She thinks she hears a smacking sound. She heard it earlier and thought perhaps it was the man clapping his hands together as he paced in front of Leo.
But this time the smacking noise is followed by the unmistakable sound of Leo crying out in pain.
“Please stop,” Leo begs, his voice louder now, and audible.
“Pie,” Sue screams. “Are you okay?”
Silence is her only response. She redoubles her sawing efforts with the nail file.
Almost there.
Chapter 23
“Shut the hell up in there!” the man roars at Sue.
He stands over Leo, who has slid down and is now lying in a fetal position, curled up on the carpet. His cheeks are bright with red marks in the shape of handprints. A small trickle of blood is leaking from a busted lip.
“You’re not going to tell me what I need to know, are you, Leo?”
Leo says nothing. He is nearly catatonic. He is trying to concentrate only on his breathing. His mouth has never felt so dry in all his life.
“Okay,” the man says, kneeling next to Leo. “If I can’t get information from you, you’re going to pay in another way. Where’s your safe? Where do you keep your money?”
Leo turns his head, waking up a bit from his stupor. Maybe this is almost over. All of this has been the charade for a simple robbery. He just needs to tell the invader where the money is, and then maybe he’ll finally leave.
“There’s a couple hundred dollars in my wallet,” Leo says. “It’s in the kitch—”
“I’m not talking about a couple hundred dollars,” the man snaps. “I’m talking about your stacks of cash. Where do you keep them?”
“Stacks of cash?” Leo says.
“Yeah,” the man says, flustered. “In your safe. You’ve got at least a hundred grand here, don’t you?”
“We don’t have a safe,” Leo says. “I don’t keep much cash in the house.”
“Are you joking with me? Do you think I’m stupid? You’re a millionaire. What about gold? How many gold bricks do you have?”
Leo shakes his head.
“If you want,” Leo says, “we can go to an ATM and I’ll make a withdrawal. I think I can withdraw five hundred dollars in a single day. Or maybe it’s only three hundred. I’m not sure.”
“You goddamn rich people,” the man says, disgusted. He stands up and begins pacing. “You ruin people’s lives and don’t have a care in the goddamn world. You don’t give a damn about who you hurt just to make yourself richer and richer. And you put your money in the goddamn bank and just let it sit there. Other people could really use that money, you selfish, greedy bastard.”
As the man paces, his voice gets louder and louder. His face turns red. Blood vessels stand out on his forehead. Spit flies from his lips as he talks—more to himself than to Leo.
His anger is building to a new level of ferocity.
“You think you can get away with anything,” he growls. “Well, not today. Today is a day of reckoning for you, Leo. Today, you’re finally going to get what’s coming to you.”
“This isn’t right,” Leo croaks. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You rotten, sniveling excuse for a human being. You made promises and you lied. You lied!”
Leo asks, in earnest, “Promises to whom?”
The man is taken aback.
“You don’t even know what did, do you? You destroyed her…after all she did for you. You’re gonna pay!”
Chapter 24
The blade of the nail file slices through the last millimeter of plastic. Sue can hardly believe it—her hands and free of their restraints.
Sue can tell the conversation—if you could call it that—is becoming more and more heated. She can hear the terror in Leo’s voice and the anger in the man’s.
She checks her watch.
It’s been fifteen minutes.
She takes a deep breath.
Okay, she tells herself. It’s time to act.
Sue clutches the door handle with trembling fingers and swings it open quietly. For a moment, Leo and the man are silent. Sue steps out onto the carpet.
She looks at the phone on her side of the bed, then lets her eyes scan toward the door. She takes a few gingerly steps forward, keeping her eyes fixed on the doorway. In another step or two, she should be able to see across the hall to where Leo and the man are located.
Now she hears noises—some kind of scuffle.
Grunting.
She takes another step forward, and all of the muscles in her body lock up in terror.
The man is holding Leo down with a pillow over his face. In his other arm, the man is holding a knife. He drives the blade down, stabbing it into Leo’s neck.
Leo squirms.
His face is free for a moment, and he screams, “Muffy, he’s killing me!”
The man laughs—a jovial sort of chuckle that sounds all the more sadistic because it doesn’t match what’s happening. The laugh sounds like it’s coming from someone watching a sitcom on TV, not a murderer in the act of killing someone.
Sue’s paralysis breaks. She opens her mouth and screams as loud as she can, “Noooo!”
She rushes forward. In a flash, the man drops the knife, reaches for his holster, and spins around with the gun aimed at Sue’s face. Sue stops short at the bedroom’s threshold.
She has time only to draw in a quick, terrified breath before the man shoots her in the head.
Chapter 25
Leo sees the muzzle flash out of the corner of his eye and hears the thunderous bark of the pistol. But his attention is on Sue. A tuft of her hair blows out from her head, as if she’s been hit by a puff of air.
His wife of forty-one years staggers backward and falls onto the carpet.
Leo tries to sit upright, craning is his neck to see Sue, flailing with one arm and holding his bleeding neck with the other. Blood coats his hand and is dripping onto the carpet. The man, who is still crouched over him, is also splattered in blood.
