Confessions of a Murder Suspect

75

I was sleeping next to Hugo when a loud crack sounded in the dark of night. We both shot up out of bed, and Hugo clutched my arm.

“Tandy. Was that a gun?”

“Give me your phone,” I said.

“It’s in the study, I think.”

“Mine’s there, too. Stay here,” I said. “Stay. Right. Here.”

“Okay.”

Hugo scrambled out from under the covers and grabbed onto a fold of my pajama top.

I hissed, “Stay here.”

“Okay,” he said again. He was still hanging on to me as I moved toward the doorway.

“It’s probably Samantha,” I said. “She probably just came home.”

“Came home and fired a gun?”

“It wasn’t a gun,” I said, feeling my way in the dark.

The sound had been sharp, like lightning striking a tree or something really heavy dropping to the floor. Like maybe an iron. But who in this house would be using an iron?

Hugo whispered, “Samantha always stops in to see me when she comes home.”

I opened Hugo’s door just a hair.

“Look,” Hugo said, breathing loudly.

He pointed to a thin line of light coming from under the laboratory door. I gripped the key hanging from the chain around my neck. The laboratory door locked automatically when it was closed, and I thought I had the only key.

Clearly, I was wrong. So who had gotten inside Malcolm’s lab?

My thoughts were scattered, my focus gone. I had gone too long without a full night of sleep. I found myself thinking that there was an intruder in the house. Only it might be worse than an intruder. It just might be the killer.

The sound we’d heard had been the lab door slamming, hadn’t it?

I had to get to a phone and call, of all people, the police.

I was sneaking past the lab with Hugo when the door opened and the light coming from the lab showed the intruder in silhouette. He was a man I knew almost better than I knew anyone.

I screamed, “Father!”