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The pounding on the door echoed into the cavernous foyer, as if Abby were standing at the top of the Grand Canyon. She didn’t expect the door to hold for long, and she had a hell of a lot of house to search if she meant to find Beatty. She honestly didn’t even know where to begin. It’s not like houses had signs pointing to the different rooms of interest.
She started first by poking her head into a powder room larger than most apartments she’d lived in. Then into more of a formal living room, with bookcases stretching to the ceilings. Next a ballroom, she guessed. It was mostly empty with chairs lining the walls. She supposed one had to make up some use for every room in a house this large, even if that use never came in handy.
She moved across the foyer again and down a hallway. The pounding against the door had abated, which meant she needed to pick up the pace. Surely those guards had another way into the property, and it would only be a matter of time before they found her.
At the end of the hall, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped, her arms relaxing as the pistol fell to her side. On every wall, every shelf, every inch of floor space, she beheld some of the greatest wonders she’d ever seen, and Abby was a woman who had seen quite a few wonders. She recognized a few of them from her own kills.
She shivered as her eyes ran across the stuffed yeti in the corner. She and Beatty had tracked it throughout the Himalayas. She’d never been that cold before or since. In fact, seeking warmth on that trip was the first time her and Beatty ever...
Her focus moved to another creature, stretched above the windows for the full length of the room. A serpent of some sort, but far larger than any she’d ever seen or even heard of. Above it, a large monkey with the wings of a bat. Her eyes couldn’t process all that she beheld. Half of it didn’t seem real, but she knew that all of it was. She’d seen too much to believe otherwise.
All of this. This is what her life had been dedicated to since Ben’s death. Killing these creatures just to sate her sorrow. Her guilt. Her rage. It all seemed stupid now. Reckless and cruel. She’d gone down this path to avenge Ben’s death by gaining all the experience and skill she’d need to finally kill the devil that took everything from her that night at Misty Lake. Now she’d completed her journey, and she felt no better for it. She felt worse. Almost sick. She wished she could take it all back.
She didn’t waste any more time feeling sorry for herself, though. She had a chance at redemption, or, if not that, at least a potentially new life with a new partner. She moved past the menagerie of cryptids and hit another hallway. She picked a door. Another bathroom. And another. Laundry room with more washers and dryers than she could count. This search had started to feel hopeless.
She pushed forward, inspecting a handful of rooms that held nothing but sickening opulence of wealth and greed.
And then, for the first time since she’d entered the mansion, she tried the handle of a door that didn’t move. Locked.
Her first instinct told her to move on to the next room. Trying to get into this one would only waste time. But her curiosity nagged enough for her to lean forward and put her ear up against the door. At first, she couldn’t make out anything of consequence. Then she heard a quiet beep. Silence. Another beep. It came at regular intervals, like a heartbeat.
And maybe that’s just what it was.
Abby slammed her shoulder into the door, but it barely budged. Backing up, she tried again, this time eliciting a groan from her but not the wooden door. She gave it a third go with no success.
Fine. She switched tactics, aimed the pistol at the locking mechanism, then fired. The sound of the bullet zinged around the hall in a myriad of echoes until finally dissipating somewhere else in the house. The handle shook, then toppled from its place onto the floor. She took a breath, gripped the gun, and kicked the door inward, slamming it against the wall.
An older woman stood with wide eyes next to a hospital bed. And on that bed—
“Beatty!”
Abby dropped her guard and rushed to Beatty’s side. Electrodes were attached to his bare chest, cords and cables snaking in every direction. A monitor nearby displayed his vitals. She glanced at them, but realized she wouldn’t know for sure what they meant anyway. She bent down to hug Beatty’s unconscious body, her tears spilling out across his warm skin.
“Ms. Wilson?”
Abby felt her body go rigid as she remembered the woman in the room with her. Abby ran the back of her hand across her face and sniffled before turning.
“Coleman?”
The woman nodded, deep crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes. It was hard to imagine that this stern nurse had ever smiled enough to earn them.
“I’m relieved you made it,” she said.
“What happened?” Abby asked. “You were supposed to meet us on the tarmac.”
“They were listening in on our communications. Locked me in.”
Radley and his goons certainly weren’t playing around.
“How many guards are there? Abby asked.
Coleman shook her head hesitantly. “Not sure. A lot usually, but not all here at once. The director took a good number with him when he left earlier.”
For the extraction no doubt.
“Okay,” Abby said. “Well it’s time to get out of here. I assume you know this place. There some sort of vehicle out of here?”
“Can you fly a plane?”
Abby shook her head. “No, can you?”
“No. There’s a garage. Some vans, jeeps, cars. We should be able to find something there, but it’ll be hard to shake the guards that way.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Abby said, motioning to Beatty’s prone body. “Get him ready to move.”
Coleman looked reticent, but eventually started unhooking him from the machines.
“He’ll wake up before long without the IV.”
“We’ll just get him out before that happens then.”
Coleman moved efficiently, turning to Abby only when it came time to get Beatty into the wheelchair. The weight of his toned body made Abby shudder in pain, but she managed the maneuver. She didn’t have a plan exactly other than out, but she trusted herself to come up with one on the way. Surely, some opportunity would present itself.
Abby checked her gun. The clip had enough rounds to put up a fight if she had to.
“Okay. I’m going out first. You follow. If guards show up, hide.”
“Understood,” Coleman said. For an old woman with no physical presence to speak of, she sure didn’t seem scared. Abby briefly wondered what the woman had seen in her years working for Radley.
Abby stepped out into the hallway, gun first and swept both directions. She saw no one. She heard nothing, either, no indication of where any guards might be. She’d only left one able to walk, so with any luck she only had one to fight off. She felt confident she could win a one-on-one gunfight if she had to.
She planted each foot along the hallway slowly and deliberately, doing her best to keep her shoes from squealing, or the floor from creaking. When she got to the end of the hallway, she peeked out into the trophy room she’d gone through before. She saw nothing but the stuffed monsters.
She took a step out, heard a gunshot, felt the whir of the bullet, and thought for sure she’d made the last mistake she’d ever make. Still, her body reacted quickly, spinning back into the hallway before Abby had time to register that the bullet had missed. She peeked again. No sign of the shooter, but she knew he must be hiding behind one of those giant trophies.
Abby took a deep breath, gripped the gun, and prepared herself for a shootout in a cryptid trophy room.
What a day.