Stars burst in Leo’s vision—and he fears that at any moment he’s going to pass out.
And then I won’t wake up, he thinks.
He isn’t sure this is a bad thing. If Muffy is dead, then he can’t imagine going on living without her.
But then a miracle happens.
His wife sits up.
Blood is dripping from her hairline down the side of her face. She reaches up and tentatively touches a spot on the side of her head where her hair is matted and dark red.
Sue looks confused—unsure how she’s still alive.
Her eyes are alert. Her face is full of determination. Leo’s heart swells with relief.
That’s my Muffy, he thinks. Nothing can stop her.
Then horror overtakes him as the man rises to his feet. He holsters his gun and bends down to pick up his knife.
Leo wants to stand up, wants to fight the man off. He digs down, tries to find the strength. He’s never wanted anything this badly in his life. He has to stop this man!
He rolls onto his stomach and crawls, watching the man walk toward Sue.
Leo makes it as far as the hallway. But the room is getting darker, as if someone is dimming the lights. And Leo can’t find the strength he desperately needs. His heart—beating so painfully hard earlier—seems to be slowing down. Leo’s whole body feels numb.
All he can do is lie on the floor and watch.
Sue rises to her feet and flops onto the bed, crawling toward the telephone on the other side. The man grabs her by the sweater and pins her against the mattress.
The man raises his knife and brings it down—again and again—into her back, shoulders, and neck.
Sue’s body goes limp.
Chapter 26
When he feels her body go lifeless beneath him, the man climbs off Sue and stands at the edge of the bed, watching her. His chest is heaving and his back muscles are screaming in pain.
That took a lot out of him.
But it looks like
he finally got the job done. Sue is lying facedown, with blood spots growing all over her white sweater, crimson flowers blooming in the snow. Her face is obscured by strands of her hair, a fistful of which is sticky with what looks like strawberry jam.
Her glasses are lying on the comforter, the lenses spattered with blood.
“Crazy bitch,” the man mutters.
He reaches out and pokes Sue’s buttocks with the knife blade to make sure she’s dead. Satisfied, he pockets his knife and moves to wipe sweat off his forehead with his shirtsleeve, but he notices blood splatters on the fabric. He looks down at himself. There is blood all over his clothes—both Sue’s and Leo’s.
He huffs, annoyed, and grabs his coat off the floor, and then his hat. He positions the fedora on his head, taking some pride in the act. He feels like the hero in an old black-and-white noir film.
He walks out into the hall, where Leo is lying on his side, holding his hand to his throat in a mess of congealed blood. His eyes are barely open and he is still breathing, but the man can see that Leo Fisher won’t last much longer. His skin is pale, his lips practically purple. Leo looks like a zombie in a low-budget horror movie.
The man laughs. Leo Fisher is a zombie, he thinks. He’s dead but just doesn’t know it yet.
The smell of gunpowder lingers, but a strange coppery scent dominates the air, like a perfume added to cover the unpleasant odor of gunfire. That perfume, the man realizes with a grin, must be the smell of blood.
The man steps past Leo and looks around on the carpet for the shell casing from his Cobra .380. When he locates it, he tucks it into his pocket. He looks at the computer and the desk and considers what to do about his fingerprints. He walks back across the hall and sifts through the pile of Leo’s clothes on the floor. He grabs a pair of boxer shorts and walks back to the office. He wipes down the keyboard and mouse on the computer. Then moves to the surface of the desk. He whistles while he works. He feels quite jovial.
He was getting more and more angry as he questioned Leo, that lying bastard, but now that the job is over, he feels a certain calm contentment about the whole thing. It didn’t go as well as he’d hoped—he would like to be leaving here with a bag full of money or some valuable information. Or both.
But the main goal has been accomplished—killing Leo Fisher.
The man looks around, trying to remember if he touched anything else. Wiping off his fingerprints is probably unnecessary, he thinks, but there’s no harm in being overly cautious.
When he’s satisfied he’s eliminated any prints he might have left, he walks back over to where Leo is lying on the floor. He drops the boxers on the floor next to the dying man. Then he pulls out his cell phone.
Staring at Leo, the man punches numbers on his phone and waits.
Chapter 27
Leo stares up from the floor at the man who murdered his wife.
The man holds a cell phone to his ear, waiting for the person on the other end to pick up. The man is carrying himself as if this is just another phone call, as if he’s at the grocery store and is calling home to see if he needs to pick up more milk.
Leo is close enough to the man to hear the woman’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Is it done?” she says, her voice muffled and unrecognizable through the phone.
“Yeah,” the man says. “He went down easy.”
The female voice says something Leo can’t make out, and the man chuckles in response.
“Sometimes it just doesn’t work out,” the man says, and both he and the woman laugh together.
There’s something about the way the man says, “Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.”
It’s as if the man is saying an inside joke—something he and this woman must say to each other, like a quote from a movie that they both find ridiculous. Or something that was once said to one of them that they’ve since talked about often—so much it’s now a punchline to them.
