The same door that Arjun burst through opens again, and it’s an older girl of about fourteen, willowy and wearing jeans and a pale-pink shirt. Her hair is worn long and straight in a shimmering curtain, held back with jeweled pins. She gives us a curious glance, then takes possession of Arjun. “Sorry, Mom,” she says. “He got away from me.” She looks resigned more than irritated.
“It’s all right,” Aisha says. “Please tell your father we have guests. And put on the scones.”
Sam looks at me and mouths scones, with raised eyebrows, and it’s all I can do not to laugh. We’ve been bedding down in crap motels and in the SUV, and this lush, fragrant place seems like heaven right now.
As the daughter disappears through the door again, Aisha leads us up two flights of polished steps to the second door, which she opens before handing me and Sam identical keys, dangling from silver tags that read MORNINGSIDE HOUSE. “I’ll send the scones up soon,” she tells us. “Have a good night.”
With that, she’s gone, closing the door with a soft click. I automatically shut the bolt—it’s a sturdy one, vintage—and then turn to look at what we’ve bought for ourselves.
It’s great. The sitting room has two comfortable sofas, old enough to fit the theme but with none of the stiffness I usually associate with antiques. There are lovely little tables and a modern flat-screen TV, two desks (a rolltop and a smaller flat one) with antique roller chairs at each. There’s a padded bench beside a large picture window that I’m sure will provide a spectacular view of the mountains come morning, but for now, I’m all too aware of the darkness outside, and the fact that we’re nearly visible from space in the illumination of the room. I pull the curtains, then turn to Sam with a smile. “So?” I spread my hands to indicate the room.
He’s studying the workmanship on a Tiffany-style lamp, all drooping, graceful purples and greens that mimic wisteria. “We lucked out,” he says, then straightens. Winces. Dumps his backpack in a wing chair near the fireplace. “This is amazing. And there are scones.”
“Bet breakfast is fabulous, too.”
“Probably.”
We look at each other for a few seconds, and then I put my backpack on the desk. I dig out the papers, find the USB, and take out my laptop. There’s an Internet sign on the wall that gives me a password, but I don’t bother. I don’t want to be connected yet. I plug in the power cord, then turn the USB drive over and over in my fingers. My laptop’s on, ready to go, and somehow, I still hesitate.
I feel Sam’s warmth behind me, and he says, “We have to know.” He doesn’t sound any more eager about it than I feel.
I slide the USB stick into my computer, and a window pops up. Files, available for review. Some of them are documents. Some, ominously, are video files. A few are just audio.
Best to get the worst over with first, I think, and I click on the first video file.
At first, it’s hard to make out what it is I’m watching, but when I realize, I involuntarily flinch backward, and then I spin the chair sideways and stare at the crisp, soothing fabric of the window curtains instead of the screen. I hear Sam murmur, “Ah, goddamn,” and hear him turn away, too. I have the volume low on the laptop. It doesn’t completely mute the harrowing, awful screams. I am shaking, I realize; my pulse is suddenly a jackhammer in my head, and my hands are quivering until I clench them hard enough to hurt. The room feels colder, and suddenly I smell cold dirt and mold and that awful stench of blood and metal that rolled out of my shattered garage that day, years ago, when Melvin Royal’s hidden life finally saw the sun.
Sam reaches past me and presses keys to stop the screaming, and I’m so glad I could sob, but I don’t. I just breathe. I keep doing that until I feel safe enough to turn and look at the computer again.
Sam’s walked away a few steps now, head down, hands fisted at his sides. Like me, he’s living in the past, but our pasts are different. I don’t know where his has taken him, but I know from the tense set of his shoulders, the harsh, rapid breathing, that it’s somewhere I wouldn’t want to be.
“They’re going to find bodies,” he says, and I agree with him. I’m horribly glad that we didn’t open that door and see what lay beyond. I’m grateful that horror wasn’t the last sight I had on earth. Sam’s voice is rough and low, and I close the laptop and get up. I go to him, but I don’t touch him. I just stand there, facing him, until he looks up. There’s a distance in his eyes that’s both painful and self-protective. “I can’t—” He stops. Just . . . stops. I know he’s thinking about his sister, Callie’s, torturous, horrific death. About the photos my ex-husband took, all those pictures that were blown up and shown to the court. He liked photographing what he called the process. In the first photo, she’s scared, alive, untouched. What’s left by the last is . . . unimaginable. And though Sam wasn’t in the courtroom for it, he’s seen the records. The video taken at the crime scene.
Even for a combat veteran, which he is, it’s too much.
“Hey,” I say softly, and this time, I do touch him. Just a light brush of fingers on his sleeve, not bare skin. There need to be barriers between us right now. “Sam. Stay with me.”
I see him snap back, as if his soul has catapulted into his body, and he blinks and focuses back on me. For an instant I see a wash of emotion so powerful I can’t guess what it is. Love? Hate? Revulsion? And then it’s gone.
Sam Cade nods, reaches out, and takes my hand in his. It’s unexpected, and I tense just a bit, but he’s careful, and the warmth of his skin eases some silent, animal howl inside. “We don’t need to watch the rest right now,” he tells me. “Not now. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say. I’m grateful he isn’t going to make me do that, or do it to himself. There’s bravery, and then there’s punishment. Not masochism, because neither one of us gets any kind of release from facing this demon. It’s just more scars. More damage. “How about the paper files?”
“Yeah, that’s an idea,” he says. We let go of each other and divide up the crumpled papers that we rescued from the inferno. They still smell of smoke, and—I just now realize—so do we. My hair feels crisp at the ends. We were so, so lucky.