House (23 page)

He picked up his pace, keeping his heels from making contact with the concrete. How Pete had covered this ground so quickly he had no clue, not with a cracked noggin like Jack said he had.

Randy rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a door, brimming with yellow light. The hall disappeared around another corner ahead, but this had to be it.

He approached the door cautiously. Shock and awe, that was the plan, but he didn't have the energy for shock and awe right now.

“Please . . .” He could hear Stephanie's muffled pleading beyond the door. “Please, I'll do anything.”

“You can be my wife,” Pete said.

She didn't respond.

Randy leaned forward, listening. He didn't know where in the room they were, and the cracks were too narrow to give him any real view. If Stephanie could distract him . . .

“Can you put that down?” she asked.

Randy pulled back. The man had a gun?

“I want you to eat the cereal,” Pete said.

Randy looked back down the hall. He could still take off.

“This cereal?” she asked.

If he took off now, he could still get out. Jack and Leslie had probably already gone. He pictured the door wide open with Betty screaming at the rain.

“It will make you strong like me.”

She hesitated. Cried softly.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Yes, yes! Leslie was a bad girl.”

“Leslie wouldn't eat your cereal?”

“Leslie was a bad girl.”

“But if I eat your cereal, then I'll be a good girl?” Stephanie said, voice cracking.

“You will be my wife.”

“And you'll be good to me?”

“If you want to be strong like me, you have to eat the cereal. Because you're guilty.”

“Guilty.”

Randy blinked. She was an operator; he'd give her that much.

“Okay. See?”

She was eating it? He put his left hand on the doorknob and twisted a fraction of an inch. It wasn't locked. He nudged it. No dead bolts.

Stephanie was now sobbing softly and continuously.

“You'll be strong,” Pete said.

Randy went then, because he knew any red-blooded male into rotten dog food would have his complete attention on Stephanie.

Pete stood with a bowl in one hand, staring at Stephanie, who had three fingers in her mouth. Her face was streaked with tears.

Randy pulled the trigger.
Boom!
Buckshot tore into Pete's side, and he dropped the bowl. But he didn't fall.

Pump the action. Another load.
Boom!

This one put the man on his knees.

“Come on!” he screamed. “Let's go.”

She looked momentarily stunned, then sprang off the bed. But she didn't fall all weeping into his arms with gratitude. She stumbled through the door, face white.

She followed him down the halls at a full run. All Randy could think about now was getting to the padlocked exit.

It occurred to him he hadn't chambered a round after that last blast, so he did it now, aware but uncaring that Stephanie was falling behind.

He turned the corner and cut into the tunnel that led back to the exit.

That's as far as he got. He wasn't alone in the tunnel. The man with the tin mask was there. Facing him. Twenty yards up the passage, with his hands by his sides, trench coat at his ankles, staring through those jagged holes in his faceplate.

Sickness washed through Randy's gut. He wanted to jerk the shotgun up and put a hole in that face, but he couldn't move.

No sign of Stephanie.

“Hello, Randy,” White said. “You're like me; that's why you're going to win this contest.”

He still couldn't hear Stephanie; where was Stephanie?

“I need a dead body,” White said. “I think Jack will try to kill you. You're scum; they all know that.”

Randy's vision swam. White's neck twitched.

“One body, Randy. Give me one body before he kills you.”

“I . . . I can't just kill—”

“If you don't kill her, then you will die.”

Her?
He couldn't think straight. “Leslie?”

“Even the innocent are guilty, Randy.”

Stephanie had lost sight of Randy, but she was too numb to call out for him to slow down. He had come back for her—he wouldn't leave her now.

Her stomach swam in revulsion from eating the paste, but it was a sickly sweet revulsion. Like chewing on the worm at the bottom of a tequila bottle. No. Worse, much worse—more like sucking up a mouthful of someone else's vomit. But that vomit was laced with a hallucinogen that had sent pleasure running along her nerves.

Her revulsion was for herself, really. For her willingness to do whatever Pete asked of her. Anything. And for her need to be accepted by him.

It hit her then that what she did had come naturally. Her sickness, her sin, preserving herself at the cost of all principle. At the cost of her own worth. The realization made her nauseated.

She'd become a shell of a woman to save herself from pain, and she was powerless to redeem herself.

Some of the paste was still lodged in her throat. Suddenly the sickly sweetness of it all was only sickly. She stopped, bent at the waist, and threw up.

Wiping her mouth, she staggered on.

“Randy?”

When she finally caught up, Randy stood with his back toward her, shotgun in one hand pointed at the ground. He turned toward her. For a moment she thought he looked different.

“You coming?”

She hurried. “Yes.” She spit bile from her mouth.

Randy jogged on.

When they reached the hall where Pete had abducted her, the door Jack and Leslie had approached stood gaping open. The exit was still padlocked. No sign of them.

Stephanie could smell her own breath—like sulfur.

“Come on!” Randy said, running to the exit. “When we get outside we run straight for the forest, not for the front of the house,” he said. “We get some cover, and then we figure out how to get back to the main road, okay?”

She didn't answer.

Randy lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, aimed at the padlock, and pulled the trigger.

“Let's go!”

He jumped up on the landing and ripped off the twisted lock with a trembling hand. The door swung open easily. They'd made it?

He whirled back, grabbed Stephanie's elbow, and pulled her roughly through the doorway, outside.

Only they weren't quite outside yet.

In fact, they weren't outside at all. Stephanie blinked, but what she saw didn't change. They were in the boiler room! The hot, suffocating boiler room!

