You're Next

Chapter 20

‘We know who you are.’

Mike stirred in bed, the hoarse, whispered voice in his ear. Next to him, the heat of Kat burrowed into his kidney.

His eyes cracked open. The baby monitor, eye level on the nightstand, stared him in the face.

The red bars flared again, rising and falling like a painted mouth. ‘The question is, do you?’

And then an earsplitting screech ripped Mike fully awake. It was the sound made when the receiver in Kat’s room came unplugged, but in the darkness, unexpected, it sounded like nothing so much as a shriek.

He sprang out of bed, digging in his drawer for the revolver and bullets. Beside him Kat rolled over with a scream, banging into Annabel, and then both were flailing upright, frantic in the sheets, the monitor still wailing until Annabel grabbed it and tugged free the cord. Sprinting down the hall, crashing into walls, Mike fought bullets into place, dropping some, kicking others and sending them pinballing across the floorboards.

Leading with the.357, he swung into Kat’s room. A dreary stillness – made bed, orderly books, vacuum-striped carpet. The only movement was the curtain fluffing up with the breeze. On numb legs he moved forward, sweeping the curtain aside.

Both locks unfastened. The window, cracked open several inches. Black square of night looking back at him through the glass.

He shoved the window the rest of the way open and popped out the loosened screen, which flew to nestle in the moist bushes below. Leaning out, he aimed left and then swung right, but there was only stillness and the faint hiss of sprinklers along the perimeter.

Annabel called from the hall, her voice trembling. ‘Mike?’

‘I’m going outside. Take Kat, lock yourselves in the bathroom, bring the cordless phone, and call 911 if you hear shots.’

He hopped through the window and dashed to the side of the house. A few steps down the concrete run, he could make out the wooden gate, unlatched and swaying in the breeze. The cold blew across him, and he noticed that he was barefoot, wearing boxers and a T-shirt.

He ran to the gate, steeled himself, then shouldered into it hard, springing into the driveway with the.357 braced in both hands. No one there.

He jogged across the front lawn, revolver at his side, and stopped, wet grass chilling his feet. The bug zapper on the Martins’ porch across the street hummed and threw off a smudge of burnt orange. Towering like witches’ hats, the cypresses at the property line nodded in the wind. He listened, but the breeze was up, branches and leaves rustling all around.

‘Where are you?’ It felt strange speaking to an empty street. ‘You want to hide?’ Fueled by anger, his voice steadied. ‘I’m not afraid. Here I am. Right here!’ More rustling, but nothing else. ‘You think you know who I am?’ He spun, shouting to the night. ‘Who am I, then? Who am I?’

The bedroom light clicked on next door at the Epsteins’. He could hear Kat crying inside. Crickets twitched on blades of grass at his ankles. After a time their chirping resumed.

Hearing a crackling of car tires, he turned sharply, greeted by a single burp of police siren. A sheriff’s-deputy car coasted up in front of his mailbox, and he eased his arm behind his back to hide the revolver. The window glided down to reveal Elzey’s dark face. She hopped out, slammed the door.

‘What are you holding?’

Turning away, Mike shoved the.357 into the waistband of his boxers, praying that the weight wouldn’t cause it to fall through one of the leg holes. He held his bare hands to either side.

‘I know what you put back there, Wingate.’ Elzey moved forward across the curb, the heel of her hand riding the butt of her hip-holstered pistol. ‘You don’t have any registered guns in your name, so you’re in serious shit if you’re holding.’

‘I didn’t give you permission to come onto my property.’

She halted. The yard was dark, and shadow caught in her face, made her look hard and rawboned. Markovic was out of the squad car now, too, staring at him across the white roof. The taste of autumn – decaying leaves, mulch, dew – was strong at the back of Mike’s throat. A faint sliver of moon cast meager light.

‘Step back,’ Mike said. ‘Or show me a warrant.’

‘You sure you want to play like this?’ Elzey asked.

Mike said, ‘Why are you here?’

‘After you left the station,’ Markovic said, ‘we were concerned.’

‘So concerned that you’re right outside, keeping an eye,’ Mike said.

‘That’s right,’ Markovic said. ‘We were cruising by, checking on the house.’

‘You didn’t happen to check my backyard, too, just now? My daughter’s window? The inside of her bedroom?’

The deputies’ faces pointed at him out of the darkness. Markovic jabbed a finger at the lens pegged to the rearview mirror in the cruiser. ‘We’ve got time-stamped in-car footage and GPS, both of which show our entire patrol tonight, so you’d better watch what kind of accusations you throw around.’

‘Someone just broke into my daughter’s room.’

‘You sure you’re not hearing things?’ Elzey asked. ‘I mean, running around half naked with a gun in your underwear at one in the morning doesn’t exactly unconfirm our suspicions.’

‘Half naked, sure. But no gun.’

‘Okay,’ Elzey said. ‘So if there was a break-in, we’ll need to come onto your property if you want us to take an incident report.’

‘Another incident report?’ Mike said. ‘No thanks. Let’s wait and see what kind of headway you make on that first one.’

Elzey shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

Mike walked backward to the gate to keep an eye on her and the revolver hidden. She watched with amusement. When he moved through the gate, she climbed into the passenger seat, the door slamming at the same time gate hit post.

The engine turned over, and the squad car drifted away.

The front yard was still.

Crouched in the dappled shadow of heavy-headed fronds at the far edge of the house, William leaned back against the dew-beaded sill of the kitchen window. His grin sprang into being, floating in the dark like the curve of a sickle.