Chapter 16
857 Words
He told her over breakfast, just like that, casually like it was nothing.
"I have an errand to run this morning," Gabriel said, not looking up from his coffee. "I'll be back by early afternoon."
Autumn kept her eyes on her plate. "Okay," she replied. "What time are you leaving?"
"Around ten."
She nodded and took a bite of her toast and said, "I'll probably just read."
He looked at her then, and she looked back at him with exactly the right amount of emotion on her face—mild, a little sleepy, and unbothered. He held her gaze for two seconds.
"Good," he said, then went back to his coffee.
She had two and a half hours to get through before ten o'clock, and she spent them doing exactly what she'd said she would. She sat in the front room with a book open in her lap, reading the same paragraph six times and absorbing none of it.
Once, she asked him if he wanted more coffee, and another time she made a comment about the chapter she was supposedly reading. She was completely, utterly boring, and that was exactly what she needed to be.
At nine fifty-five she watched him get ready. He moved the way he always moved; not rushing or making any noise, leaving everything in its place. He grabbed his coat and keys from the hook by the door. Then he leaned down and kissed the top of her head.
Autumn smiled up at him and said, "Drive safely."
"Don't open the windows," he said lightly, like it was a joke. "It's freezing out."
She laughed. "I know."
She heard him type in the code to the door—five digits, different from the usual sequence—and then the door opened and closed. She heard his footsteps on the front path. Then she heard him closing the car door and starting the engine.
She sat exactly where she was and counted to sixty.
The car pulled down the drive. The sound faded until the house was completely quiet.
Autumn put the book down, moving fast but not sloppy. She had to be fast and careful. She went to the panel door in the hallway first and tried it, but it was still locked. She went to the locked door off the kitchen, crouched, looked at the keyhole, and tried the handle just to confirm what she already knew. It was locked too.
Then she went to the far end of the hallway, past the stairs.
The door was plain, painted white, and it looked no different from any of the other doors in the hallway. She just told herself it was a closet as she grabbed the handle.
Surprisingly, it opened.
It had a flight of stairs going down, concrete floors, no carpet, and a bare bulb hanging from a cord, already lit, throwing flat white light on the plain grey walls. The air coming up from below was cold and it carried a smell she recognized; fresh wood and something that smelled sharp like chemicals, probably glue or new paint.
Autumn stood at the top of the stairs for one full second. Then she went down.
The basement was larger than she expected. The main room was wide, with low ceilings, and it was clean, not dusty or neglected, but actively maintained. There were shelves along one wall, a utility sink in the corner, a workbench with tools organized above it in a way that reminded her uncomfortably of the rest of the house. Everything was precisely in its place.
And then in the far corner was a room. A smaller room built inside the larger one, with its own door and its own walls. The door was heavy, with metal hinges and a solid frame. Even from across the basement, she could see that the lock was on the outside.
She stood and looked at it for a moment. Then she made herself move.
She checked the shelves first, quickly and efficiently, the way she'd been training herself to do everything in this house. It was filled with cardboard boxes labeled in Gabriel's handwriting, tools, paint cans, and a small folded tarp. And then, on the second shelf from the bottom, was a box with no label.
She pulled it out and opened it.
She set the lid down on the shelf and looked at what was inside, and immediately, chills ran down her spine.
Autumn put the lid back on, stood up straight, and took three long, slow breaths. Then she looked around the rest of the room, and when she found the backup camera in the drawer of the workbench—she'd seen it upstairs two days ago and took note of it—she understood why her hands had gone completely steady.
She had less than three hours.
She looked back at the box. At the inner room with its locked door. At the shelves along the wall.
Then she picked up the camera, went back to the shelf, and opened the box again.
She started from the beginning and she used every minute she had.
- Writer
