The House That Death Built (12 page)

Good luck with that
.

She knew everyone else in the
group had marked this room. And that if there was any noise from this point
forward, one of the first moves Rob would make would be to order her or Tommy –
or both – back here to take the couple by whatever force might be necessary.

Fun.

She squeezed her brother's arm as
the door closed. He looked at her, irritation clear in his eyes, then calmed
and nodded. He got it. She wasn't going to stop his fun, but there was a time
and a place.

He'd get his chance.

They all would.

Rob was standing in front of the
final, closed door. He should have been moving to open it, but he was just
standing. And the longer she watched, the longer he continued to do nothing at
all.

After a while – too long – she
sidled up to him. "What?" she whispered.

He looked around. The doors, the
rooms, the hanging lamp, all of it. "Something," he said.
"Something about this place…." Then he shook himself, casting off whatever
thoughts had reached up from his subconscious. He nodded to Kayla.

She reached for the closed door.
The final door.

The only one that mattered.

She opened it.

And they went in.

So far, every step had been an
agony, culminating in the moment when Tommy looked like he was going to lose
control and rape and murder the girl in her room. That was, Aaron thought, as
bad as it could get.

But he was wrong. Even after he
shut the girl's door and rejoined the others, his dread somehow grew. Each step
down the dark hallway was worse than the last.

It didn't matter. No one else
felt the way he did: this was just money and maybe some fun. The people in the
house, the lives in danger –

(
Dee!
)

– made no difference to anyone at
all.

Kayla turned the doorknob on the
final door. Like the rest of the doors, this one opened outward, a tight arc
that somehow went too fast and terribly slow.

The rooms at Aaron's back were
large-to-huge. He figured that they took up half the entire upstairs floor
space.

The master bedroom was the other
half. It stretched the entire width of the second floor. To Aaron's left was a
sitting area: divan and chaise, separated by a bookshelf. A door led into one
of the twin bathrooms – a "his" and a "hers."

To his right, a vanity sat
against one wall. It looked Victorian, with outward-swept legs that curled gracefully
into several drawers, all of it topped by a mirror held in place by scrolled
woodwork. A full-length mirror leaned against the wall near the vanity, as well
as a wardrobe that looked so beautiful and expensive it was nearly shocking;
the type of thing you expected to see in a movie, not in an actual home. Beyond
the wardrobe was a half-open door to the second of the master bathrooms.

And in the middle of it all sat a
king-size, four-poster bed. An actual canopy draped across the dark wood posts,
heavy fabric that looked softer than most blankets. Tassels and golden cords
hung down, twisted artfully around each bedpost.

Snoring in the bed was a man. Rob
had said the mark's name was Crawford, and this man certainly matched his
description: dark hair, graying at the edges; a hawk nose that made him seem a
bit peremptory even in repose.

Beside Crawford, another shape
lay outlined by the thick duvet. The cover was pulled up so high on her that
Aaron could only see a spill of dark hair on her pillow.

Crawford took a deep breath.

Three guns came out, pointed
instantly at the pair on the bed: Kayla, Tommy, and Rob were
all
packing. Aaron felt the world start spinning a bit faster under his feet.

He had known they would all bring
weapons. No matter what they said, what they promised, none of them would ever
consider a job without bringing firepower. But the sight of the guns still sent
a shock through his spine. Everything was out of control.

It was never
in
control.

Aaron started trembling, his
muscles tensing and releasing so fast he expected his teeth to chatter
together.

Say something.

What? What can I say?

Crawford snuffled. Then took
another deep breath and visibly slipped back into an even deeper slumber. The
guns lowered. Not pointed at the floor, but at least not directly aimed at his
head.

Rob pointed. In the back of the
room, between the two bathrooms, was an open door that would lead to the
closet. To the safe. The door hung open, revealing a few hanging clothes,
darkness beyond.

Rob nudged Aaron. Almost a shove,
and he nearly tripped over his feet before he regained his balance. He righted
himself, got his feet planted firmly under him, and glanced at Rob. His eyes
were flat, unblinking. If the man went to a rattlesnake family reunion, he'd
fit right in.

Aaron moved reluctantly to the
closet. He entered, and in only a few steps he fell into pitch blackness. He
pulled out a flashlight – not the usual white light carried by people the world
around, but a specially-designed red LED light. It had the dual advantage of
not ruining his darkness-adapted sight, and being low enough that even sleepers
in the same room wouldn't be jerked to wakefulness by its glow. A safe light
for a safecracker.

The clothes pressed in on him,
and the light made it seem like he was trespassing a killing floor.
Claustrophobic in spite of the fact that the closet was larger than should be
legal.

