She stays crouched on the floor for a few minutes, hearing only the sound of her own breath.
“Are you okay?” She hears the loud whisper of Cora’s voice in her earbuds. She puts her thumb in front of her chest to show the camera a thumbs-up and then slowly stands. She takes her shoes off at the door so she can tiptoe, sock-footed and silent, to the curved staircase in the middle of the room.
She holds the railing and walks so softly up the stairs she can’t even hear her own footsteps. When she reaches the top, she stops and listens. She hears flutes and trickling water. It sounds like the meditation music they play at the foot spa. She guesses it’s a sleep aid, but how would Nicola know since she is locked in a different room at night? She doesn’t stop to ask the women. She presses on and thinks this is a good thing because it’s less likely he’ll hear anything. Then she hears a voice and stays frozen, her heart speeding up.
“I am a smart and powerful man. Happiness is a choice, not a condition. I choose to be happy.” At first, she turns to scurry back down the stairs, but then she quickly realizes that it, too, is a recording.
Oh, gross, he’s listening to self-help mantras in his sleep. What a tool, she thinks, but again, this is good. She has to creep past his open bedroom door. She first takes her phone from her bra and stretches her hand ever so slightly around the corner so the camera catches what’s inside.
“He’s asleep,” Cora’s voice comes through her earbuds. “What’s he listening to?” she asks then. “Sorry. Shhh. I know, I’ll—Sorry.”
Paige walks softly past the bedroom door and comes to the second door on the left, which is closed. She has to open it soundlessly. She steadies her breath and turns the knob very slowly, but it still makes a loud click when it opens.
“Shit,” she whispers and then cups her mouth. She didn’t mean to say that out loud. She slips inside the office and takes long, quiet strides to the open closet and then stands inside of it in case the noise woke Lucas up. She waits.
“What are you doing?” Cora’s voice asks. Paige turns the camera around to her face and puts her finger to her mouth, telling Cora to shush. Then she turns the camera to show her the messenger bag on the floor next to his desk. Paige remembers slipping the recorder into a small tear in the lining, which will make it more difficult to get out, but after a minute of standing still and not hearing movement, she goes to the bag and slips her hand inside, feeling for the tear. She finds it.
Her palms are slick with nervous sweat and trembling a little bit as she feels around in the bag lining for the small metal square. She has to make the tear bigger in order to get her wrist through, but she tries to rip it quietly. Then, her fingertips feel what she’s looking for, and she pulls it out. She shows it to the camera and hears them cheer through her earbuds. That was loud: they suck at this. If she were closer to him, that could have been a problem. She doesn’t bother shushing them. She slips the recorder in her bra and wishes she had thought to wear something with pockets, and then she pads gently to the office door and waits and listens again.
There is still mostly silence, with the whisper of the trickling stream and mantras coming from his room, but she doesn’t hear any creaks or footsteps, so she starts to creep down the hall. And then she hears a toilet flush, and she freezes. She hears Cora and Nicola gasp.
She doesn’t know whether to run or stay still in the hall—both feel dangerous—but before she has time to decide, she sees it. His frame in the doorway. A black silhouette, backlit by the bathroom light. He steps out of the shadow and stares right at her. She screams and tries to run past him. She takes advantage of his moment of shock and slips by, but he’s right behind her. She hears him say, “What the fuck?” and “Who are you?” as she tries to outrun him down the upstairs hall. She can see the staircase. If she could just get herself down the stairs, she might be okay.
But she feels him grab her shirt from behind, and it stops her cold. Her shirt chokes her around the neck with a violent yank of his hand, and she falls to the ground.
Paige can hear the unhelpful instructions in her ear from Cora and Nicola telling her to run, as if she’s not trying. He’s so much bigger than her that she doesn’t know what her next move should be. She scrambles to her knees and starts to crawl away, desperately trying to catch her breath.
“Who the fuck are you? Hey! Hey! What are doing here?” he demands, following her. Easily only a few steps behind her. There is nowhere for her to run.
