Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (115 page)

“She’s gone,” Grant said. “I parked on the street. Came in when I saw her leave.”

“Just let yourself in, huh?”

“Door wasn’t locked.”

“Interesting choice.”

“Says the detective who broke in through the basement.”

“I was worried about you, Grant. I thought you were in some kind of trouble.”

“I’m fine.”

“Thrilled to hear it. What’s with all the candles?”

Grant walked over to a light switch beside the sink, gave it a few flips.

“No power,” he said.

“Strange that Ms. Spiegel would just leave all these candles burning.”

“Probably means she didn’t plan on being gone long. We should get out of here.”

“You been drinking?” Sophie asked. “You smell like booze.”

What could he do? Deny?

“I had a whiskey at the hotel before I rolled up here. You have an issue with that?”

Sophie smiled a smile that wasn’t. She stared Grant down across the island and shook her head.

“What?” Grant said.

“You are so full of shit it’s not even funny.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Has one thing you’ve said to me in the last three minutes even entered the same ballpark as the truth?”

“Yeah. Everything.”

“Look at you. What are you wearing? Jeans and a T-shirt?”

My real clothes are covered in the blood of Don McFee who’s at this moment passing through rigor mortis in a room directly above our heads because of something I still don’t understand. What if I laid
that
on you, partner? Then what?

Grant’s headache and nausea vanished. He felt suddenly perfect, like someone had thrown a switch or hit him with a beautiful morphine push. He straightened, reevaluating everything absent the distraction of agony.

“You’re not even wearing shoes, Grant.”

Fair point.

“Where’s your gun? Where’s your shield?”

“In my car.”

“You wanna tell me what’s really going on here?”

“I just did.”

“No, you just lied to me. For the second time today.”

“Sophie—”

Heavy footsteps thumped above them on the second floor.

Sophie cocked her head. “Thought you said we were alone.”

“Listen to me.”

She turned and started down the hallway as the footfalls reached the top of the stairs.

“Sophie, come back here.”

They began their descent.

Grant moved around the island and followed Sophie down the hall.

By the time he reached her at the foyer, Steve Vincent was five steps from the bottom of the staircase and progressing at a steady, unhurried pace toward the front door, the same incomprehensible vacancy in his eyes that Grant had seen in Jude’s. Steve wore pants and shoes, but his shirt, coat, and tie he carried in a bundle under his left arm.

Sophie said, “Sir, do you live here?”

Steve reached the foyer and walked past them to the front door.

“Excuse me, sir, I just asked you a question.”

The man turned the two deadbolts and slung back the chain.

“Sir! Seattle Po—”

Grant said, “Let him go.”

Steve opened the door, disappeared outside.

Sophie looked at Grant.

“Who was that?”

Where to begin?

Sophie looked up the staircase. She started toward it, but Grant stepped into her path.

“That’s not a good idea,” he said.

The intensity in her eyes belied a card he’d never seen her play—fear.

“What have you gotten yourself into, Grant?”

Where to
even
begin?

“Get out of my way,” she said.

“I can’t let you go up there.”

“Grant?” From upstairs, his sister called his name.

“Who’s that?” Sophie asked.

His eyes flashed to her belt.

Back to her face.

At least he could think again.

“Grant!”

“Who’s calling you, Grant?”

With his arms already at his sides, Grant eased his left hand forward and went for it—flicked open the brass snap on Sophie’s belt and snatched her handcuffs before she had a chance to react.

He locked a bracelet around her left wrist as her right hand shot into her jacket.

Glimpsed the black composite stock of her G22 as she tore it out of the holster.

He slapped the barrel, the Glock ripping out of Sophie’s grasp and arcing toward the living room.

It struck the hardwood and slid across the floor as Grant jerked the handcuffs toward the banister and locked the other bracelet around a baluster.

It came with a vengeance—Sophie swinging with her free right arm, her fist slamming into Grant’s jaw with enough force to turn his head and kill the lights.

