BEFORE WE MOVED ON, WEfound a heavy box of old bar glassware against the wall and dragged it across the room to shove in front of the little door. It took us both, all our strength—“What’sinthis, Alex’s anvil collection?” et cetera, et cetera.
When I opened the door to Oona’s closet and ducked through, one of the dogs gave a huffy, deep bark of warning from somewhere in the apartment.
“Bear,” I said as we struggled through the overstuffed closet, tripping among Oona’s shoes. “It’s me.”
“What’s that famous story about the world behind the closet?” Marisa said as we emerged in Oona’s room.
Bear and Lemondrop blasted in through the bedroom door, barking and then wiggling their butts, tails thrashing us, hard. They were especially excited to see their old pal Marisa.
“You’re not going to claim you read that one to me, too?” I said.
“I would have,” she said. “I think I got the book for you when you were…”
“Eight? Nine? If only you’d still known me.” I crossed to the open door to the living room and looked out. Everything was quiet.
“Whose room is this?” she asked.
“My roommate’s.”
“Do you use that entrance… a lot?”
“Only when being chased by murderers,” I said.
“Murder?”
She’d spent four days in isolation, and didn’t know. “A theory. Come on.”
Marisa trailed after me into the apartment. “But… you’ve seen Sicily? She’s okay, right?” Her pitch rose toward alarm again. “You’d tell me? If something had happened to Sis, you’d tell me?”
I probably wouldn’t. Not right now, anyway. “She’s fine. If she listens to voicemails, she should be here soon.”
“Here?”
“Downstairs,” I said. “And that’s where all the working phones are, too.”
I edged past the dogs through our kitchen toward the door, trying not to think that in every movie I’d ever watched, this was where the monster crashed through, snarling and gnashing their teeth.
The dog treat jar on the counter gave me an idea. “Move,” I said to Marisa. “You don’t want to be on the wrong side of this experiment.”
Marisa shrank against the wall.
Don’t even try tossing two dogsonetreat. “Wufers?” I whispered. They wentwild, barking and snapping their cookies out of the air, a synchronized event. That should clear the landing.
The dogs sniffed at Marisa for further treats while I went to the door to look through the peephole.
“I can’t see every corner where someone might be hiding,” I said. “There’s a blind spot near the door to the pub.”
Marisa nudged me aside and replaced me at the peephole. “Oh,” she said.
“I don’t know what to do.”
She pulled back from the door. “I see where we are, now. You knew about that little door because… Right.”
“It would have been a good place to grow up,” I said. “Once my arm healed up.”
She turned her head, frowning. “Your arm?”
“We need aphone,” I said. “Oona doesn’t have a landline…”
