Still no motion he could detect. Either nobody was home or Morris had just alerted Wolfe that he had a visitor. Shit. He was at a loss as to what to do next. He’d honestly expected someone to answer the goddamned door.
What now? Should he shoot the lock with his rifle? Break the glass panels and reach through with his hand to unlock the door from the inside? Neither option sounded appealing. As it was, he was trespassing. If he got inside, it would be breaking and entering. And with a weapon-well, what would that mean? Home invasion? Attempted something-or-other?
And what if there was an alarm system? A house this size, there had to be. Would it scream silently or wail like a banshee? Would the neighbors come running with their guns to shoot him, the intruder? Or would Wolfe hear the alarm, panic, and hurt Sheila?
He hadn’t thought this through. For a split second he found himself wishing Jerry were here-the man was sensible and would know what to do.
Morris really did feel bad about punching the PI, but, goddamn it, Jerry had no balls. And, for an ex-cop, no instincts. Something about Ethan Wolfe stank to high heaven-how was it possible that Morris was the only one who could smell it?
He didn’t care whether it had been Wolfe on the security tape or not. Sheila was here. He could feel it.
Before he could overthink it, he slammed his body into the door with all the force he could muster. If this didn’t work, he’d blow the door open with the rifle, neighbors be damned. But under his weight, the bolt ripped from the casing and the door swung open. Surprised, he stood frozen, waiting for the alarm that was sure to sound.
But nothing happened. No beeping or screeching announced Morris’s entrance. No red or green lights flashed anywhere on the walls to acknowledge his body movements. On the contrary, the house was eerily quiet. He was breathing fast and he tried to calm down so he wouldn’t give himself away. A warm trickle of sweat ran down the nape of his neck to the curve of his spine.
It was too easy. What kind of guy would put such a flimsy lock on the front door with no alarm system? In an upscale neighborhood like this, burglary was a legitimate concern. Maybe Wolfe had a silent alarm, but the point was to scare intruders away, not let them ransack the house before they got caught.
Morris raised the Remington and entered the house, shutting the battered door behind him. A small amount of light filtered through the stained-glass panels from the streetlamps outside. Otherwise, it was dark. The shapes from the glass cast strange, dim patterns on the hardwood floors. He stopped again.
What if Wolfe was watching him this very moment? Crouched in a shadow, ready to pounce?
Feeling around on the wall perpendicular to the door, he found the light switch and flicked it on. A stretch of hallway that ran straight to the back of the house was instantly illuminated. Morris clutched the rifle, fully expecting to see Wolfe coming at him with a gun or a knife or some other awful instrument of death designed to kill him where he stood.
But there was nobody. Just the tasteful entryway of a big house.
“Sheila!” Morris stage-whispered. It sounded ridiculous somehow. “Sheila!”
He walked down the hallway, his finger hovering over the trigger. The Remington’s trigger pull was heavy. It minimized the possibility of unintentionally firing a shot. He was especially happy about this since his hands were shaking. He moved swiftly from room to room, continuing to whisper Sheila’s name. Nobody responded.
The door to the master bedroom was open, and he entered. Turning the light on, he let out a breath when he saw that nobody was waiting for him, ready to blow his head off. In actuality, the bed was neatly made, the furnishings surprisingly nice even though the large room was minimally decorated. He crossed to the bathroom ensuite, but nobody lay in wait there, either. The room was spotless and smelled faintly of disinfectant.
Three more bedrooms yielded nothing-two were empty, and one held a desk and nothing else. Another bathroom, also pristine. At the back of the house, the enormous kitchen displayed state-of-the-art appliances, gleaming as if they had never known the joy of cooking.
Something was off about this house, and Morris couldn’t put his finger on it. It came to him a moment later.
The entire space was completely devoid of personal items. No photos on the walls, no clothes in the closets, no dishes in the sink.
Did Wolfe even live here? Why buy a house like this and then rent a crappy one-bedroom apartment in Seattle? What was the point?
Back in the main hallway, he spied a connecting door to the garage. He opened it and poked his head inside, his eyes widening at the sight of Wolfe’s vintage Triumph motorcycle.
The kid was here somewhere. But where? Morris had checked the whole house. Frustrated, he shut the connecting door and stepped back into the main hallway.
Something flashed in the corner of his eye and he turned toward it. A little green light was blinking on a keypad that was mounted to the wall a few feet away. Beside the keypad was a door he must have passed earlier, but apparently hadn’t noticed. It looked out of place. Keypads belonged on the outside of the house, to keep folks out, but this one was inside. Frowning, he walked toward it and tried the handle. Locked.
His heart, already well into tachycardia, kicked into an even higher gear. No locked door had ever seemed so sinister. The goddamned front door had a crappy lock and no alarm system, but this one was bolted with a keypad? Why? What was behind it? Closet? Crawl space? It was impossible to know without either looking at the blueprints or looking inside. Morris wished he had the blueprints.
He rattled the handle again but it didn’t budge. There was only one way to find out what the door was concealing. Insanely, Monty Hall’s voice from that old game show Let’s Make a Deal echoed in his head. What’s behind door number one?
Damp with sweat, Morris stood back as far as he could before hitting the wall behind him. Aiming the Remington, he took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.
The sound was louder than anything he could have anticipated. Bits of wood flew everywhere, one fleck hitting Morris’s cheek just below his eye socket. The rifle’s crack was scary and exhilarating. Obviously, he’d never fired a rifle inside a house before; it was crazy to think he’d just done it in Wolfe’s house in the middle of the night. The neighbors had to have heard that. The old biddy next door was probably ripping out her curlers.
The door handle was gone. In its place was a huge, gaping hole. Morris kicked out his foot and the door swung open easily.
It was a basement. Morris was stunned. Nothing on the outside of the home indicated the house even had one. A set of stairs covered in gray industrial carpet led straight down to the bottom. His heart accelerated once again. Nothing good could be down there.
“Sheila!” he yelled at the top of his lungs before fear could overtake him. Trotting down the stairs as fast as his stiff knees would allow, he felt half out of his mind with panic. A few steps down, he yelled again, the rifle cocked and ready. He had three rounds left. If Wolfe was holding Sheila captive, he wouldn’t hesitate to pump all three of them into the bastard’s body. “Sheila, are you down here?”
As if to answer his cry, he heard a whimper, a small sound, a pitiful sound, but it pierced his heart.
Sheila.
Turning the corner into the main room, not waiting to fully process what he was seeing, Morris aimed the rifle and fired.
CHAPTER 43
U nrecognizable voices were speaking in hushed tones when Sheila awoke, but it was the strong smell of antiseptic that told her she was somewhere new.
“I’m telling you, Kim, it was the creepiest shit I ever saw,” the man said in a low voice. “All these masks, like real human faces, lined up neatly. A whole shelf of them. At first I thought they were actual heads with the eyes gouged out. I didn’t think they could make masks that looked so real. Sick motherfucker.”