“What do you want?” he says, his face red and spit flying from his mouth. He grabs her off the floor by her hair, and her earbuds rip out and catch in his grip. She lets out a howl and kicks at him. She swings at his face with her nails to prevent him from taking off her mask, but she can’t make contact. He’s too strong, and he keeps her at arm’s length with his fist still holding her hair. Then she kicks him between the legs as hard as she can, and when he doubles over, screaming “Bitch!” at her, she runs past him and down the stairs. It doesn’t stop him. He muscles through the pain and follows her down. She sees the door, she races in that direction, but he catches her near the bottom of the stairs. Again, he pulls her hair, and she wrenches backward and falls the last few stairs until she lies flat on the marble-tiled floor.
She’s glad the earbuds were ripped out because the constant screaming on the other end was only distracting. She feels for the pepper spray around her wrist and holds it in her palm. She feels the thrashing pain up the side of her leg where her pants were torn and the skin was scraped off as she hit the sharp edge of each stair. She feels a bump forming on her head where it hit the ground, but even though she can get up, she stays still a moment. He’ll think he has her.
She doesn’t feel him looming over her. In fact, he’s not near her. He’s across the front room, fumbling in a locked drawer. And then she realizes it: she should have run. He pulls out a small revolver and comes over to her, pointing it at her forehead. She lost her chance.
“I have every right to kill an intruder,” he says, a coldness in his eyes that makes her shudder, that makes her feel like he hopes that’s how this goes down because he wanted to be forced to use his gun. She suppresses a whimper. She uses one hand and her heel to try and push herself backward, away from him across the floor.
“Don’t even think about moving.” he says and stares at her, waiting for something. “Say something, goddamn it! Is this about Georgia?” he says, leaning over, getting close to her face. He searches her eyes, trying to identify her behind the misshapen ski mask, but before he can grab it off her, she takes her shot. She aims the pepper spray in his eyes and hits him with it. He involuntarily drops the gun as his hands fly up to his face.
This time, he can’t see to stop her. She pushes herself up onto her hands and knees, painfully but quickly, and lunges for the front door. She pulls it open with shaking hands, leaving her shoes behind as she runs down the front steps and sprints when she hits the footpath in front of the house.
She doesn’t think it’s safe to run back to Cora and Nicola in case any eyes are on her, so she runs to her own home. She slips herself between the bushes and the siding of her house, ducks into the shadows, and takes off the mask as fast as she’s able. Once she reaches the back garden, she pushes herself inside her back door to safety. She locks it behind her and turns off the lights, praying there was no way he was able to see well enough to track her.
She pulls out her phone, knowing Cora and Nicola will be in full panic. The FaceTime session has been ended somewhere amid the struggle, so she texts Cora.
I got out. I’m home. Not safe to come there now, but I got it. Will bring it over tomorrow.
She doesn’t wait for a response, and she doesn’t have the energy to explain any further. They know she’s safe and out, and so she turns her phone volume down and goes upstairs, even though she can already picture the hundred texts and missed calls she’ll wake up to. She didn’t expect this to happen. She just can’t explain right now. She has no energy left. She makes a small slit with her fingers in the bedroom drapes so she can look down at the Kinneys’ house. The lights are still on. The front door is closed, though. She left it open. She sees him close the front blinds and turn out the lights and she exhales.
She runs a scalding-hot bath and lowers her aching body into the water. Her nerve endings are still filled with electricity, and she tries to take a few deep breaths and calm down. She thinks again of Grant. Wishing he were here right now—a thought that hadn’t crossed her mind in a long time. She wishes he were waiting outside the door with a cup of tea and her robe and that she could hold him as long as she wanted, for years if that’s what it took until everything was better. But she’s pushed him so far away, she doesn’t even know him anymore.
Then she thinks of Caleb. She thinks of him most of the time, but after what she’s just been through, she sees what she has imagined his last moments to be with fresh eyes. Did he feel that same terror? Did he think he was going to die alone? Her poor baby. She would do anything in the whole world to take that pain away from him, to have it be her who died that night.
“My baby,” she whispers into the dark emptiness around her and then leans her head against the porcelain edge of the tub and lets out a wail, and then the sobs come in waves she can’t control. It should have been her.
27
CORA
