Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(57)

“I will.”

Another scream rises, then fades away to nothing. Harper can barely think. “Stay in the car. Press that button there to lock the doors from the inside,” she tells her, walking away, pulling her gun from the holster.

“Jane!”

She turns back.

“Be careful.”

Harper runs to the house.



The man is dying. Lester looks at him, the axe in his hands dripping dark-red blood.

“How doef it feel?”

The man frowns, gasping for air, looking at him with a mixture of confusion and desperation. As Lester squats down next to him, the man looks away, a big tear running from his eye, rolling down his cheek. His breath catches; there is a long moment when nothing else happens, then a release of air, one final exhalation.

Lester stands up and considers the man in his hall. There is blood everywhere, mixed in with the dirt on the floor. Perhaps he should cut him into pieces the way he did with Mack . . . Wouldn’t that make sense?

He hears the unmistakable sound of footsteps crunching their way toward the house. The front door is locked. Whoever is coming is likely looking for the man he’s just killed. If they come in by the back door, they’ll see him lying there in the hall. They might hesitate, back off, and call for help.

Lester wants them to come in. He wants to cut them into chunks and watch them die, watch them draw their last breath. Quickly, he runs to the front door and unlocks it so whoever it is can walk straight in.

Then, he hides.



She tries the handle. The front door is unlocked. Harper eases it open with her foot, weapon at the ready, and moves inside. It’s dark compared to the brightness outside, and it takes a second for her eyes to adjust. There is a staircase, doors to the left and right. On the floor in front of her, a crumpled form lies in a widening pool of scarlet blood—Stu. Harper fights the impulse to run to his side. She watches every angle, carefully crossing the entrance hall and dropping to one knee beside him.

“Oh God . . .”

It’s obvious he’s gone, even before she puts her fingers to his neck and attempts to find a pulse. His clammy skin is already cool to the touch.

The tears come, but she fights them back, swallows them down inside for later. There is blood everywhere, his whole body is covered in it. Harper tries not to look at where he’s been cut—or hacked—into. She reaches out and touches his face.

If I just look at his face, he could be sleeping.

Later, she will find a dark, quiet place. She will drink; she will cry; she will let everything out. But for now, her training kicks in. Harper knows that what she is going through, what she is feeling, must be bottled up inside.

There’s a creak, a foot passing on a floorboard, and she is up, gun in front of her. There is a door to her left, leading to a series of shadowy rooms. A door to the right opens into a scruffy kitchen. The whole place is covered in dirt and stinks to high heaven.

Another creak of old wood. Fine dust filtering down from the ceiling.

Harper looks up at the big staircase, at the landing on either side of it over her head. She holds her gun at the ready and backs her way up to the bottom step, watching for signs of movement from the landing. It is empty. Her heart hammers in her chest, her blood pounding through her veins. She reaches the top step and has to decide: left or right.

Should I call out? Get him to surrender?

Harper dismisses the idea right away. Her hands flex on the gun. Her palms are sweaty. She goes to the left, back to the wall. The door on the other side is shut. She might’ve heard it close behind him if he’d gone that way. That leaves the door she is edging toward, swallowing spit to lubricate the sore dryness of her throat, sweat pouring down her back. She glances down, to the bottom of the stairs, where Stu’s body rests in a bloodbath.



“Stay put, we’re on our way,” Dudley tells Ida on the phone.

“Jane told me to call . . .”

“Listen to me. Lock the doors, roll up the windows,” Dudley says. “Stay where you are. Backup is coming.”

Ida ends the call and is left with the phone, the silence of the car, the house in front of her. She unlocks the door and gets out, gripping the cell phone tight in her hand. A thought comes to her. A name. It howls in her head like a storm wind rushing under the eaves: Jane.



Harper licks her lips, swallows, gets ready to peer around the edge of the door frame. There’s no way he’s on the other side of the landing . . . but what if he is? What if he got the door shut so quietly she didn’t hear it? Now she’s not so sure.

I need to call him out.

Everything inside her begs her not to do it.

“This is Jane Harper! Hope’s Peak PD!” she yells at the top of her lungs, waiting for something to happen, waiting for a sound, for anything to indicate the killer has heard her.

Nothing.

Harper clears her throat. Sweat trickles down one side of her face. She cocks her head, wipes it away on her shoulder. The air in the house doesn’t move; it is hot and stuffy. Funky with mildew, dirt, and grime.

Decay.

A floorboard creaks, ever so slightly, on the other side of the wall she is standing against.

He’s there. He’s listening. If he doesn’t come out you’re gonna have to swing around the door frame and take a shot.

She turns, trying to follow the sound with her gun. The wall behind her bursts apart, explodes, throwing her forward against the railing. A cloud of plaster, dust, and debris flies around her. Harper barely registers the way the hard railing jams into her midsection before a body crashes into her. The wooden rail splits, gives way, and the two of them fall, hard.