Chapter Eight #2
Ana had made one real friend, at least: Salvador Santos, Saoirse’s tutor—the man who had rescued her on the road that first day.
Since then, Salvador always sat next to her at breakfast and regaled her with the latest house gossip or his own stories.
He had been born in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, Ana learned.
His grandmother had raised him. They didn’t have a lot of means, but Salvador was smart and precocious and won his way into a prestigious boys’ school and then a scholarship to Stanford, where he’d met Ransom.
Salvador and Ransom weren’t friends, exactly, but they were friendly.
Salvador served as a de facto tutor for Ransom’s fraternity, which Ana came to learn meant he wrote their term papers for them and secured answers to exams in exchange for cash.
Salvador majored in languages and philosophy, and he spoke Portuguese, English, Italian, Spanish, and French fluently.
His grandmother had passed away while he was at college, so when he graduated, he had no reason to return.
Instead, he had traveled all over South America, offering translation services and tutoring to get by.
And then, a year ago, he had gotten a call from his old acquaintance Ransom Towers, asking for a favor.
So he had returned to California to oversee Saoirse’s education.
Salvador was, without a doubt, Ana’s closest friend in the house.
Now, Ana opened her bedroom door and peered down the hall, first one way and then the other, squinting into the dark. It was empty.
She padded across the hallway quietly. She knew which door it was, even though she’d never been inside. In the dark, she had to feel around for the handle. It twisted in her palm, and she sent up a silent prayer of gratitude that it wasn’t locked. She slipped in and shut it silently behind her.
Once inside, Ana flipped on the light.
In many ways, Ransom’s bedroom was a mirror image of hers, though slightly larger and with a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in the far corner and a built-in desk. There was a fireplace and sitting area near the door, just like in her room, but his had a liquor cabinet against the wall.
Ana locked the door behind her. That would buy her at least a few minutes if someone were to try to come in, though in that case, her only recourse would be to go out on the balcony and scale the side of the house.
Ana’s stomach dropped at just the thought of it.
Ransom’s balcony overlooked the cliffside, meaning any misstep would result in a staggering drop four hundred feet down into the cold ocean and jagged rocks. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.
Ana turned on the dim desk lamp and switched off the bright overhead light in the hope that, should anyone pass by in the hall, they wouldn’t see a light on under the door.
Now it was time to get to work.
It struck Ana as odd—unsettling, even—how neat and sterile and, well, bare the room was.
This was the room that Ransom had grown up in, spent his whole childhood in, and yet there was nothing to suggest that a child had once occupied it—no school memorabilia hung on the walls; there were no trophies lining bookshelves or ribbons to denote past achievements.
There were no photographs of Ransom with ruddy cheeks displayed in frames, his sweaty hair pushed back, his arms slung around the shoulders of his teammates on a rugby pitch—no pictures of him on a beach vacation with his family.
There were no personal photographs at all.
Instead, there were black-and-white landscapes—the sun peeking through clouds in Yosemite, snow-covered pines in a forest, a fallen tree in a still lake.
Even Ransom’s bookcase lacked warmth or personality.
There were no well-worn Chronicles of Narnia or Hardy Boys book sets, no Stephen King paperbacks or James Bond novels or guilty pleasure reads.
Instead, there were only the classics, books by Pynchon and Gabriel García Márquez, books on architecture and large tomes of nonfiction like Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Shiny, leather-bound first editions. It was the kind of bookcase one might curate for a public space to give the appearance of being educated and well read, but surely not the kind of bookcase that reflected one’s individual tastes and passions.
Who had a bedroom like this—so cold, so devoid of individuality or sentiment?
Ana pulled open Ransom’s bedside drawer, thinking that surely there would be something there that marked Ransom as human—just flesh and blood like the rest of us.
A stash of Playboys, perhaps, a bottle of lube, a box of condoms—but she found only a Bible and a pair of spare reading glasses. She shoved the drawer closed.
“Fucking sociopath,” Ana muttered.
She turned her attention to Ransom’s desk next.
It sat along the far wall, in front of the window.
In the center was a thick taupe box with a screen, an Apple II.
Ana recognized it from the commercials she’d seen on TV.
She’d never known anyone who had their own personal computer before.
The library at her school had a single Xerox Alto, but it was a large boxy station, and only the engineering students used it.
She tried the main long drawer in the middle of Ransom’s desk first, but there was nothing of significance in it, just a bunch of pens and paper clips, a bottle of Wite-Out, and a blank legal pad.
Next, she opened the top-right desk drawer, which was organized into a mini filing cabinet.
This one took Ana a while to go through.
There were contracts for the construction on the east wing, background checks and employment paperwork for the household staff, tax returns going back several years, and a will.
Nothing of interest to her. She shut it with a growing sense of irritation and tugged on the handle for the bottom-right desk drawer, but this one wouldn’t budge. She pulled on it again. It was locked.
Bingo.
Ana got a paper clip from the center drawer and went to work. It took her only about a minute, and she was in.