He saw the safe.

A bit of him shriveled inside. He
knew the safe was supposed to be there, but actually seeing it drove out the
last remnants of hope. They were in the house, in the owners'
room
, but
if the safe hadn't been here –

What? You think Rob would have
just walked out, whistling and smiling?

Maybe it's better this way.

He moved back to the closet door.
Leaned out and gestured to Rob to join him.

Rob did, moving quickly and
quietly. Tommy and Kayla kept their guns pointed in the general direction of
the bed, but they couldn't resist moving toward the closet as well. Looking in
to see the prize.

Aaron had already moved to the
back of the closet, kneeling by the safe. It was four feet tall, maybe three
feet deep. A good-size safe, certainly big enough to hide a lot of bearer
bonds.

Rob nudged him, gestured for him
to get started. Aaron flicked his eyes toward the closet door. Not at Kayla and
Tommy, who were looking in with naked greed. Beyond them. To the sleeping
couple on the bed.

What if they wake up?

Rob's mask moved as he grinned
beneath it. He drew a finger across his throat.

Aaron knew that would be the
answer. But it still stung. Every second of this night was a betrayal: a
revelation of the lies Rob would speak, the violence he would commit.

Aren't you doing it, too?

No. Trying to stop it.

Rob nudged him again. Aaron drew
tools from his pocket. The safe had an electronic lock: a keypad built into the
face of the door, a lever next to it that would open the safe after the right
combination was entered.

Aaron clicked off his red
flashlight. Moving by touch he drew out another light from one of his pockets.
He turned it on silently – it had originally clicked, but he adjusted it and
now it slid on and off without a sound – and aimed the pale yellow light at the
keypad.

Unlike the red light, the yellow
one wasn't designed to save his vision. Rather, it emitted a spectrum that
reacted with the skin oils people left behind on everything they touched. It
wouldn't give him the combination, but it was an important first step to
getting it.

All the metallic keys shone in
the light, curved edges refracting the glare in different directions. None of
them looked different from the others.

Aaron shifted a button on the
side of the light. Now it was green – a different spectrum. And now several of
the keys looked different, like a darker green ink had been applied: hundreds
of layers of fingerprints. These were the keys that the owners used when they
opened the safe.

He took out a grease pen and
wrote the numbers on the front of the safe: "1, 2, 5, 7, 8," then
turned off the light and returned the device to his pocket. He turned the red
light back on, and removed a small screwdriver from his pack. The keypad was
fastened by custom screws, but he had a series of adjustable heads that should
work.

He picked the right one after
only two tries, and a moment later had the fasteners off and laying in a neat
row atop the safe. The keypad dangled from a thick cord of braided wires, like
a flat eye hanging from the optic nerve. It always disquieted Aaron to see, and
he wasn't sure whether it was the image itself, or the fact of what he was
doing when he saw it.

Another tool came out of his
pockets. This one was a device that looked like a multimeter of the type
electricians use to measure current, complete with a red lead and a black one,
each with a tiny alligator clip at the end.

He clipped the leads to a pair of
the wires leading to the keypad, twisting the clips slightly as he did so that
they stripped off the insulation and lay bare the wiring beneath. The scanner
had a small keypad below an LED screen, and he used it to type in the numbers
he'd written on the safe.

1-2-5-7-8
.

He hit another button, and the
LED began blinking, numbers scrolling across it so quickly they were blurry
masses of green and black.

Rob edged close to him. He
watched the scanner for a moment, then whispered, "How long?"

Aaron didn't want to answer. He
waited a moment, irrationally hoping that Rob would forget he'd asked and just
leave. When Rob prodded him, he answered, "I have the base numbers…
probably. But finding the right combination will take some time."

Rob leaned in so close Aaron
could tell what he'd eaten last. It was pizza. With anchovies. "How. Much.
Time?" Each word was a whisper, but they somehow managed to convey Rob's
willingness to escalate things if he didn't get the right answer.

"Six to twenty minutes, best
guess," he finally said. He looked past Rob, past Kayla and Tommy, again
returning his gaze to the sleeping couple. "Please, Rob, we don't have to
–"

"Make it fast." Rob
tapped Aaron's shoulder with his gun. "I'd hate to see what happens if
anyone wakes up. Or if I have to
wake
them up."

Rob looked at his watch. Seven
minutes and counting.

He knew this was the one – he
knew
it. He could hear what was in the safe calling him, screaming for him to
come to it, to take it.

And yet every minute passed with
nothing to show for it. Every second a new disappointment.

