She descends the stairs.
The main floor is laid out like a dark diorama. Raindrops rattle against glass and shingle. The temperature down here seems to have dropped.
Kitchen, her mind whispers. Under the sink.
She tiptoes toward it.
On her way there, she scans the windows to her left. It feels like the house is plunging underwater, already miles below the surface and still dropping. Millions of gallons of frigid seawater on all sides. Pressure rising. Her nightmare brought to life.
He’s not there.
She remembers to breathe. There’s a light switch somewhere to her right, but she knows she must preserve her night vision at all costs. She guides herself along the wood-paneled wall, past the ticking grandfather clock, feeling with an outstretched palm. Rounding the corner, entering the kitchen, she braces for gloved fingers to grasp her throat.
Nothing.
The kitchen is pitch-black. He might be standing directly in front of her. She takes another step forward—an explosive, jangling clatter. Her heart leaps, but she already knows exactly what it is. Laika’s metal food bowl.
“Jesus.” She steps over it.
No way he didn’t hear that.
Upstairs, Laika barks. She’s heard it, too—or maybe she’s feeling the first painful cramps as the poison enters her bloodstream? Emma doesn’t know how many minutes or seconds are left. It all depends on the type of poison in play. Anticoagulant? Arsenic? Bromethalin? She considers trying to bargain with the psychopath. You can do whatever you want to me, but please promise you’ll drive my dog to the veterinarian afterward?
Not happening.
She reaches for the light switch but reconsiders—those kitchen fluorescents will be a beacon in the dark house. They’ll be the brightest thing for miles. He’ll close in on her immediately. If she fails to deliver the peroxide to Laika upstairs, all is lost.
Emma can die after.
Not before.
Her hip bumps into the kitchen island—almost there—and then she guides herself along the counter’s edge toward the sink. She finds the cabinet underneath, where she remembers returning the peroxide bottle. Through the window, she scans the darkness outside. Still no trace of the author—but on the horizon, she can see Deek’s house. His bedroom light is still on. It’s barely past eight, and he’s surely still awake. Drunk, but awake.
Please, she thinks. Please check your telescope.
She studies the warm glow in her neighbor’s window for a moment longer, grateful for another spaceship in the night.
But she can’t afford to wait. Every second counts.
She tries not to think about the unknown weapon she photographed at the attacker’s waist outside. It shouldn’t be, it can’t be, but it is—she’s certain he was carrying a sword. A medieval sword, three feet of curved steel, as poised and deadly as the samurai warrior’s blade depicted on that strange poster in the teenager’s bedroom Emma fears to enter.
Come to think of it . . . the curved swords might even be an exact match. As if brought to life from that stylized poster. What are the odds? It’s a bizarre coincidence, deeply unsettling, and Emma fears she’s losing her mind.
Coincidences are fine in real life.
But in fiction?
Bad writing.
She opens the cabinet doors under the kitchen sink. They squeak on corroded hinges, excruciatingly loud. Saving Space Dog is all that matters.
“Come on. Come on—”
She pulls out a trash bin. Dish detergent. Hand soap. Drain cleaner—
Laika whines upstairs. A heartbreaking cry.
“Where is it?”
She keeps pulling out more and more, hurling useless objects aside—bug spray, garbage bags, mop pads, a miniature fire extinguisher, more crap than she can ever remember seeing stored under Jules’s sink, until the dark space is emptied.
No hydrogen peroxide at all.
It’s gone.
But she’s certain she left it there. Just days ago, after cleaning Laika’s cut with antiseptic, she stored the bottle under the sink. Am I misremembering? As panic rises within her, she fears the author outside has anticipated this too, somehow, that she’s trapped in the shifting rules of H. G. Kane’s Murder Beach—
In the living room, a window shatters.