Closing Costs by Bracken MacLeod

Author:Bracken MacLeod
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358335764
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2021-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

34

Upstairs, an airy digital melody trilled in the front room of the house, unable to rise above the sounds of crying and shouting filtering through the floorboards from downstairs. After a few rings, the call redirected, and after a moment’s silence, the phone chirped a final short burst of notes, letting the empty room know that Nelle had a voicemail.

And then it was silent.

VIII

◆

Phantoms

35

The man patted his pockets searching for something. Nelle wondered what he could want. He looked at the book box and his face darkened. It was her phone he was missing. He rubbed his temples. “Fuckin’ upstairs,” he mumbled.

She could see the beginnings of his unraveling, where he’d appeared in control only an hour or two earlier. Things weren’t going the way he wanted, and that was throwing him. There was no denying he was good at sneaking up on people, good at hurting them, but it was becoming clear he didn’t know a thing about people and what made them work. This was a guy who heard cracking and still applied pressure.

She looked at her husband’s still-bleeding face. The cut was long and deep. It was red and angry as anything she’d ever seen. A flooded red river overflowing its banks.

Roarke would kill them when he saw no other end.

Whatever he did after that didn’t matter. It was the time leading up to his eventual realization that things weren’t going his way that counted. And that time was shortening with every new frustration.

The EpiPen in the front of her pants pressed against her belly, still secure in the waistband of her shorts. She had gotten lucky and he’d hit high when he punched her in the stomach. He was taller than she was and hit just under her ribs. And then she was lucky a second time when she went down and it didn’t fall out of her pants. Now her hands were taped to the chair again, and the spring-loaded needle was as useless as everything else in this basement. Still, she felt it, right there in her waistband. She had it. And maybe she’d get the chance to use it. Maybe. If she was . . .

Lucky.

Evan groaned.

Roarke put his hands up to his head and pressed against his temples. “Shut up, the both of you! I can’t think,” he said, as if the slight sounds she and Evan made weren’t the direct result of him doing awful things to them. He tromped up the stairs.

Nelle listened to him rummage in the bathroom. His head hurt. I hope you’re having a fucking stroke.

While it was a pleasing mental image, she banished the fantasy of a blood vessel in his brain bursting open like a crimson grenade and instead tried to focus on how to get out of this situation. She could cooperate all he wanted, and at the end, the game was rigged for only one winner. If she wanted to come out ahead, she had to get out of this chair.

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