Maybe my luck's
not
changing, after –

The LED blinked. Not the way it
had been, a strobe-flash of numbers flinging past too quickly to see. Now it
blinked steadily, slowly. A set of numbers on the screen appeared, disappeared,
then reappeared once more in an endless loop.

"25178."

The safe clicked.

Rob almost dropped his gun in his
excitement. He looked back and saw Kayla and Tommy staring in: they'd heard the
noise. He should probably make them pay attention to the couple on the bed,
rather than what was going on here. But his excitement swallowed everything
else. All there was – the sum of the universe – was the safe, was him, was his
long-awaited
right
to return to the top.

Aaron unclipped the scanner, then
pulled the safe's lever to the side. The door pulled open with satisfying
slowness. The heft of something crafted to protect the most valuable of
objects, the most precious of –

"The hell?"

The words were spoken at full
volume, and Rob nearly scolded the speaker for forgetting to whisper, until he
realized that the voice was his own.

He said it again. "The
hell?"

There was nearly nothing in the
safe. Certainly there were no bearer bonds, no jewels, no money, not even a
manila envelope that might hold birth certificates or passports or social
security information.

There was only a single paper. It
was thick, nearly construction paper, folded in half so it stood like a tent on
the single shelf that bisected the interior of the safe. And on it, scrawled in
dark, angry slashes of ink, was, under the circumstances, the strangest
sentence Rob had ever seen.

those who have nothing cannot be
robbed

Rob stared at it for a moment,
his mind completely stalled.

Not here. The bonds aren't here.
My
money
isn't here!

Aaron reached out and took the
paper. As he did, another piece of paper fell from inside it. He picked up the
smaller piece and looked at it under his light. It looked like it might be part
of a photo, but too small to make out what it was a picture of. He flipped it
over, and on the back was a number: "1."

Rob stared at it all for another
angry beat. Blood surged through his chest, rocketing skyward and filling his
head and ears with a thundering pulse. Rage took control of his muscles and his
hand tightened on his gun to the point of being painful.

"What the hell is
this?" he growled. He still didn't whisper. Whispering was done, the time
for stealth was past. "Where's the money? Where are the bearer bonds and
–" He cut himself off, spinning to where Tommy and Kayla were still
looking at the safe. "Get them up," he said.

"Rob, please don't –"
Aaron began.

"Get them
up
!"
Rob roared. "I want –"

The words ended. His voice
silenced. His mouth hung open, like he'd had his jaw broken not by a surprise
punch but by the mere sight of what lay beyond the closet door.

Kayla and Tommy saw him looking
beyond them. They turned, again moving in that creepy unison that always made
Rob uneasy.

Tommy cursed. Kayla made a small
noise that might have been a gasp.

The bed, the beautiful
four-poster bed in the center of the room.

It was empty.

Crawford and his wife were gone.

Rob ran out of the closet. He
sensed Aaron scooping up his tools and shoving them into a pocket behind him.
Then he was standing beside Kayla and Tommy in the bedroom as shocked silence
gave way to shocked speech.

"Where'd they –" Tommy
began, with Kayla saying, "We just looked away for a minute –" at the
same time before Rob cut them both off with a terse, "Shut up. Find
them."

All of them had been moving by
ambient light until now – flashlights were always a double-edged sword during a
burglary. Now Rob, Tommy, and Kayla all grabbed Maglites from their pockets and
turned them on. The beams slashed through the room, creating phantom movement as
new shadows sprung into being.

Rob moved toward the closest
bathroom door as Kayla ran to the other and Tommy dropped to his knees to check
under the bed. Aaron was standing in the doorway to the closet, staring down at
the paper and the bit of photo that had been in the safe.

"Help, you idiot!" he
snapped.

Aaron moved, but Rob didn't see
where he went. He was already in the bathroom – easily discerned as the
"his" bathroom by the shaving articles on the sink, the tight circle
of expensive colognes beside them.

Other than that and the fixtures,
there was nothing in the bathroom that
shouldn't
be here; certainly no
one cowering in the bath or hiding in the linen closet at the back of the room.

Rob rushed out just as Kayla
emerged from the other bathroom. She shook her head, and so did Tommy, who was
still kneeling beside the bed. Aaron had managed to move all of three feet out
of the closet before he was apparently paralyzed by indecision.

Dumb, stupid idiot.

I'm gonna kill him.

Later.

Rob motioned for Kayla and Tommy
to follow him out – he didn't so much as look at Aaron. If he had, he might
have killed him right then. And as nice as that would be, it would add too much
of a mess for the current situation.

