No One's Home by D. M. Pulley

Author:D. M. Pulley [Pulley, D. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542041546
Published: 2019-08-31T22:00:00+00:00

33

Margot pounded on the door until her fist was raw. “Hello? Hunter? God dammit! Let me out of here!” she bellowed, her voice echoing off the bare sloped ceilings and hard floor of the attic. “This is it, Hunter! I’ve had it! Let me out of here now, or I swear to God . . .”

She could never finish that sentence, not even while pounding and kicking hard enough to crack one of the panels of the door. The crackle of cleaving wood startled her enough to stop her banging. Squinting in disgust, she ran a finger over the joint between the panel and the style. These doors alone are worth a fortune! the interior designer had exclaimed, sauntering around during his tour. Fifteen hundred dollars apiece, easily!

Margot collapsed on a step. Is he even home? Did I see him leave? Do I know him at all anymore? The thought of awkward, lanky Hunter locking her in a room left her gaping with disbelief. But who else? “Hunter? Are you there?”

Her hands were trembling. The bath towel had fallen onto the steps in her fury. She looked down at her naked torso, then up at the attic ceiling. It would be hours before Myron returned home from work. And that was if he didn’t stop off at the gym, or wherever it was he went. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

An electronic trill of music made its way under the locked door. The cell phone. She’d left it down in the kitchen. She leaned toward the sound. Hunter? Myron?

The song abruptly stopped. She waited with shallow breaths for it to begin again, but there was nothing. A hostile silence radiated up through the floorboards. She shrank back against the steps, sweating in the stale heat of the third floor. The sun had drifted higher in the sky, beating down on the dark slate of the roof, cooking the wood and plaster. She swallowed hard.

Finally, she stood up and crept back up the stairs to take stock. Out one of the front dormer windows, cars rushed past on Lee Road down below the trees. A delivery truck rumbled past. Each window dormer created a useless but charming alcove not quite big enough for a desk or a reading chair, just the frustrated possibility of one. She opened a window and called out, “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

Cars kept passing by.

In the crawl space, the air-conditioning kicked on, filling the air with the hum of the electric motor and the waterfall sounds of the air rushing through the ducts buried behind the knee walls. A bead of sweat dripped down Margot’s back.

Out the bathroom window, the view was entirely trees and the shadow of the house next door. The sash opened without a fight. Several cigarette butts sat piled in the windowsill, and a smattering of ashes blew into her face along with a blast of fresh air. Margot recoiled, spitting and wiping her face. “Max! You son of a bitch!”

Once she’d

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