Chapter 3
A wave of anxiety hit me just as I turned the key to unlock the front door.
I lived in my family’s beautifully restored Victorian house with my sister, her daughter, and our grandmother. I had been there my entire life. The same house where my father had grown up. And the same house he and my mother had shared.
It was dark inside the house. And very quiet. The smell of Gran’s evening chamomile tea didn’t greet me. No one moved about beyond the foyer.
And no one was there to see my terror when I switched on the light.
I clasped my hand over my mouth.
My body and my voice froze, trapping me inside a nightmare. But I was awake.
There, on the floor, Isabel and our grandmother held hands as they lay in a pool of blood that got bigger as each second passed.
Someone had shot them.
Gran had already passed.
Isabel blinked. Horror marked her beautiful face. She tugged on some paper in her pocket until she exhausted her strength, and her arm fell to the floor. Her fading words floated away on her last breath.
“Find Lissie and get out…” she whispered.
She stopped blinking, her eyes still staring up at me but seeing nothing.
“Isabel…no, you can’t leave me…no, no, no!” I shouted.
And then I fell on my knees between my grandmother and my sister, holding their cold hands in mine, pulling our hands to my chest.
They were both gone.
A forceful wail pushed hard at my lungs, but I wouldn’t allow it to come out.
Stinging tears flooded my eyes.
Painful seconds, heartbreaking seconds that dragged on for an eternity tore up my heart.
The clock chimed eleven times, startling me, and I jerked wildly.
Looking around the room, I realized I had to get up. I had to dismiss it all…because…Lissie. I had to find her.
Fear for her life and mine took pain’s place.
I grabbed the paper my sister had been tugging on. When I unfolded it, I saw my drawing. Will Hastings’s face. His eyes. Something senseless, something I couldn’t rationalize that was neither right nor wrong, skipped through my mind and banged around inside my skull.
Isabel had taken my sketch and printed the name “Ethan” and an international phone number on it.
I put the paper in my back pocket and jumped up, causing myself to slip, righting myself only to stumble and fall against the round entryway table. I anchored myself there for a second to catch my breath.
My mind reeled, sorting through frenzied thoughts, seeking answers, but no answers came. Only one word in all the rambling inside my head made any sense.
Run.
I rushed up the staircase and called out for Lissie.
Her bedroom was at the back of the house, and her door was already open when I got there. I pounded the side of my fist against the light switch. The room spun. I reached for the doorframe and pulled in a deep breath to fight the rush of adrenaline.
“Lissie, are you here?”
I called out to her again and again, but she didn’t answer.
There was nothing, no sound at all.
After searching beneath the bed and in her closet, I ran to Isabel’s room. But my niece wasn’t there either. And my room was just as empty.
A sob pushed upward into the back of my throat. I swallowed it.
Five. F— No, no, no. Don’t count. Find her.
Gran’s room, the last bedroom.
I ran down the hall and banged the door open.
A slight thump hit the wall.
I froze.
Another soft thump against the far bedroom wall.
I sprinted across the room and burst into the closet.
Lissie screamed.
I pushed away the clothing and the heavy coats hanging in front of the opening to the secret room at the back of our grandmother’s closet.
Inside, Lissie crouched in the corner, covering her head with her hands.
She’d hidden in the place where Isabel and I had played as children. The little secret room where we hosted tea parties with our dolls, where we giggled about boys, where we swore the ghosts of our dead parents visited us.
“Lissie, sweetheart, thank God,” I whispered.
Kneeling in front of her, I peeled her hands away from her face, so she could see me. She lunged at me like a wild animal, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck.
We were in danger. We had to get out of the house. But I couldn’t bring myself to let her go…I could only hold on to the one person I had left.
Isabel’s words screamed inside my head.
I squeezed Lissie harder.
My sister had been clear that I should find her daughter and leave.
While peeling Lissie’s arms away from my neck, I listened for sounds anomalous to our old house. Soft whistling from the air ducts. A dog barking in the distance.
“I need to call for help, Lissie, then we’re going to leave. But I need you to stay right here while I get my phone. Understand? You wait here for me. I promise you I’m not leaving this house without you.”
I wanted her to stay put…I didn’t want her to see her mother’s lifeless body. I didn’t want that to be the last image of Isabel she had burned into her memory forever.
After hugging Lissie again, I left the secret room, still inside the closet, and dragged my fingers along the door casing, searching for the key to Gran’s storage trunk. I rummaged through the old trunk for the metal box that I never imagined I might need someday.
Secured inside the metal box was a pretty .25 caliber automatic pistol, a gift to my mother from my father…once upon a time. Gran had said they named her Pearl. The grip was made with mother of pearl and the silver barrel was embellished with floral engraving.
Gran had tried to give it to me once, but I refused it.
Isabel would have taken it, but she’d had her own guns.
“Why can’t you listen for once, Ellie? Just take the fucking gun. I know it’s not much, but after you learn the basics, we’ll get you something more useful,” she had said.
We just celebrated her twenty-eighth birthday two weeks earlier.
I pushed the preloaded magazine into Pearl, slid the gun into the back of my cutoffs for lack of a better plan, and pulled the closet door shut, listening before entering the hallway.
In Lissie’s room, I stuffed her backpack with as much as possible before hurrying to my room, where I grabbed my bag, phone charger, and car keys.
But damn it, my phone still laid on the foyer floor.
The one landline phone we still had wasn’t any closer, so I tiptoed down the wooden stairs, my back to the wall, my eyes focused on the chandelier.
I got down and crawled past the entry door.
Vomit burned my throat.
I forced it back and reached out my hand, fumbling until I found my phone.
I dropped my head for a second to fight my body’s overwhelming urge to give in.
My chest tightened more. I counted back from five to calm myself.
Breathe. Five. Four. Breathe. Three. Two. One.
I had to get on my feet and get us out of the house.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
The thrashing of my heart filled my ears.
Someone was inside the house again.
I’d screwed up…we shouldn’t have still been there.
Footsteps behind me.
An intruder’s voice echoed my thoughts.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.