He rushed out of the master
bedroom, back into the long hall that traversed the rest of the second floor.

A bit past the ceiling lamp that
still hung awkwardly overhead, he skidded to a stop.

Tommy stopped right beside him:
he had seen it, too. Rob shared a look with the big man.

The doors in the hall –
all
of them – were closed.

They were open. Just a minute
ago, they were
all
open.

Now they were tightly shut. It
couldn't be that Crawford and his wife took shelter in two different rooms and
shut the doors behind them, either: that would account for
two
more
rooms with closed doors, not six.

There's no way they could have
done this. Even if they wanted to run room to room, closing doors all the way,
there's no way. There was no time.

Tommy darted out a hand and
pulled on the door that led to the media room. Any pretense of stealth was gone
now, so when he gripped the knob it wasn't with the quiet motion of a thief, it
was just a hard grab followed by a quick rattling as he first tried to turn it
then actively shook it.

Locked.

And something inside him told Rob
that all the doors would be the same.

What's going on?

Kayla had drawn even with them,
pressed close behind her brother. Looking from left to right with wide eyes.

Rob suddenly didn't care what was
going on. He didn't want to know.

Tommy began moving – fast –
toward the stairs. Rob followed instantly. This wasn't time to solve mysteries,
it was time to get the hell out.

He heard Kayla behind him, and a
third set of footsteps that meant that coward Aaron was bugging out as well.

Only he's not a coward, is he?
We're
all
running.

And we should. We need to get
outta here fast.

"I don't like this.
Something's –" Kayla began, again overlapping her brother's speech as he
said, "Where did these ass –"

Then Tommy went down. Just fell
hard like he'd been kneecapped by a thug with a baseball bat. And he screamed
just like it, too, his free hand clapping against his shin. Rob swung his
flashlight to look at it, and saw blood sheeting between and over the big man's
fingers.

"Tommy!" screamed
Kayla. She rushed to her brother, tried to hold her own small hand against his.
Both hands were red in an instant.

Rob stared. Just stared, and
couldn't understand.

What's happening?

He swung the light away from
Tommy, nausea settling like a lead ball in his stomach. He wasn't afraid of
blood – he'd caused more than a little of it to flow in his day – but for some
reason the sight of the big man howling on the floor, bloodied by some unknown
force… it –

(
scared frightened terrified
)

– deeply unnerved him.

His flashlight beam swung toward
the end of the hall, toward the balcony and the stairs. It caught the bottom
edges of the crystalline chandelier that hung above the foyer and sent it
sparkling back. A light too bright and beautiful for this dark night that had
begun so right and suddenly felt so wrong.

He swept the light back and
forth, side to side. Looking for something, anything, that might explain what
had just happened.

Tommy was still screaming. Aaron
was beside him now as well, removing a dark blue handkerchief from a pocket and
binding it against the man's shin.

The handkerchief soaked
immediately. Dark blue deepened to arterial red.

Rob kept sweeping the flashlight
back and forth. And saw something.

It was just a glisten, the barest
flicker. And it wasn't so much the gleam of… whatever it was… it was the
placement
.

Something was hanging in midair.
Just hanging there, impossibly suspended in what seemed to be the air itself.
Rob cast his light back to where he had spotted the glint.

It was blood. A few drops just
hanging
.
Red jewels that had spewed from Tommy's leg, not falling to the carpet but
simply gathering in midair about a foot –

(
about shin-height
)

– above the carpet.

How? How can it be there?

He drew closer. Knelt before it
almost like he was worshipping the sudden, dark miracle that had appeared
before them.

But it wasn't a miracle. A thin
wire of some kind – nearly invisible as spider silk – stretched across the
hall. A trip wire, yes, but one built not simply to halt, but to maim.

Tommy's blood finally fell from
where it had beaded on the wire. Surface tension released its pull, and the
droplets drooped and plummeted to the carpet.

Rob swung his light to the right,
to the left. The wire wasn't attached to the wall, wasn't looped around eyelets
or anchored by screws.

It simply
disappeared
into
the wall on either side. Anchored somewhere beyond the paint and wood and
drywall.

How could they have –

The thought cut off. The answer
was obvious before it completed:
They couldn't have.

Just like the doors all closing.

No way to do
any
of this.

And, finally, a repeat of the
thought that kept bouncing around his mind, an echo in an endless loop. An echo
that didn't fade, but instead grew louder with each repetition.

What's happening?

What's happening?

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

Then he looked behind him. Looked
away from the wire because it and the sudden lack of control it represented
were too terrifying to contemplate.

He looked behind him.

And screamed.