The man is still talking to the woman on the phone, but Leo’s thoughts drift elsewhere. His mind is a murky fog—he’s barely conscious—but he has the feeling again that he knows this man from somewhere.
The phrase echoes through the cloudy canyons of his mind—Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.
Chapter 28
Leo stands at the desk of his employee Alecia Schmuhl as she packs up her belongings into a cardboard box. Her eyes are puffy because she’s been crying.
Leo hates to see her like this. He never likes terminating people, but firing Alecia is especially painful.
“You’re going to make a great lawyer someday,” Leo says.
“Just not here,” Alecia says spitefully.
She takes a framed photograph—the last of her possessions—and tosses it onto the top of the box.
“Please don’t feel bad,” Leo says. “Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.”
Alecia lifts the box, and Leo’s eyes drop for an instant to the photograph. It’s a picture of Alecia and her husband. Leo knows his name but has never met him, but the sight of the two of them looking happy makes Leo feel even worse, so he looks away. His eyes only drift over the image of her husband for a split second.
He doesn’t expect to see Alecia again.
And he certainly doesn’t expect to see her husband two weeks later—ringing the doorbell of Leo’s home pretending to be an SEC agent.
Chapter 29
For Leo, the world seems to darken and then lighten, darken and lighten, as if someone is standing at the light switch, constantly adjusting the dimmer.
He knows what’s happening—he’s slipping in and out of consciousness.
He rouses awake for a moment and notices the man—the psychopath who invaded his home—is still standing over him, talking on the telephone.
“Cool,” the man says to whomever he’s talking to. “Meet me at the front door.”
With that, the man pockets the phone. He bends over at the waist and puts his hands on his knees. He stares at Leo.
“Guess what, Leo?” the man says cheerfully, like a friend who has good news. “You’re going to die.”
Then the man’s face changes from merry to mad. He clenches his teeth and stands. He pulls one leg back like a soccer player ready to make a penalty kick. When he drives the toe of his shoe into the side of Leo’s head, fresh lightning bolts explode through Leo’s skull.
Instead of knocking Leo out, the blow has the opposite effect—it wakes him up.
As the man walks away, Leo feels a burst of energy. He sits up, grabs the underwear from the floor, and holds the cloth against his bleeding neck. He crawls on his knees and one hand down the hallway.
He makes it to the end of the hallway, where he can see through the living room to the foyer. The front door is wide open, and a woman is approaching on the walkway, carrying some kind of object. It looks like a milk jug, only bigger.
The man leans down, and the two embrace with a long, tongue-filled kiss.
When they break apart, the man shifts his body, and Leo can see the woman’s face better.
Leo squints his eyes.
“Alecia?”
She was behind all of this?
The woman he’d fired from Bean, Kinney & Korman hands the object she’s carrying to her husband, Andrew Schmuhl.
“Finish them,” Alecia says, and she spins on her heel and heads back down the walkway.
Andrew closes the door and turns around. Leo can make out the object now.
It’s a gasoline can.
The thought of being burned alive flashes through Leo’s mind. Then blackness overtakes his vision, and he slumps to the floor.
His last thought before he loses consciousness is that hopefully he’ll be dead before Andrew Schmuhl sets him on fire.
Chapter 30
Sue Duncan opens her eyes.
She rises from the bed to her hands and knees. She fumbles around with her hand and grabs her glasses. Even though they are splattered with blood, she can see better wit
h them.
Through the blood-smeared lenses, she looks around the room and out into the hallway to make sure the intruder isn’t near.
She’s been playing dead, biding her time.
When the man pulled the trigger of his gun, she’d felt the bullet graze her skull. She’d fallen down, but had realized right away that she was going to live. That’s when she’d jumped up and headed for the phone.
But that had been a mistake, because the evil maniac had been on her in seconds. She should have played dead then, she realized.
As the knife came down over and over again, she knew she couldn’t fight him. She had to do what she should have done the second he shot her.
After he jammed the knife into the side of her neck, she closed her eyes, went limp, and held her breath.
It took all her willpower not to scream out in pain and terror. After he left the room, she breathed a slow, silent sigh of relief. But still she didn’t get up. The phone was only a few feet away, but she would need time to dial and to speak into the receiver.
So she waited.
As the man talked to Leo. As he talked on the phone. As he whistled as if this was just another day at the office. While he did all these things, Sue waited.
But she hasn’t heard him for a while now. From her position on the bed, she can’t see either the intruder or Leo. There’s a trail of blood in the hallway, but no sign of Leo.
Maybe he’s still alive, Sue thinks. Maybe there’s still time to save him.
She crawls forward. Blood dribbles onto the comforter from the wound in her neck. She grabs the telephone and puts the receiver to her ear and listens for the dial tone.
The line is dead.
The cord is disconnected from the wall. Not just unplugged, she notices—the wire itself is torn. The man must have done that during one of her stays in the bathroom. He must have known what she was thinking.
Sue wants to cry. She wants to give up. This is too much.