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Chapter Seven
V
“Vee?”
My sister’s voice came from behind her bedroom door, nerves causing it to quiver. The sound of me lugging the men’s bodies and throwing them into the cellar must have woken her.
I paused, looking down into the cellar at the bundle of bodies at the bottom of the stairs, and then reached in and flicked off the light, plunging the one who was still alive into darkness. He wouldn’t be going anywhere with his feet and hands bound, and the weight of two dead men on top of him. I’d shoved my new cache of guns onto one of the shelves in the nook beside the cellar door, and I hoped she wouldn’t see them there. It was too late to hide them somewhere else now.
“It’s okay, Nickie. Everything is fine,” I called back.
She’d grown up in the same household I had, and knew when something was going on that you shouldn’t open the door to. Things were different here, but her seventeen years of training hadn’t changed overnight, and so she remained hidden in her room.
Softly, I shut the cellar door, and then walked down the hallway toward her bedroom.
“Do we need to call the Marshals?” she called out.
I approached her door and knocked gently. I pushed it open and found her standing in the middle of the room, looking young and afraid, pulling down the oversized t-shirt she wore with one hand to cover her thighs.
“It’s nothing. It’s been taken care of.”
“Vee, please tell me.”
The attitude she’d given me only a few hours ago had vanished, and my heart softened at the sight of her. I didn’t like that. I couldn’t afford to go soft, not now, not any time. I could keep myself alive, but it was her I worried about.
I didn’t want her to end up like me.
“Seriously, Nickie, I’ve taken care of it. You can go back to bed.”
Her gaze drifted down and alighted on my clothes and hands. Her eyes widened. “Where did the blood come from?”
I glanced down to see red streaked across the front of my tank top and on my fingers. In the dim light, with only moonlight coming through the windows, the amount of blood didn’t look as bad as it was. I quickly wiped my hands off on the seat of my shorts.
“A bird got into the house,” I said. “It was disoriented and flew into a window and broke its neck. I cleaned up the mess, but it was pretty gruesome. You wouldn’t want to see it.”
Her nose wrinkled. “A bird? In the middle of the night?”
I shrugged. “Like I said, it was disoriented.”
“It must have been a big fucking bird.”
“It was a massive crow. Just go back to bed. You’ve got school in a couple of hours.”
She didn’t believe me about the crow, but she also knew not to ask too many questions. All too often, she didn’t like the answer. With a sigh, she turned away from me and got back into bed, but remained sitting up, the bedcovers pulled up over her knees.
I backed out of the room and gently shut the door, but remained standing there, listening to see if she’d get back out of bed.
I figured I’d better do something about the hole in the window beside the back door before she did. If I put a plant pot up against it, she wouldn’t notice, but then I remembered that greenery and I didn’t exactly get along, and plant pots weren’t something I had many of. I knew she wouldn’t go down into the cellar. She hated the place—said it reminded her of too many horror movies. I couldn’t say I blamed her. It certainly looked like a scene out of a horror movie now that it was full of dead bodies—and one not so dead body.
I needed her to go back to sleep so I could go down into the cellar and uncover the guy I still had alive. As much as I’d be happy if he was dead, I needed him to answer some questions, and I didn’t think he’d be too good at doing so if he suffocated under the weight of the other two men.
From behind the door, I heard the creak of Nickie’s bed springs, signaling her lying down and getting comfortable.
Was the guy right? Would other people be sent after us? How long had he been given to do the job of killing us? Was it hours or days? I was painfully aware of the window in Nickie’s bedroom and how defenseless she was. What if someone crept in while I was down in the cellar and slaughtered her in her bed? How would I ever forgive myself?
I wouldn’t, I decided. I’d kill myself, too, before I considered living with that.
I waited for a few minutes to make sure everything was quiet, and then turned and went back to the cellar door. I grabbed one of the guns I’d hidden on the shelves nearby. Taking a couple of breaths, I paused outside to prepare myself, and then pulled open the door again. I stepped inside, flicked on the light, and closed the door behind me so I was caught inside the space with two bodies and another man who wanted me dead.