Grant came to on his back at the foot of the stairs, sat up punch drunk to the sound of keys clinking together.

He scrambled to his feet and lunged at Sophie, snagging the key chain out of her grasp and ducking as her fingernails raked at his face.

Grant stumbled back as she pulled against the balustrade.

The front door to the brownstone stood wide open.

He crossed the foyer and closed it, locked back the deadbolts and rehung the chain.

“The fuck is wrong with you?”
Sophie screamed.

His jaw throbbed, hot to the touch. Bruised but not broken.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

One of the steps near the top of the staircase creaked. Grant looked up, saw the shape of his sister descending through the darkness.

She stopped halfway to the bottom and eased down onto a step.

“What’s going on, Grant?”

“We had a visitor while you were upstairs.”

“Who you’ve handcuffed to the banister?”

“Paige, meet Sophie. My partner.”

Paige rested her forehead against her knees and said, “Oh God.”

“Sophie, meet Paige. My sister.”

Sophie glared up the staircase, and then back at Grant.

He said, “Paige, we need to talk. Could you come join me in the kitchen please?” And then to Sophie. “Give me your purse.”

She wiped the mascara-stained tears from her cheeks and threw it at him.

“I hate this,” Grant said.

He unzipped her handbag and fished out her phone. Powered it off, slid it into the side pocket of his jeans.

He set the purse on the first step and looked at his partner, asked, “Who else knows that you came here?”

Paige walked past Sophie and Grant and started down the hallway toward the kitchen.

“Fuck you.”

“Sophie, I will explain everything to you. I promise. But right now, I need to know if more people are coming. For all of our safety.”

She blinked through a sheet of tears that glistened in the candlelight and said at barely a whisper, “Just me.”

“How’s the hand? You didn’t break it hitting me, did you?”

“No.”

“The cuffs all right? Too tight?”

She shook her head.

Grant paused at the banister on his way down the hall and tested the bracelet around Sophie’s left wrist and the bracelet around the balustrade.

Chapter 25

Paige stood waiting for him at the kitchen island, her face grim in the candlelight.

“How bad is this?” she asked.

“We need to leave.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know, but more people will come.”

“From your work?”

“Yes.”

“What’s going to happen when they ...” She cut her eyes toward the ceiling.

“Nothing good.”

“Your face is swollen.”

“She hit me.” Grant glanced back down the hallway. “I should talk to her.”

“About what?”

“Make her understand what’s—”

“No.”

“No?”

“Why would you tell her about any of this?”

“Does it not look bad enough already? I just handcuffed my own partner to a staircase and took her gun.”

“How’d she even find you?”

“The private investigator I called this afternoon. My phone died, he couldn’t reach me, so he called her.”

“Does this mean she talked to your PI?”

“I would assume.”

“So maybe she has some info on the house.”

“I’ll find out. I’m going to tell her everything, Paige.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because maybe she believes me, and then it’s three of us against whatever’s upstairs.”

“You didn’t believe me until you saw your friend cut his neck open with a piece of glass.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe she won’t believe me. But she will listen.”

# # #

Grant sat down a foot outside of Sophie’s reach.

She glared at him, dark eyes ablaze with equal parts sadness, anger, and fear. In the thousands of hours they’d spent together, he’d never seen this look before. A new level of intimacy reached under the worst possible conditions. It felt unnatural, impossible that he might be the object of that intensity. That
he
had hurt her. In the back of his mind, he’d always thought it would be the other way around.

“I need you to do something, Sophie.”

With her free hand, she pushed her straight black hair out of her face. “What?”

“Try and remember what it felt like to trust me.”

“Are you joking?”

“Three months ago, when you had your biopsy—”

“Don’t do that.”

“Hear me out. You know I would have been sitting in that waiting room when you came out, whether you asked me to be there or not.”

Grant thought he saw the hardness in her eyes give just a little.

