beg for mercy. A gossamer line of saliva slipped out of her mouth and dangled briefly from her lip before it fell and wetted a spot on her thigh. It ran down her leg, over her knee, leaving a shiny trail. Though she was far beyond feeling shame for drooling on herself, it was a humiliation that broke her a little more. Another small thing adding up to the weight that would soon crush her spirit entirely. She swallowed and focused on finding her breath. Her voice.
“Stop. Please.” She lost control of the hitch in her voice and openly sobbed, not caring anymore whether Roarke took any pleasure in her tears. “Just stop. I’ll do . . . anything . . . you want.”
He stuffed the gun in his waistband holster and pulled the folding knife out of his pocket. He grabbed hold of Evan’s jaw and pressed the knife to his cheek and pulled it back, bearing down. Evan’s muffled scream filled the basement despite the gag; snot burst out of his nose, coating the duct tape over his mouth. Nelle answered with her own rising howl, wild and irrational.
Roarke let go and turned to face her, red knife in hand. Blood ran from Evan’s cheek, dripping off of his chin onto the front of his shirt. Roarke stomped back over to Nelle. He snatched the pair of underwear off the floor where they’d fallen and stuffed them back into her mouth. She tasted her husband’s blood on the man’s fingers and gagged as he shoved the cloth deep into her mouth. She wanted to bite, but his hands were so far in, like he was trying to pack her throat, and she couldn’t get the leverage to resist. All she could do was gag and try not to vomit. If she threw up, she’d choke to death. She realized that was how it would’ve worked before. She’d never have been able to bite hard enough.
He jabbed forward once with his fingers and let go. He tossed the knife on the plastic box where he’d set it earlier and she heard the loud rip of silver tape coming off the roll. Then, he pressed the strip to her face, covering her mouth. He was clumsy with rage, and it stuck high up, partially over her nose. She snorted hard, shooting out blood and snot that reflected back up onto her cheeks. He jerked his hands back, as if getting these fluids on his hands was a line he was not willing to cross, and glared at her. His jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. Nelle shook her head, crying and struggling to breathe. He slapped her again.
Dieoffrightdieoffrightdieoffright!
He yanked her up off the floor and set her hard in the dining chair, pulling strips of tape off the roll. He started with her wrists and moved on to her ankles. When he taped her around the midsection, he covered the lower half of her breasts, pinching them painfully.
No more, she thought. I’ll do anything. She tried pleading with him through the gag, but her appeals were muted and went unheard. It didn’t matter. What little faith she’d had in his willingness to listen was gone. There wasn’t a way she could imagine getting Evan and herself out of bondage and out of the house that involved either his compassion or mercy. He was on a mission to kill as many people as he could, and nothing would sway or even slow him when he finally decided to get started. She hoped that he’d use the gun and be quick so they didn’t suffer. And she hoped he killed her first so she didn’t have to watch her husband die. It was selfish, but among all the pains of the world she thought she could handle, that one was too much.
She cried. The sounds she made were ugly and desperate, but she was beyond caring, so she let herself make honest sounds.
34
Upstairs, an airy digital melody trilled in the front room of the house, unable to rise above the sounds of crying and shouting filtering through the floorboards from downstairs. After a few rings, the call redirected, and after a moment’s silence, the phone chirped a final short burst of notes, letting the empty room know that Nelle had a voicemail.
And then it was silent.
VIII
◆
Phantoms
35
The man patted his pockets searching for something. Nelle wondered what he could want. He looked at the book box and his face darkened. It was her phone he was missing. He rubbed his temples. “Fuckin’ upstairs,” he mumbled.
She could see the beginnings of his unraveling, where he’d appeared in control only an hour or two earlier. Things weren’t going the way he wanted, and that was throwing him. There was no denying he was good at sneaking up on people, good at hurting them, but it was becoming clear he didn’t know a thing about people and what made them work. This was a guy who heard cracking and still applied pressure.
She looked at her husband’s still-bleeding face. The cut was long and deep. It was red and angry as anything she’d ever seen. A flooded red river overflowing its banks.
Roarke would kill them when he saw no other end.
Whatever he did after that didn’t matter. It was the time leading up to his eventual realization that things weren’t going his way that counted. And that time was shortening with every new frustration.
The EpiPen in the front of her pants pressed against her belly, still secure in the waistband of her shorts. She had gotten lucky and he’d hit high when he punched her in the stomach. He was taller than she was and hit just under her ribs. And then she was lucky a second time when she went down and it didn’t fall out of her pants. Now her hands were taped to the chair again, and the spring-loaded needle was as useless as everything else in this basement. Still, she felt it, right there in her waistband. She had it. And maybe she’d get the chance to use it. Maybe. If she was . . .
Closing Costs Page 15