The door clicked shut behind her.

“Oh God oh God oh God!”

24
3:59 am

JACK EASED TO ONE KNEE BY THE DOOR and felt Leslie bump into him from behind. She drew close to his face, and by the look in her eyes he knew immediately that something had happened.

“They're gone!” He followed her look down the hall. They'd left Randy and Stephanie less than a minute ago with a promise from Randy to wait. But there was now no sign of Randy or Stephanie. The back exit was still closed.

A distant, muffled cry reached him. Stephanie! Someone had taken her? Pete or White.

For a moment he was torn between giving chase and going after Susan, who he was sure waited behind this door. Randy was also gone—as much as he hated to trust the man, Jack chose to believe that he'd gone after Stephanie.

He would go after Susan.

Jack had thought about the matter while bringing up the rear on their walk through the tunnels. The more he thought about Susan, the more he equated her with his own daughter, Melissa. It was their innocence, not their age, that bound them.

He hadn't been able to save his own daughter from death, but he would do everything in his power to save Susan. He'd always been a stubborn, loyal guy, but his resolve to save this girl now, in the midst of such chaos, surprised even him.

He'd stopped Leslie back at a corner in the tunnels and told her, “I can't leave Susan. I'm going to find out where the exit is then go after her.”

She looked him in the eye. “I'll go with you.”

“No.”

“Yes.” She would not be moved. “You're a good man, Jack.”

Now they were here, going after Susan, with the surprising fortune of locating Betty quickly. Whether that fortune was good or bad, they would soon know.

Leslie crouched and leaned against the opposite wall, watching Jack.

“It makes no sense,” Betty was saying beyond the door. “Not a lick of sense. Why would anyone risk their neck for you? They won't come.”

“Jack will,” Susan's voice said.

“They still don't have a clue what they're in for; you know that, don't you? They'll all be dead in a couple of hours.”

“Then so will you.”

Jack heard a slap.

He nearly went then. But he still hadn't formed a plan. He very carefully cracked the door.

The study, as they called it, lay as he remembered it with the lone desk and the large mirror. Betty faced the mirror with her back to Jack. She had a brush in her hand and was working through Susan's long, tangled hair.

No gun. Not that he could see.

Betty jerked Susan around to face her. “You don't think I know a thing or two about killing? The guilty die. That means White isn't beyond being killed if it comes down to it. He may have done what he did to bring the house alive, but let's not forget who was here first.”

“You'll be dead by morning,” Susan said.

This time Betty didn't bother slapping her. She put the brush in her hair and tugged. “That's long past your dead time, honey. You're right; they're coming for you. But it's not what they think.”

Jack knew he should be going in now, but their words gripped him.

“They're stronger than you know,” Susan said.

“If they're so strong, they wouldn't be fooled by you, now would they? They don't know if they're coming or going. And they don't know what the real game is.”

Susan didn't respond. Could any of Betty's words be true? Was it possible that Susan was actually with White?

“I don't see what anyone would see in this pretty soft face, anyway.” Betty was squeezing Susan's cheeks, and both were looking at the mirror. Which was odd. “I don't care what White says, we should have killed you the day you set foot in this place.”

Betty squeezed. Tighter and tighter.

Susan whimpered.

Jack pulled back, breathing steady.

“Is . . . is she with us?” Leslie asked. She'd heard.

“Who do you trust: Susan, who risked her neck to save you, or Betty?” Jack whispered.

“But Betty didn't kill her.”

He thought a moment. “Betty has reasons to keep her alive. And Susan saved you.”

“It could be part of the game.”

“No! We can't leave her, even if she is part of their game. I'm going in.”

She glanced at the door. “Okay. Be careful.”

Jack took a deep breath, gently pushed the door, and spun into the room, spade raised high.

But Betty was already whirling, using Susan as a shield. Instead of a brush, she now held a knife, and it was pressed against Susan's thin neck. Susan saw Jack, and the corner of her mouth lifted ever so slightly.

“It's about time,” Betty said, smiling so that her gaping white teeth were bared. “Drop the spade.”

“Don't!” Susan cried.

“I said drop it!”

Leslie stepped in past Jack. “Kill her, Jack.”

“I'll give you to three to drop that thing, or I'm slicing her neck,” Betty said.

“Then what?” Jack demanded, approaching Betty, jaw set. “Huh? Then what, you sick stain of a woman? I'll make sure you never stand up again, that's what.”

Betty backed up, dragging Susan.

“You can't let me kill her; you know that,” Betty said. But there was a hint of fear in her eyes now. “She's the only thing keeping you alive! She's part of the game. You'll see that; I swear you will.”

“Don't listen to her!” Susan said.

Betty flicked her knife, and Susan gasped. Blood seeped from a thin cut on her chin. “What's the matter, you couldn't get out the back door? Shovel won't help you there, sugarplum.”

Leslie walked to the far side of the room, on Betty's right.

“I don't know what you think this sick game is about,” she said, “but Stewart's dead and White wants us to kill you. Is that what you want? A bloodbath down here? He won't stop till we're all dead. Surely you see that.”

Betty smiled. “You think Stewart is dead? Oh, he drowned all right, but he's got strong lungs.”

“Drop the knife,” Jack said, stepping closer. “You kill her, and I promise you I'll remove your head. Let her go.”

“It's White we have to stop!” Leslie said. “We should be working together, not against each other.”

Betty's eyes skipped to Leslie. Jack walked closer. The thought of actually taking her out was turning out to be more difficult than he would have guessed. And there was still the chance that Betty would manage to kill Susan.