Abandon

Lawrence whispered, “Where’s Stu?”

Abigail shrugged, quietly unzipped her jacket, and pulled a wallet from an inner pocket. She fished out a dime, knelt down. The coin made a soft and delicate purr as it rolled across the marble, spinning out just a foot from June’s right leg.

The woman looked up, the bulb of her headlamp making it difficult for Lawrence and Abigail to see her.

“Hurry,” June whispered. “He’ll be back any minute.”

FORTY-FIVE

They crept across the icy marble of the foyer, and when they reached June, Lawrence withdrew Isaiah’s sheathed dagger from his ski pants.

“You okay, sweetie?” Abigail whispered, her words reverberating through the foyer like prayers in a vast cathedral. It was hard to see June’s face with any clarity in the sole, fading light of her headlamp.

“My left leg’s cut pretty bad,” June said, on the brink of tears. Abigail touched her shoulder as Lawrence sat down and began sawing the knife through the climbing rope that bound June to the rafter.

“How long’s Stu been gone?” Abigail asked.

“About ten minutes.”

“We didn’t see any new tracks leaving the mansion.”

“No, he’s still inside. He heard something up on the third floor, went to check it out.”

“What’d he hear?”

“Sounded like wood breaking from down here. It was loud. What happened to you guys?”

“Isaiah and Jerrod are dead,” Abigail said. “It was . . . Look, I’ll tell you that story later. Does Stu still have night-vision goggles and a gun?”

“Yes.”

Lawrence unwound the climbing rope and tossed it aside. “Can you stand up and turn around for me? I’ll cut these off.” The blade sliced easily through the nylon restraints. “June, I think it’d be a good idea to switch off your headlamp.”

The three stood close together in sheer darkness.

After a moment, June spoke, her voice breaking, “I keep looking over there at him. Keep thinking he’ll get up, come over to me. Or that any second, I’ll wake in our apartment, reach over in bed, feel the warmth of him in the dark. But he’s cold now, isn’t he? Do you think I could go over and sit with him? Would that be all—”

“You hear that?” Abigail said.

“What?” Lawrence asked.

“Listen.” From some remote part of the mansion came a sound like a muted jackhammer, and it took Abigail only a moment to place it. “Stu’s firing his machine gun.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Lawrence said. “Scott’s back in town, dead. Isaiah and Jerrod are dead somewhere up near the pass. What the hell’s he shooting at?”

The machine gun went quiet. High above, in one of the upper corridors, came the thump of slow, heavy footsteps. Abigail peered up—they all did—but there was nothing to see in that expansive vacuum of light. She reached down, grabbed hold of June’s hand as the footsteps stopped.

No one whispered.

No one breathed.

Something crashed into the floor of the foyer, and Abigail and June nearly crushed each other’s hands.

They stood in stunned silence, no one daring to move.

Lawrence finally turned on his headlamp.

“Dear God,” June said. The light beam traced a widening lake of blood across the floor to its source—the destroyed head of Stu. He lay unnatural and broken on the section of marble exposed to the skylight, his face torqued away from them.

“You think Stu accidentally fell?” Abigail said. “Or jumped? Remember what Isaiah said about him? How he’d fallen apart since the war?”

“He drank half a bottle of vodka after you left,” June said.

Lawrence shook his head. “Look, his gun’s gone. Night goggles, too.”

“So maybe he left them on the third floor.”

Lawrence started toward the west wing.

“Wait!” Abigail whispered. She caught up with him. “You aren’t seriously going up there?”

FORTY-SIX

Emmett’s plunge had effectively destroyed the central staircase, so Lawrence and Abigail worked their way back toward the kitchen to the west-wing stairwell.

They climbed to the third floor and stood for a second time in that bullet-shredded corridor, Abigail feeling trapped in some kind of repetitive fever dream, coming back again and again to this nightmare world.

Their headlamps passed over the doors, the wood-paneled walls, the mounds of snow where the ceiling had failed.

Lawrence limped a few steps into the corridor, stood there listening.

They proceeded on, over the pockmarked wood where Isaiah had fired up at them through the ceiling, skirting that hole where Abigail had punched through and nearly fallen to her death.

They reached what was left of the central staircase.

“I don’t hear a thing,” Abigail whispered.

“Me, neither. Look at that.” He pointed to where several dozen brass shell casings had rolled against the wall. “What was he shooting at?”

They walked on, their headlamps aimed toward the end of the east-wing corridor, an occasional snowflake drifting down through the ceiling, a speck of bright white in their light beams.

“Maybe he did jump,” Lawrence whispered. “Got fueled up on vodka and freaked out when he heard something. Emerald House shifts constantly. It’s full of noises. Or it could’ve just been an animal. Another coyote.”

“Should we go back, then?” Abigail said.

“Yeah, I think that’s a good—” Lawrence took a sharp breath.

“What?” Abigail whispered. “You’re scaring me, Lawrence.”

“Something just stepped out from one of the rooms at the end of the corridor.”

She clutched her father’s arm. “Where’d it go?”

“Toward the sitting room, I think. It was just a shadow, and it moved so fast.”

“Okay, let’s not do this, all right? This is stupid. Like in horror movies when people walk into haunted houses by themselves for no good reason. I wanna go—”

“This isn’t like that, Abby. Come on. We have to see.”

“No.”

“Then go back down to the foyer and wait with June, but I’m not leaving until I—”

She tightened her grip on his arm, said, “I’m not going anywhere in this place alone.”

“Then I guess you’re coming with me.”

Lawrence continued slowly down the corridor, Abigail clinging to her father like she was eight years old again.