Page 55 of The Chain House

“The uprising.”

Just then something below tugged on the chain in the floor, moving her ankle along with it. She screamed, “What’s going on?”

And that got Billy Boyle going again on the other side of the wall. “What was that? Beth, you’re moving? What’s going on?”

“Shut up,” Minks shouted at the wall.

And through the floor, the chain tightened. Someone moved down there, and then, by the weighted pull on the chain around her ankle, she knew someone else had been attached to the chain below.

And then another male voice shouted from the room beneath her. “Help!”

A door slammed below.

Beth froze, her eyes on Minks. “Who’s helping you?”

Maybe he smiled, she couldn’t tell, but something in his expression shifted his mask, and from the next room, Billy Boyle lost it. “Beth? What’s going on? Is he in there? Whoever you are … Oliver Crown, I mean … please … this is all a mistake. Please let me go.”

“Shut him up,” Minks said again.

Beth, still horrified by what was happening below her, screamed at Billy, “Shut up, Billy, please!”

But Billy only got louder: “I’ve got a wife and kids at home. Please. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Minks stormed from the room, slammed the door behind him. Footsteps trailed down the hallway on the other side of the wall, and then the door opened in the neighboring room, Billy’s room, and he screamed. He must have moved away because the tug on Beth’s ankle was violent and immediate and the force of it pulled her a few feet across the room.

Heavy, angry footsteps sounded on the other side of the wall and Billy screamed, “No … please, no …”

The gunshot was so unexpected, Beth screamed again.

And so did the man in the room below.

The door slammed in Billy’s room.

Minks’s footfalls trailed away.

“Billy …” Crying now, Beth crawled as close to the wall as she could, but with the addition of the other two chains, she couldn’t go as far as she’d previously been able to. “Billy? Oh God, please … Billy?”

Nothing.

And then the male voice from the hole in the floor said. “Who’s up there?”

She crawled closer to that hole, but the chain wouldn’t allow her to look down into it. Maybe it was better that way. She said, “I’m Beth. What’s your name?”

“Joseph,” he said. “Joseph Gerrard.”

Beth rolled onto her back, stared at the plain white ceiling. And as if to normalize the situation for Jospeh as much as possible, she said, “And what do you do, Joseph?”

After a beat, where he seemed to be gathering his emotions, he said, “I’m a marketing assistant. At Quiver and Bow. Have you heard of it?”

“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes.

Closing her eyes.

Swearing she could hear a typewriter pecking. Somewhere inside the house.

CHAPTER25

TREVOR HARPER DROVE the speed limit, as he always did.