The Spite House(63)
“Hey, you need to answer me,” the man said. “There’s a little girl in this house, isn’t there? Look, I’m not going to hurt her, but I need her. I need her help. She can help my wife, that’s why I’m asking about her. That’s all, you see?”
“There’s nobody else here but me,” Lafonda said.
“That’s a lie. Don’t lie to me.”
“Just take whatever you want. There’re lots of valuable things—”
“I’m not here to rob you, goddammit. Listen to me. You are going to get yourself hurt, and the old woman hurt, too. And the little girl, too, by mistake. By mistake if I start shooting and I don’t know where she is. Now I know you’re lying. I know Eunice is here. I’ve been here before, I met her back when she had the other one before you. Letty. Letty was the one before you. You know that, don’t you? So you know I’m not lying. I know what I’m talking about. I know the old woman’s here, and I know that a little girl is, too. So don’t lie to me about that anymore or you’re going to make me do something I don’t want to do.”
“If you shoot me, they’ll hear it,” Lafonda said. “Then they’ll hide in a room and lock themselves in and call the police. If you really have been here before you know how big this place is. There’re a lot of rooms they can hide in.”
“Listen, lady, goddammit, I am not playing around. You really want me chasing them around here and shooting this place up to flush them out? Does that sound safe? Are you even listening to what you’re saying? To what I’m saying? I don’t want to hurt anybody, but you’re going to turn this into something it doesn’t have to be.”
He pressed the gun harder into her back, and her understanding of the situation told her that the time for talking him down was over. “They’re upstairs,” she said.
“Where upstairs?”
“Eunice’s room. Do you remember where that is?”
“No. Walk me up there. And don’t get stupid.”
She moved forward, taking each step with deliberate care to show the man that she was not thinking of running. He kept a hand on her shoulder and raised the gun to the nape of her neck. At the top of the stairs she turned right in a stiff way that she hoped would make him feel as if he were partially steering her. He’d told her to lead, but she thought it would be best for him to feel as though he were still in physical control. This was important as they passed the open door of the library. He wouldn’t see Stacy if he glanced inside. The chair she sat in faced away from the door and covered her, and she was as quiet as an actual librarian. But if she sneezed or coughed, or if her page-turning was just a bit louder than Lafonda thought it was, then this man would go inside to investigate, and Lafonda had no plan for what to do if that happened.
She resisted the urge to hold her breath or turn her head away from the library’s doorway as she passed it, to do anything different from what she’d been doing. Her pulse picked up and she feared the muzzle of the gun would register this like a stethoscope, or that her smartwatch would blink on and ask, “Would you like to record an exercise?” It was one thing to “act casual,” which she already didn’t know how to do, but a different thing to “act as scared as you already are, no more so.” She had no way of knowing whether she kept herself from signaling to the man that anything was amiss, even after they passed the library and came to Eunice’s door. He could shove her into Eunice’s bedroom, shoot them both, and then double back to the library to find Stacy if she had tipped him off. She tried not to think of this. Her legs might give out if she latched on to it as a true possibility.
The door to Eunice’s bedroom was ajar. Lafonda gave a courtesy knock and waited for Eunice to respond, “Yes?”
“It’s me again,” she said, a little louder than she would under normal circumstances.
“I know it’s you. What is it now?” Eunice said. As Lafonda pushed the door open the man did indeed shove her ahead, so hard that she almost fell to the floor, saved only by putting her hands out on the chaise longue a few feet from the bed.
This is it. He’s going to shoot us. She turned to see the man pointing his gun away from her, holding it low and with both hands like the center stick of an airplane he was pushing into a dive. She followed his gaze to what grabbed his attention. Eunice stood just outside her bedchamber’s bathroom, still in her sleeping gown and robe. If any shock had ever shown on her face upon seeing the gun, Lafonda had missed it. Eunice glowered at the man and cocked her head like she was looking for the right angle to take before lunging into an attack. She took a small step forward, and the man took a larger step back before the gun reminded him that he was the only armed party in the room.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Renner?” Eunice said.
Hearing that name made Lafonda feel sick, and for the first time she believed that he wasn’t some local, drug-addled black sheep there to rob them, someone who’d been spying on them for a few days and baked up a master plan where he’d use Stacy as leverage to be sure Eunice gave him the most he could get. No, he really was here for Stacy.
“Where’s the little girl?” Max Renner said. “I know she’s here. I’m not here to hurt anyone, but I need to know where the girl—”
Lafonda shouted, “Stacy, run!” She did not know what made her do this at this moment. Even as the words came out she thought she might be doing the wrong thing. Making the worst choice that she could. It didn’t even feel like a decision, more like an action she had no real control over, like waking up every morning. Something you weren’t doing a moment before and that was already behind you by the time you realized it had happened. “Run away right now! Run!”