The electronic squeal, steady, earsplitting.
Audrey considered, then rejected, entering through the French doors that led into the kitchen. No. She’d have to approach with some stealth. She raced to the next set of French doors, but they were locked too. Was there no basement entrance, bulkhead doors or whatever?
There didn’t seem to be.
A hissing sound drew her to the far side of the house near the pool fence. She saw pipes-gas pipes, she realized. Some kind of metal objects were lying on the ground next to the pipe stand, and a crescent wrench. Valves or something. They’d been removed, and maybe that was why the hissing was so loud, like the flow had been turned up full, maybe.
The gas pipes had to lead into the basement, she knew, because that was always where they went.
Over the hissing she could hear a shout. It was coming from a grate about twenty feet away.
She ran to the grate, put her face against it, the skunky, metallic smell of gas nauseating her. “Hello?” she called out.
“Down here! We’re down here!” An adolescent male voice. Conover’s son?
“Who is it?” Audrey said.
“Lucas. And my sister. She’s got us locked in here.”
“Who does?”
“That crazy bitch. Cassie.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“I don’t know-just, shit, will you help us? We’re going to fucking die down here!”
“Stay calm,” Audrey said, though calm was the one thing she didn’t feel. “Listen, Lucas. Help me out. You can help me, okay?”
“Who’re you?”
“I’m Detective Rhimes. Listen to me. How’s your sister doing?”
“She’s-she’s scared, what the fuck do you think?”
“Julia, right? Julia, can you hear me?”
A small, frightened voice. “Yes.”
“Are you getting enough oxygen?”
“What?”
“Stand over here by this grate, sweetheart. Make sure you get enough air from the outside. You’ll be okay.”
“Okay,” the girl said.
“Now, Lucas, is there a pilot light down there?”
“A pilot light?”
“Are you near the water heater? There’s usually a pilot light going on the water heater, and if that ignites the cloud of gas, the whole house is going to blow. You’ve got to turn it off.”
“There’s no pilot light.” His voice was faint, distant, as if he’d gone to check. “No pilot light. She must have put it out so the gas wouldn’t ignite too early.”
Smart kid, she thought. “All right. Is there a shutoff for the gas line? It would be on the wall where the gas pipes enter.”
“I see it.”
“You see the shutoff?”
Footsteps. “No. I don’t see a shutoff.”
She sighed, tried to think. “Are any of the doors to the house open?”
“I-I don’t know, how would I know?” the boy replied.
“I think they’re all locked. Is there a key hidden somewhere outside, like under a rock or something?”
She heard a jingling, and a small steel key ring poked up through the slats in the grate. “Use mine,” the boy said.
Thumping from the basement, frantic, the noises reassuring because they were alive. Now in the few seconds of stillness Nick could faintly hear Lucas’s voice yelling. They were alive. And desperate to get out of there.
“I’m going to call United right now,” Nick said. “I’ll get you on our flight no matter what it costs. First class if you want it, but you probably want to sit with us in business class.” He thought, Don’t pick up the phone, even as a pretense. The phone could ignite the gas. He remembered reading somewhere about a woman who had a gas leak and she picked up the phone and called 911, and an electric arc from the phone circuit sparked and the house exploded. “The kids would love that. You know they would, baby.”
“Please, Nick.” She toyed with the lighter, and in her other hand the knife dangled at her side.
He could leap at her, hurl her to the ground, if he did it carefully, chose the right moment.
“I know you now,” she said in a monotone. “I can see right through you.”
Quietly, quietly, Audrey turned the key in the back-door lock, and then pushed the door open.
A tone sounded. The alarm system’s entry alert.
It had just announced her arrival.
The skunk stench was overpowering in here.
She walked slowly, orienting herself. She didn’t remember the layout of the house well, but then she could hear voices, female and male, and she knew which way to go.
Was the unhinged woman holding Conover hostage? If she was, then the sound of Audrey entering might attract her attention, unnerve her, maybe make her do something rash. The wrench, the gas pipes-it told Audrey that Cassie Stadler, it had to be her, had opened the pipes in order to fill the house with gas just as she’d done in other houses before.
All she’d have to do would be to strike a match and the house would explode, killing herself and the children in the basement and Audrey too. But why hadn’t she done it yet?
Audrey had an idea now.
Cassie Stadler was filling the house with gas, had been for a while. Maybe she was just waiting for the entire house to fill up. So she could get the biggest bang possible.
Yes. That’s what she was waiting for.
The children. That was the first thing. She had to free them.
A pounding on a door somewhere nearby told her where to go. A door in the hall. She heard the kids, or maybe it was just Lucas, pounding and pounding.
Swiftly she turned the deadbolt with a loud, satisfying click, and she pulled the door open. The boy tumbled out, sprawled to the floor.
“Hush,” Audrey whispered. “Where’s your sister?”
“Right here,” said Lucas, and the girl came streaking out, weeping, her face red.
“Go!” Audrey whispered. “Both of you.” She pointed to the open door. “Run!”
“Where’s Dad?” Julia cried. “Where is he?”
“He’s all right,” Audrey said, not knowing what else to say. She had to get them out of here. “Go!”
Julia took right off, pushed open the screen door and began running across the lawn, but Lucas didn’t move. He looked at her.
“Don’t fire that gun,” he said. “That’ll set it off.”
“I know,” she said.
“What was that?” said Cassie.
“What?”
“That sound. The alarm. Someone just came in the house.”
“I didn’t hear it.”
Cassie turned slowly, looked from one entrance to the other, all the while flicking her eyes back to Nick, making sure he didn’t advance toward her.
“You know,” she said, her eyes trained on him, “it’s funny, the way I went through stages of thinking about you. First I saw you as the destroyer of families. You sure destroyed my dad’s life when you fired him, so I had to let you know you weren’t any safer than anyone else.”
“The graffiti,” Nick said, realizing. “‘No hiding place.’”
“But then I got to know you a little better, and I thought I’d been wrong, I decided you were a good man. But I know better now. Sometimes you gotta trust your first impressions.”
“Put the lighter down, Cassie. You don’t want to do this. Let’s talk, let’s figure things out.”
“You know what fooled me? When I saw what a good daddy you were.”
“Please, Cassie.”
Behind her was the entrance that led to the back hallway. He became aware of a slight change in the light, a shadow. A movement.
A figure slowly approaching.
Nick knew enough not to break eye contact with Cassie. He looked into her red-rimmed eyes, while in his peripheral vision he could make out a woman moving stealthily along the wall, advancing toward the kitchen.
It was the police detective, Audrey Rhimes.
Don’t break eye contact. He forced himself to look into Cassie’s desperate heavy-lidded eyes, bottomless pools of anguish and madness.