23. Cassidy
When I emerge from my room, I make sure the door to Ethan’s master suite is closed before hurrying downstairs. I don’t know how long he’ll be busy, so I have to be fast.
I put another load of laundry in the machine, and then detour to the scullery to fetch my bucket of cleaning supplies. If our paths cross, at least I can try to convince him I was doing my job.
I’ll just have to play dumb. After all, he was pretty adamant I shouldn’t clean the basement or the attic. So it’s perfectly logical to assume that’s where he might hide something.
After some poking around, I find the basement entrance at the back of Ethan’s wine cellar, next to the kitchen’s large pantry. I leave my cleaning supplies in the kitchen and take a slow breath before letting myself in through the basement’s wooden door.
I almost climb out of my fucking skin at the creak its hinges make. I tell myself the sound—no matter how atrocious—couldn’t have traveled to the master suite.
What would a therapist say about these delusions I have, I wonder?
Standing at the top of the basement’s pitch black staircase, I feel like the final girl in a horror movie.
I fumble over the wall for a light switch and breathe out a sigh of relief when I find it. A row of fluorescent tubes flicker to life, flooding the basement with a harsh, white light. I squint down at the innocuous collection of junk from my vantage point at the top of the open concrete stairs.
Shit.
I don’t know what I was hoping to find. Mom bound to a chair in the middle of a bloodstained floor?
But it’s just another dead end.
I suppose I’m going to have to scrounge up whatever courage I have left and just tell Ethan who I am and get him to admit that he met with my mother. He could choose to keep lying, of course, but what else can I do? Who would keep evidence like that lying around?
Serial killers keep trophies.
The thought sends a horrified shudder through my body. I’ve made a few leaps in my reasoning the past few days, but this is the biggest one yet.
Ethan went from being a liar to the reincarnation of Ted motherfucking Bundy.
I’m so done with my imagination. Sure, I have hella erotic dreams, but I don’t need serial killers in my life. I’m going to close this door, go back upstairs, and finish cleaning this McMansion.
Who knows, Ethan might even reward me for a job well done.
Hmm…if what happened last night was punishment, what could a reward be?
I’m smiling as I turn to leave, but then something catches my eye.
I slowly turn back, straining to make out the pile of boxes at the back of the basement.
Is that…?
I close the door behind me, cringing all the way to my fucking toes as it lets out another hair-raising creak. My chest grows tight as I trot down the stairs, and my nose wrinkles with the urge to sneeze as I kick up dust with every step.
Someone was down here recently, if the faint trail scuffed through the dust on the floor is any sign, but they definitely didn’t do any cleaning.
The pile of boxes comes into view, and I slow down. Most of them are unmarked, but the most striking thing about them is the lack of dust. They must have been put down here recently.
Less than six months ago?
My heart beats faster, my mouth going dry with anticipation as I walk around to the box that caught my eye from the top of the stairs.
RE—
Large, angular writing in black Sharpie. I couldn’t see the rest of the letters from the top of the stairs—the fluorescents cast too dark a shadow on them—but I already know what I’m going to see.
Rebecca.
My heart wants to pound through my chest as I step closer. Besides my mother’s dead body, I can’t think of anything more damning for Ethan than a box with her name on it.
Filled with what?
The stuff she took from our house the night she vanished?
Stuff he then had to get rid of after he’d gotten rid of her?
I have to force myself to keep walking, because now that I’m so close to the truth, I almost don’t want to know anymore. At least if she ran away, that means still alive. That there’s still a chance she might come back, that we could be a family?—
RECEIPTS
My feet shuffle to a stop.
Receipts?
I blink at the word scrawled on the box.
Receipts?
Are you fucking kidding me?
I shove the box so hard it goes flying off the stack and hits the floor with a thump. I stare at the box beside it, this one unmarked, and shove it too. It rolls over a few times before stopping.
Fuck you, Ethan Remington!
I shove another box, then another. They go flying into those already on the floor. I don’t know what I’m enjoying more—destroying Ethan’s neat stacks, or the sound as the boxes hit the floor.
One box doesn’t thud or a thump, though. It crashes…and there’s the faintly muffled yet unmistakable tinkle of broken glass inside.