He went on, “Now imagine the kind of situation the guy sitting in that doctor’s office would have to be in to physically disarm you and chain you to a banister. Imagine how scared out of his mind he’d have to be.”

“I can’t if you don’t tell me.”

“I’m going to. And I hope you think about all the things you love, or used to love, about me. I hope you’ll give me the benefit of all the doubts you have.”

“Why should I?”

“Because no one in their right mind would believe what I’m about to tell you.”

It was raining again. Grant could hear it pattering on the windows. A good, rich smell wafted in from the kitchen. The soft crackle of browning butter. Paige making grilled cheese sandwiches, he hoped.

The modest heat of the day had fled and a damp, merciless chill had begun to overtake the brownstone.

“Those Facebook profiles you sent me last night?”

“Yeah?”

“One of them was just a pair of eyes, but I recognized them. They were my sister’s. What I said about the concierge was true. He told me about this place. I showed up last night, and sure enough, Paige was living here.”

“Your sister, the one you hadn’t seen in years, is living in Queen Anne and working as a prostitute?”

Grant nodded. “Maybe you can understand why I came here alone.”

“I’ll give you that.”

“She let me in, and right off, I noticed she didn’t look well. Strung out, I figured. She’s always struggled with addiction, so I’ve seen it before. But nothing like this. She looked emaciated. Pale as a ghost.”

“You should’ve called me.”

“Be glad I didn’t.”

“Why?”

Grant glanced up the staircase.

His stomach churned.

“I need to show you something. If I uncuff you, am I going to regret it?”

“No.”

Grant walked into the living room, grabbed the flashlight from the coffee table, and then retrieved Sophie’s Glock from beneath a tufted wingback chair that sat in the corner. He pocketed the magazine, racked the slide, and caught the semi-jacketed .40 cal hollowpoint in midair.

“You think I’d shoot you?” she asked.

“You ever think I’d cuff you to a banister?”

Grant dug her keys out of his pocket as he walked back over to the stairs. Unlocking the bracelet from the balustrade, he cuffed it around his own wrist and helped Sophie onto her feet.

“Can I see your hand?” he asked.

She held it up, the swelling already begun along the ring and pinkie fingers below the knuckles, Sophie’s light brown skin flashing the darkening blush of a bruise.

“Next time you hit someone,” Grant said, “keep your fist closed.”

“Your jaw’s an asshole,” she said.

“You hit like a girl.” He motioned toward the steps. “We’re headed up.”

“Why?”

“To show you something.”

“Can’t you just tell me?”

“Remember what they say about seeing?”

“No.”

“It’s believing.”

They climbed in tandem, Grant’s right hand bound to Sophie’s left. Halfway up, they lost the morsels of light from the candles down below. Grant switched on the flashlight, its beam striking the landing above them with a circle of illumination that seemed much weaker than the last time he’d used it.

He was suddenly aware of the shudder of his heart, like something shaking manically inside his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Sophie asked.

“I don’t like it up here.”

They reached the second floor and Grant led them to the foot of the corridor that accessed Paige’s bedroom.

He passed the beam over the table, the lamp, the peeling wallpaper.

“What are we doing up here?” Sophie asked.

Grant shone his flashlight on the bedroom door.

Still closed.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

They moved down the corridor. As they neared Paige’s room, Grant felt himself struggling against the same fear he’d known as a child—staring down the hall from his bedroom in the middle of the night, weighing his thirst for a drink of water from the kitchen against the knowledge that he’d have to walk past the yawning black mouth of the bathroom to get it.

As they passed Paige’s door, Grant felt that magnetic pull he’d dreamt of.

A burning desire crystallized in the back of his mind which contained all the fatal allure of a suicidal question ...

What would the barrel of this gun taste like?

What would it feel like to jump?

What if I stepped in front of that bus?

What if I just opened the door?

It would be the simplest action, one he’d done tens of thousands of times in his life.