We get out of the car, unhooking the bungee cords and then carrying the box to the front porch of the house. There was nothing in my instructions that said I had to knock or ring the bell or anything, so I don’t. Instead, as soon as we set that box down, Chasm and I turn to leave.
Only … someone comes out of the house and sees us.
My eyes meet his and a cold chill skitters through me. Every instinct in my body tells me to run. Every cell. Every chromosome.
I know this guy, I think, just before another thought crosses my mind: is this him? Is this my father?
Dear god, I hope not.
“What are you doing here?” the man asks, which sort of helps to answer that question. He runs his tongue across his lower lip which most definitely isn’t a good sign. Chasm has my arm in his hand already and he’s tugging me down the path.
Unfortunately for the pair of us, we don’t get very far.
“Wait a second,” the guy tells us, drawing a gun from the waistband of his pants and pointing it at us. “The two of you aren’t going fucking anywhere.”
Chasm stares at the gun like he can’t quite process what he’s seeing. This is a far cry from our time at the lake, isn’t it? When I danced to Working Bitch and he tried to kiss me against the trunk of a tree. How the hell did we end up here of all places, with a dead maid in a box, and a gun pointed at us?
“Get in the house.” The man gestures with the gun before leaning down and cracking open the lid to the box. Unlike any normal human being, he doesn’t seem to have much of a reaction to it. Actually, he seems … annoyed?
This is not the boss, Dakota. This is the sub-boss.
In which case, he’ll be easier to beat but far more annoying than the final monster. That’s how games always work. Somehow, thinking about the man with the gun as a stupid shitty sub-boss makes the situation easier to deal with.
“Dakota, run,” Chasm whispers, and then he shoves me to one side and freaking tackles the guy. The gun falls to the floor as both men crash into the wall, grappling with one another. There are precious few seconds to waste, so I don’t bother overthinking the situation.
Instead, I’m throwing myself on the floor and going for the weapon. The man that Chasm’s attacking is no amateur though, and he kicks the gun away before I can grab it. I scramble to my feet at the same moment that Chasm is shoved back. He ends up falling against me and we hit the ground together hard enough to knock the air out of me.
The man reappears above us with the gun back in hand.
“Nice try, kid, but no dice. Get the fuck up.” He kicks Chasm as hard as he can in the stomach, preventing him from rising to his feet. Instead, he lies there on his side, clutching his belly and coughing hard. Fear spikes through me as I push to my feet, hands raised, doing my best to distract the man from Chas.
“Look, we didn’t come here to hurt anyone,” I say slowly, studying the man in front of me. He’s fairly indistinct, white, middle-aged, balding. There isn’t much to him, nothing that might make him stand out in a crowd. The only distinct feature he has are his eyes, this pale blue color that only helps to enhance the disturbing nature of his stare.
It’s like he’s undressing me with his eyes, and I hate it. I feel helpless. Just like I did on the hike.
The hike.
This guy is the hiker. I know it. I know it as sure as I know the sun will rise tomorrow.
“You’re the hiker,” I say, and the assertion seems to surprise him. “You were there; you hit Maxx with a walking stick.”
“Fuck me,” the guy murmurs, and for some reason, my statement seems to make him nervous. “That’s why you’re here then? He sent you.” The guy curses some more as Chasm struggles to sit up, but I very carefully put my foot on his side, telling him as quietly as I can to stay down and be quiet.
“You’re the ATV driver, too,” I suggest, although I’m much less sure of this part. “You hit us on purpose.”
The man scratches the side of his head with the barrel of the gun, not like it itches. More like he’s starting to panic and isn’t sure what to do with himself.
“Get in the bedroom,” he tells me, gesturing down the short hallway with the revolver. “Now.” He points at Chasm with the gun and meets my stare with a pair of soulless eyes. There’s a sense of wrongness around this man, an instinctual residue of perversion that makes me physically ill. He’s looking at me like so much meat, like I’m not even a person.
