An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena

Author:Shari Lapena
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2018-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

Saturday, 6:30 PM

‘We’d better search the rest of the hotel,’ James says. ‘The entire ground floor, and then the cellars.’ James is very disturbed by the appearance of room 202. Nothing like this has ever happened before. He asks himself if it is possible that there is someone here that they’re not aware of – some interloper. But he has no enemies. Not that he can think of. No mad relatives hidden away. No disgruntled employees. He wishes now that he’d installed security cameras, but he hadn’t wanted them in his quaint, old-fashioned hotel. He hadn’t thought they would ever be necessary. But now, if only he’d had cameras installed in the corridors, they might have shown what happened to Dana – if it happened before the power went out. But then he realizes they wouldn’t have been able to review the video anyway, without electricity.

James glances at Bradley. Bradley is standing in the hall with the rest of them, staring down at the floor, unaware that he’s being observed. There’s naked fear on his face. And something else that James can’t quite read. It’s a look he’s seen before …

James feels his stomach drop with a sickening lurch. He doesn’t really know everything about his son. No parent does. Bradley has had some brushes with the law. James thought those days were behind them. Dear God, he hopes Bradley hasn’t become involved with something bigger than he can handle. But then he assures himself that anything Bradley might be involved in couldn’t have anything to do with this. Bradley is a good boy, who once got involved with some bad people. But he’ll talk to him when he gets a chance.

He comes up beside his son and whispers, ‘Are you okay?’

Bradley looks up at him, startled. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ And that look on his face is gone and he looks like he always does, and James tells himself he’s worrying for nothing. This has nothing to do with Bradley. He’s just frightened like everybody else.

‘Bradley,’ James says, ‘you’ve got the lamp, why don’t you lead?’

This time, they take the back staircase down to the ground floor. It’s the first time Beverly’s seen it. It’s narrow and uncarpeted. They go down single file, their steps echoing.

‘This was the servants’ staircase,’ Bradley says.

‘Is there an attic we should be checking out?’ David asks.

‘No,’ James says.

They arrive at the bottom of the stairs where a door opens onto a hall that runs along the back of the hotel. Immediately to the left is the kitchen.

‘Let’s leave the kitchen and cellars for last,’ James says. ‘Let’s try the woodshed.’

Down the hall from the kitchen is the door to the woodshed. They follow Bradley. Beverly hadn’t really looked closely at the woodshed when she was here before, being in a hurry to follow the others to the icehouse. But she looks at it now. It’s really cold in here. The walls are simple barn board. It’s not insulated. There’s a large wooden stump with an axe plunged into it in the centre of the earthen floor.

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