Mistress

Chapter 20

My heart thumps so fiercely it robs me of my breath. Someone is in the cabin.

He’s downstairs, probably checking the single bedroom and bathroom down there. But it won’t take him a minute to realize they’re empty and that, other than the living room and kitchen, everything else is up here.

Think. Think think think. What does he know? He knows I’m in the house. But he doesn’t know where. Every light in the house is off. I could be anywhere.

I move on the balls of my feet down to the bathroom adjacent to my bedroom. I tiptoe in, flip on the light, and turn on the shower water. I get back out, sure that he’s heard me, absolutely certain he’s already in the hallway waiting for me, that I’m going to walk into a bullet, but I don’t have a choice, so I move back into the hallway and duck into the next bedroom and I don’t think he saw me. I press myself flat against the near wall and silently name the presidents in order and try to control my breathing. I need to stay near the door.

When I get to Van Buren, I hear the stair groan, that third stair up that I’ve always meant to fix.

Then I hear it groan a second time.

Two people.

They’re up here now, in the hallway. By now they’ve noticed the light emanating from the bathroom and have probably heard the soft, consistent hum of the shower water. Their footfalls suggest they’re not being as cautious now, that they’re moving with more purpose. They’re headed my way, which means they didn’t stop at the first upstairs bedroom.

I’m in the second one.

I can feel their body heat now and pray they can’t sense mine. If I spun around to my right, I could reach out and touch them. Sweat drips into my eyes and I squeeze them shut and hold my breath.

They pass me.

They move to the next door down, to the bathroom, where they’re sure I’m taking a shower.

Then there’s a burst of rapid-fire gunshots, automatic weapons unloading.

That’s when I race out of the bedroom to the staircase.

The rat-a-tat-tat of the gunfire provides me with audio cover. I’m bounding down the stairs before I hear the first sounds from them.

“Shit!”

“Staircase!”

I take the stairs in twos, all my weight forward, barely able to keep my balance as I bound toward the ground floor. I feel the bullets whiz past me in the dark, hear the sounds of them penetrate wood and cloth in staccato thumps. The wall of windows shatters in a violent crescendo, raining glass on me as I duck my head down and blast through the open sliding glass door onto the deck. Time is not on my side, so I don’t turn for the stairs on either side. I meet the outer railing without breaking stride, jump onto the top plank, and vault over it and down, fifteen feet, to the grass.