Gun Shy(79)

I close my eyes again as I hear her coming up the stairs. I wait for her to get into bed, but her footsteps continue past our bedroom.

And up to the attic.

Huh.

I don’t hear anything else, and she’s only gone for ten or fifteen minutes. I spend the time listening in vain for anything, but it’s dead silence.

When she comes back, she slides into bed. Nothing amiss. She probably went to find something. All her medical records are stored up there, and her old baby clothes. She probably just went to get something. I’m being paranoid.

“Leo?” she shakes me again. I know I should respond, but something in me tells me to stay still. She lies down beside me. The bed starts to rock slightly. Oh my God, is she doing what I think she’s doing? She is. She’s touching herself. My dick immediately gets hard, and I have to shift onto my side to stop it from being mashed into the mattress.

Beside me, Cassie stills. “Leo?”

This time, I groan in response. Moments later, hands are pulling my boxers down, my extremely pregnant girlfriend crawling up on top of me before I can crack an eye open. We don’t speak. She takes my hand and places my fingers against her clit as she guides me inside her, and it’s mere seconds before she’s coming against my touch.





CHAPTER FORTY-SIX





Leo



* * *



Cassie is showering the next morning when I go up to the attic. It’s locked, no surprise there. No problem. I’ve got a power drill, and it takes me about three seconds to remove the lock and open the door. I’m not sure what I’m expecting to find. Maybe nothing. Maybe a whole lot of dust. But something in my gut tells me I’m going to find something.

The room looks just like you’d expect an attic to look. Low, sloping ceiling. Things stacked in the corner in neatly labeled bins and boxes. Oddly, there’s a high stack of old milk cartons. And in the middle of the room, a plain pine storage box.

I want to know what’s in that box.

But it’s locked, another padlock that prevents me access. No matter. I study the lock, looking for a weak spot, and then I smash the whole thing off with the tire iron I brought up with me. It takes two or three hits, and I hope to fuck that Cassie’s shower drowns out the noise.

I drop the lock and open the latch. I don’t know what I’m going to find, but suddenly, I’m terrified. I open the lid before I can talk myself out of it, and what do you know, I’ve been sleeping under a box with a dead body inside it for an entire year.





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN





LEO





I recoil from the box, stumbling back until I find the wall. I lean against it, trying to breathe, my palm mashed against my mouth as I try not to scream this entire fucking house down.

Did I just see what I think I saw? A pine storage box in the attic that’s now somebody’s coffin. I bite my fist to stop myself from yelling, edging back to the box.

Damon King.

My lovely girlfriend was lying about the letters she got from him, unless she handed him the paper and pen herself. Because her stepfather hasn’t been fishing in early retirement or taking stress leave in the Ozarks. No. He’s been in our fucking attic this entire time.

I peer over the edge of the coffin, and just when I think things can’t get worse, I’m sorely proven wrong. Dead Damon opens his eyes and stares straight at me, his bright blue eyes the only thing I recognize about before. But this isn’t a horror movie, folks. He’s not a vampire waiting to rise from his coffin and drink my blood. He’s a man who’s been starved until his skin stretches painfully over his bones, his cheekbones sharp and jutting, his neck bulging with veins, an array of chains and handcuffs restraining him. He’s got duct tape over his mouth, to keep him quiet I suppose, and without thinking, I rip that tape off.

If it hurts, he doesn’t show pain. No, the captive who’s been imprisoned in our attic opens his mouth and fucking laughs.

There’s something about his laugh — hollow and throaty and maniacal — that terrifies me almost to the point of a goddamn heart attack. I slam the lid of the box shut, but he’s still fucking laughing, the sound drilling into my brain like a sledgehammer. I open the lid again, just long enough to slap the tape back on his mouth, and then I slam it shut again.

“Leo!” I hear Cassie yell from downstairs. Damon’s in our attic. He’s in our fucking attic! I must be in fucking shock, my head swimming in a sea of what the fuck as I exit the attic and head down to the bathroom.

“Yeah?” I say, my voice sounding foreign, what the fuck has she done? Cassie doesn’t notice me, one hand on the shower wall as steam billows around her.

“Oh, shit,” I say, noticing the way she’s hunched over, her face scrunched up in pain. “Is this it?”

What the fuck have you done?

What the fuck have you DONE?

But I can’t ask her to please stop being in labor so she can explain to me why the FUCK there is a dude tied up in our attic, a man who looks like he’s been starved within an inch of actual death. If it weren’t for the eyes, I wouldn’t even recognize him, because he’d surely fit right into a concentration camp in wartime Nazi Germany.

“This is it,” Cassie breathes, straightening, as what I’m assuming was a contraction passes. And then she’s fine, normal, standing in the bath smiling at me. “We should start filling that birthing pool.”