Locked Doors (Andrew Z. Thomas/Luther Kite Series 2)

Maria let out a squeal, jumping back.

This can’t actually be happening. It all has to be some sort of joke.

She stared at the brown thing like it would jump up and grab her.

Is it real? It looks shriveled and old.

Some stupid Halloween prop?

Then she smelled it. An odor of decay that invaded her nose and mouth and made her gag.

“It’s real. Oh my god... it’s real.”

Someone put a severed human ear in my room.

She ran to the door, and the knob twisted without her unlocking it. Maria tugged it inward, raising her pepper spray to dose anyone standing there.

The hallway was empty. Dark and quiet.

She hurried to the stairs, passing doors with the names Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Millard Fillmore. Over the winding staircase was a gigantic poster of Mount Rushmore. Maria took the stairs two at a time, sprinting as soon as her feet hit the ground floor. She flew past the dining room, and the living room with its artificial fireplace, and ran up to the front door, turning the knob and throwing her weight against it.

Her shoulder bounced off, painfully. Maria twisted the knob the other way, giving it a second push.

No good. The door won’t budge.

She tried pulling, with equal results.

Swearing, Maria searched for a deadbolt, a latch, a door stop, or some other clue why it wasn’t opening. The only lock on the door was on the knob, and that spun freely. She ground her molars together and gave it another firm shoulder-butt.

It was like slamming into concrete. The door didn’t even shake in its jamb.

“Hey! Girly!”

The words shook Maria like a blow. A male voice, coming from somewhere behind her. She spun around, her muscles all bunching up.

“Yeah, I’m talkin’ to y’all, ya pretty thang. We gonna have some fun, we are.”

The voice was raspy and mean, dripping with country twang. But she couldn’t spot where it was coming from. The foyer, and the living room to the right, looked empty except for the furniture. The overhead chandelier, made from dusty deer antlers, cast crazy, crooked shadows over everything. The shadows undulated, due to the artificial fireplace, a plastic log flickering electric orange.

“Who’s there?” Maria demanded, her pepper spray held out at arm’s length, her index finger on the spray button and ready to press.

No one answered.

There were many places he could be hiding. Behind the sofa. Around any number of corners. Tucked next to the large bookcase. Behind the larger-than-life-size statue of George Washington, holding a sign that said Welcome to the Rushmore Inn. Or even up the stairs, beyond her line of sight.

Maria kept her back to the wall and moved slowly to the right, her eyes sweeping the area, scanning for any kind of movement. She yearned to run, to hide, but there was nowhere to go. Behind her, she felt the drapes of one of the windows. She quickly turned around, parting the fabric, seeking out the window latch.

But like the Lincoln bedroom, there was no glass there. Only bricks, hidden from view on the outside by closed wooden shutters that she’d thought quaint when she first pulled in.

This house is like a prison.

That thought was followed by one even more distressing.

I’m not their first victim. They’ve done this before.

Oh, Jesus, they’ve done this before.

Maria clutched the pepper spray in both hands, but she couldn’t keep it steady. She was so terrified her legs were trembling—a first for her. A nervous giggle escaped her lips, but it came out more like a whimper. Taking a big breath, she screamed, “Help me!”

The house carried her plea, bounced it around, then swallowed it up.

A moment later she heard, “Help me!”

But it wasn’t her echo. It was a male falsetto, mocking her voice.

Coming from the stairs.

“Help me!” Another voice. Coming from the living room.

“Help me!” This one even closer, from a closet door less than ten feet away.

“Help me.” The last one was low pitched. Quiet.

Coming from right next to her.

The statue of Washington.

It smiled at her, its crooked teeth announcing it wasn’t a statue at all.

The incredibly large man dropped the Welcome sign and lunged, both arms outstretched.

Maria pressed the button on pepper spray.

The jet missed him by several feet, and his hand brushed her shirt.

She danced away from his grasp, and then barreled toward the stairs as the closet door crashed open and someone burst out. Someone big and fat and...

Sweet lord, what was wrong with his body?

Maria pulled her eyes away and attacked the stairs with every bit of her energy. The hundreds of hours she spent training paid off, and she climbed so quickly the man—don’t look at his horrible face—on the second floor couldn’t react in time to grab her. She ducked past, inhaling a stench of body odor and rot, heading for the only other room she knew to be occupied, the two men arguing sports.

And they were still arguing, behind the door labeled Theodore Roosevelt. Maria threw herself into the room without knocking, slamming and locking the door behind her.

“You’ve got to help—”

The lights were on, but the room was empty. Maria looked for the voices, which hadn’t abated, and quickly focused on the nightstand next to the bed. Setting on top was an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. The voices of the arguing men droned through its speakers in an endless loop.

A trick. To distract her. Make her feel like she wasn’t alone.

Or maybe the purpose of the recording was to lure her into this room.

Then the tape recorder, and the lights, abruptly went off.

Maria froze. She heard someone crying, and with no small surprise realized the sound was coming from her. Dropping onto all fours, she crawled toward the bed. This room was laid out the same way as the Lincoln room, and she quickly bumped against the dust ruffle, brought her legs in front of her, and eased underneath on her belly, feet first, keeping her head poking out so she could listen.

At first she couldn’t hear anything above her heart hammering in her ears and her own shallow panting. She forced her breathing to slow down, sucking in air through her nose, blowing it out softly through her puffed cheeks.

Then she heard the footsteps. From the hallway. Getting closer. First one set, slow and deliberate, each footfall sounding like a thunderclap. Then another set, equally heavy, running up fast.

Both of them stopped at the door.

“I think the girly is in here.”

“That’s Teddy’s room. We can’t go in.”