Colin had anticipated this development, and he felt good about that. Standing in the dark hall, he smiled.
Something moved in the wall beside him, and he jumped. A mouse. Nothing more than that. It wasn’t Roy. He could still hear Roy downstairs. just a mouse. Maybe a rat. At worst, a couple of rats. Nothing to worry about. But he knew he had better guard against overconfidence, because if he didn’t he would be nothing but food for those rats before the night was out.
Footsteps.
A flashlight, hooded by a hand.
The light moved to the foot of the stairs.
Roy was coming up.
Suddenly, Colin felt that the plan was childish, stupid, naive. It would never work. Not in a million years. He and Heather were going to die.
He swallowed hard and switched on his own light, shone it down the steps. “Hello, Roy.”
42
Roy stopped, pointed his flashlight at Colin.
For several seconds they stared at each other. Colin could see the hatred in Roy’s eyes and he wondered if his own fear was equally visible.
“You’re here already,” Roy said.
“The girl’s up here.”
“There isn’t any girl.”
“Come see.”
“Who is she?”
“Come see,” Colin said.
“What’s the trick?”
“There isn’t one. I told you on the phone. I want to be on your side. I’ve tried being on their side. It didn’t work. They don’t believe me. They don’t care about me. None of them. I hate them. All of them. My mother, too. You were right about her. She’s a fucking bitch. You were right about all of them. They’ll never help me. Never. They’re no good to me at all. And I don’t want to have to run from you forever. I don’t want to have to be looking over my shoulder, for the rest of my life. You can’t be beat. You’ll get me sooner or later. You’re a winner. You win at everything eventually. I see that now. I’m tired of being a loser. That’s why I want to be on your side. I want to win. I want to get even with them, all of them. I’ll do anything you want to do, Roy. Anything.”
“So you got a girl for us.”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you get her up there?”
“I saw her yesterday,” Colin said, trying to sound excited, as if he hadn’t carefully worked out every word of what he was about to say. “I was riding my bike, just cruising, thinking, trying to think of some way to make up with you. I passed here, and I saw her sitting on the front walk. She had a drawing tablet. She’s interested in art. She was sketching the mansion. I stopped and talked to her, and I found out she’d been working on sketches of the place for a few days. She said she was coming back this evening, so she could draw the place with late-afternoon shadows. I knew right away she was what I was looking for. I knew if I gave her to you that we’d be friends again. She’s foxy as hell, Roy. She’s really something. I set up a trap for her. Now she’s up here, in one of the bedrooms, tied and gagged.”
“Just like that?” Roy asked.
“Huh?”
“You just set a trap and single-handedly tied and gagged her. It was that easy?”
“Hell, no!” Colin said. “It wasn’t easy at all. I had to hit her. Knocked her out. Bloodied her up a little. But I got her. You’ll see.”
Roy stared up at him, thinking about it, making up his mind to either stay or leave. His icy eyes gleamed in the thin, cold light.
“Are you coming?” Colin asked. “Or are you afraid to really do it to her?”
Roy slowly climbed the steps.
Colin backed away from the head of the stairs to the open door of the room where Heather waited.
Roy stepped into the second-floor hallway.
The two boys were no more than fifteen feet apart.
“In here,” Colin said.
But Roy stayed against the far wall and moved toward the door of the room opposite the one where Colin wanted him to go.
“What are you doing?” Colin asked.
“I want to see who else is here,” Roy said.
“No one. I told you.”
“I want to see for myself.”
Keeping one eye on Colin, Roy shone his light into the room across the hall. Colin thought of the cardboard box he had left in there, and his heart began to pound furiously. He knew the trick would be exposed and the plan ruined if Roy saw the bottle of ketchup. But the box must not have looked out of place among the other trash that littered the floors of the rotting mansion, for Roy didn’t go into the room to investigate it. He moved on down the hall to see whether the rest of the second floor was deserted.
Colin waited in the doorway until Roy had looked in all the other rooms.
“No one,” Roy said.
“I’m being straight with you.”
Roy started toward him.
Colin backed into the bedroom and went quickly to Heather. He stood beside her.
She looked as if she might scream in spite of the gag in her mouth. Colin wanted to smile and reassure her, but he didn’t dare; Roy might step inside and see the exchange, and then he would realize they were in collusion.
Roy entered cautiously. Shadows danced out from his moving flashlight beam. When he saw the girl, he stopped, surprised. He was only fifteen feet away, and he was blocking the only exit; this was the moment of truth. “Is that …?”
“Yeah,” Colin said thickly. “You know her? Isn’t she something?”
Roy looked her over with growing interest. Colin saw the boy’s eyes lingering on the curve of her smooth, sleek calves, then her knees, then her taut thighs. For a minute Roy didn’t seem capable of lifting his gaze from those slender, shapely legs. Then he finally looked up at her ruined blouse, at the swell of breasts that were partly visible through the torn material. He looked at the ropes, at the gag in her mouth, and at her wide, frightened eyes. He saw that she was genuinely afraid, and her fear pleased him. He smiled and turned to Colin. “You did it.”
Colin knew the trick had worked. Roy couldn’t conceive of Colin and Heather setting a trap all by themselves, without adults to back them up. As soon as Roy had seen that they were alone in the mansion, that there were no reinforcements waiting in another room, he had been convinced. The Colin he knew was too much of a coward to try anything like that. But the Colin he knew no longer existed. The new Colin was a stranger to him.
“You really, really did it,” Roy said.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“Is that blood on her head?”
“I had to hit her pretty hard. She was unconscious for a while,” Colin said.
“Jesus.”
“Now do you believe me?”
“You really want to fuck her?” Roy asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then kill her?”
“Yeah.”
Heather protested through her gag, but her voice was weak and unintelligible.
“How will we kill her?” Roy asked.
“You have your penknife with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Colin said, “I’ve got mine, too.”
“You mean-stab her?”
“Just like you did the cat.”
“With penknives, it’ll take a long time.”
“The longer the better-right?”
Roy grinned. “Right.”
“So are we friends again?”
“I guess we are.”
“Blood brothers?”
“Well … all right. Sure. You’ve made up for what you did.”
“You’ll stop trying to kill me?”
“I’d never hurt a blood brother.”
“You tried to hurt me before.”
“Because you stopped acting like a blood brother.”
“You won’t throw me off a cliff like you did Steve Rose?”