The drawer was mainly empty, aside from a thick black leather notebook and, on top of it, a silver frame.
Ana pulled the frame out first. The glass was dusty, so she held it with the sleeves of her sweatshirt pulled over her fingertips so she wouldn’t leave prints.
In the frame was a picture of a girl with dark auburn hair.
She had on a heather-gray sweatshirt, a crimson S in the middle emblazoned with a tree.
The girl was only half turned toward the camera, as if she had been walking in the other direction and the person taking the picture had called her name, so she’d turned around.
Her hand was halfway to her face, and her mouth was open, as if she’d been caught mid-conversation.
Behind her was a thicket of redwoods, soft afternoon sunlight dappling through the trees.
The photograph was so casual and spontaneous, so unrehearsed—a genuine moment caught and preserved behind glass—that it made Ana want to keep looking.
It played out in her mind like a home video, or a memory—this girl walking through the forest on a crisp fall afternoon, her jeans tucked into her Wellington boots.
In the shade of the tall trees looming overhead, the air had a wet chill to it, but when you stepped into a puddle of sun, it was pleasantly warm.
The girl was talking about her art history class, some Swedish artist she had just learned about, and Ransom, trailing along behind her, had paused, raised his camera, called her name.
Just then, there was a rattling sound, and Ana looked up, pulled from her reverie.
She glanced across the room, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from, and then she saw it: the black orb of the doorknob seemed to shudder, turning incrementally in one direction and then the other.
Then the whole door moaned as someone tried to tug it open. Someone was trying to get in.
“Fuck,” Ana said. She immediately lowered herself to the floor, hiding behind the desk.
Who would be up at this hour? she wondered.
And who would need access to Ransom’s room?
She’d been meticulous; she’d studied the maid’s schedule.
She came in only on Friday afternoons to clean it—Ana was sure of it.
She heard a mechanical click, and the knob turned again.
Double fuck, she thought.
Whoever it was, they had a key.
Ana ducked back down and held her breath as she heard the door swing open and then the echo of several purposeful strides against the wood floor as someone entered and closed the door behind them.
She chanced a peek over the desk. From where she was, she could see only the figure’s back.
From the breadth of their shoulders and their height, she guessed that he was male.
He carried a bag, which he set down on the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed.
What is this guy doing? Robbing the joint?
Ana got onto her knees and crawled to the other side of the desk to get a better look. The man took off his jacket and sat on the edge of the bed. The lamp she had turned on on the other side of the room was still illuminated, so she could make out his face when he turned.
Ransom.
Ana recoiled behind the desk. What the hell is he doing home?
He wasn’t supposed to be here. Ana had heard nothing from Mrs. Talbot or Saoirse or the maids about Ransom being expected back at Cliffhaven this weekend.
She took a deep breath and peeked around the corner of the desk again. Ransom had unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and was shrugging out of it. Underneath, he had on a white undershirt that hugged his chest tightly. She could see the way his biceps bulged at the sleeves.
Ana swallowed hard. She drew back behind the desk and shook her head. She had to focus. There had to be a way out of this.
Maybe she could wait until he fell asleep, and then she could tiptoe across the room to the door.
But she would have to pass by his bed if she did that, and the lamp was still on on that side of the room, so if he woke up or opened his eyes and looked over, he would surely see her.
Whereas, where she was now, on the far side of the room, was at least shrouded in shadow.
She glanced toward the French doors that led out onto the balcony, only a few feet to her left.
Her stomach dropped at the thought of having to traverse the stone railing in the dark and maneuver onto the thin ledge along the side of the house, absolutely nothing standing between her and a four-hundred-foot free fall into the water and rocks below.
But what choice did she have? She couldn’t risk getting caught now. She’d come this far.
Ana heard footsteps—Ransom was up off the bed now—and a moment later another light flickered on somewhere in the room. Ana’s heart started to race. Of course Ransom was the type of person who would dive into work at 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday after taking a cross-country red-eye.
Fucking sociopath, Ana thought for the second time that morning.
She steeled herself for the moment he would discover her there, crouched behind his desk. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes—here was the end of it, after everything she had put into this, after the years of waiting, the planning, the sacrifices she had made.
Ana heard a spray of water against tile, the gurgle of a drain.
She peered around the corner of the desk again. It was the bathroom light that had been turned on. Ransom was in the shower.
Ana exhaled sharply.
Thank God.
Still, she wasn’t out of the woods just yet; she had to move fast. She glanced down at the frame she still held in her hands. When she went to put it back in the half-open drawer, she saw the black notebook lying at the bottom.
Ana paused. What secrets might lurk in a notebook locked away in one’s bottom desk drawer?
Her fingers itched to take it, but was it too risky?
The frame that had rested on top was dusty.
Maybe Ransom never went in this drawer. Maybe it was a drawer full of memories too painful to look at but too precious to discard.
Before Ana could think better of it, she reached in and grabbed the notebook, slid it under her sweatshirt.
Maybe it was time for some secrets to see the light of day.