Shiiiit…
I stand frozen until I can force my legs to move.
“Please don’t be broken, please don’t be broken…” I whisper as I creep closer to the box that made the ominous sound as it struck the floor. It’s lying on its side, a now clearly visible FRAGILE sticker glaring at me.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
My hands are shaking as I attempt to right the box as carefully as possible, my face scrunching up at the sound of all the broken things tumbling around inside.
If I put everything back where I found it, no one will ever know I was here.
I pick up the box, return it to the stack, and then turn to get another from the floor.
But my body locks up as my brain signals desperately to me.
My gaze flicks back to the box.
BECKS
I blink at the word a few times, making sure I’m actually seeing what I’m seeing.
Becks? As in…short for Rebecca? Dad sometimes called Mom Becka, but never Becks…but maybe that’s Ethan’s pet name for her.
My breath stalls.
I was right. He was keeping a box of my mother’s things down here like some sick trophy. Those must be his footprints. How often has he come back down here to relive what happened?
To relive her murder?
Rage flushes my cheeks with heat.
I reach for the box with every intention of ripping it open, but I’m interrupted by the sound of someone opening the basement door. I instinctively drop into a crouch, my back pressed against the closest stack of boxes as I try to stop breathing.
My soul nearly leaves my fucking body when Ethan calls out, “Cassidy? Are you down here?”
Nothing to see here! Just go about your business.
But Ethan’s spidey sense must be picking up some kind of disturbance because instead of leaving, I hear heavy footfalls coming down the stairs.
Maybe if I’d come out of hiding as soon as he called me, this scenario wouldn’t have seemed so suspicious. But now he’ll know something is up. My only option is to hope he gives up and leaves.
But Ethan Remington smells a fucking rat.
“Cassidy?”
I don’t like the mischievous purr of his voice, like we’re playing a game of hide and seek that doesn’t involve one of us being murdered when it ends.
My heart beats inside my chest like a drummer on meth.
“I know you’re in here…”
You know nothing, Jon Snow.
Attempting to triangulate his position by the sound of his footfalls isn’t working too great. He’s coming closer, but I can’t tell if he’s going to the left or the right of my stack of boxes.
With the overhead lights on, I’ll be immediately visible if I choose the wrong direction to scamper to.
“I thought I made myself very clear when I said the basement was off limits.”
Why the hell does he sound like he’s enjoying this?
Oh my God, maybe this is a sex kink, him stalking his victims through this massive house before slicing their throats.
Or worse.
Fuck, I wish I wasn’t blessed with such an active imagination.
His footsteps pause, and I nearly wet myself as the tension builds. What is he doing? Why did he stop? Has he spotted me? My body is shivering with the effort of keeping still in this crouched position.
Ethan sneezes.
The sound is so unexpected, so loud, so fucking violent, I barely trap a surprised yelp behind my mouth.
“Jesus, it’s dusty down here,” he mutters angrily.
Gotcha! I’m ninety-nine percent sure I know where he is, which direction he’s headed, and how to escape without him seeing. Mustering every vestige of courage I still have left, I bite my lower lip and scurry across to a nearby row of shelves filled with gardening supplies.
The stench of compost becomes stronger as I get closer. Footprints crisscross the floor. I guess the last person to come down to the basement was whoever dropped off all these bags.
Kind of messes up my earlier theory, but I’ll have more than enough time to think about that later.
On the way to the police station…if I survive this.
“Cassidy!”
There’s nothing friendly about Ethan’s voice anymore. My fingertips prickle with panic as I hurry across the basement floor, keeping cover as much as possible as I head for the stairs.
Shit. The stairs.
If Ethan looks back, he’ll see me running up them.
But the alternative is waiting.
No fucking way I’m doing that. My heart will give in.
I don’t look back. I don’t second guess myself. As soon as I reach the stairs, I race up them as silently as I can. Thank God I’m only in socks—shoes would have made too much noise.
If there’d been a key in the door, I’d have locked Ethan inside and called the cops. But I head straight for the wall phone in the kitchen instead.
I rip the receiver off its handle and press it to my ear as I stab in 9-1-1
But there’s no dial tone.
This phone is as dead as my fucking mobile.
Possibly as dead as Becks.