Chapter Fifteen – Stephanie

 

Ryder pulled me into a crouch, and we began to make our way up to the back door of Christina’s house. It was a solid door, but had nine little windowpanes set in a grid into the top third. I crouched down on the little concrete step, and grabbed a seemingly average rock sitting on the edge of the small flower bed that flanked the door to either side. Christina had been keeping her spare key there for years, as far back as I could remember.

But, apparently, times, they were a-changin’. I swore under my breath.

“What’s wrong?” Ryder asked, his back to the door as, shotgun still braced against his shoulder, he continued to scan the backyard to make sure nothing was following.

“The spare key,” I said. “It was right here. She must have moved it.”

“Oh. Well, I can handle that.”

“You can pick locks, too?” I asked as he turned around and approached the door. “Wow.”

“Not quite. She have an alarm?”

“No.”

“Good,” he said as he flipped the shotgun around and, before I could even react, smashed the butt of his gun through the bottom right window. I jumped in surprise as glass tinkled to the ground on the other side of the door. “See?”

“Jesus Christ, Ryder,” I said, shaking my head as he knocked away the rest of the glass with the wooden stock of his shotgun, sending more shards to the ground on both sides. He stuffed his arm through the little hole he’d just finished making, fishing around on the other side till he found the lock.

“There, done.”

“Couldn’t have done that a little bit cleaner?” I asked. “Like tried ringing the doorbell first?”

“You know, I could’ve kicked the door in, instead.”

“Surprised you didn’t just shoot the door knob.”

“That really only works in the movies.”

I rolled my eyes. Even though I could practically still feel the strength of his arms around me as they’d held me in the forest, and when I blinked, I saw his heavy-lidded eyes looking back into mine, he was still frustrating sometimes.

He turned the knob and gently pushed the door open, letting it swing back gently. Before it hit the mudroom wall with a soft thud, he had the shotgun up and against his shoulder again, his eye right over the barrel.

“Stay here,” he whispered. “I’ll sweep the place and make sure it’s safe.”

I glanced back over my shoulder at the backyard, still dark in the predawn hours. At the looming woods behind it, with their branches turned into groping claws, which seemed to reach out towards me over the wood-slatted fence.

“And leave me out here by myself? Screw that, I’m coming with you. Momma didn’t raise me to be kitten chow.”

Shotgun still at the ready, his cheek just over the stock, he seemed to appraise me with one raised eyebrow. “Point. Ready?”

I nodded.

“Stay close, with your hand on my back,” he said in a hushed tone, his fingers working on the grip of his shotgun, his finger laid right alongside the trigger, but not on it. “Anything goes wrong, you hit the ground. Okay?”

I nodded again. “Got it.”

And then, with Ryder in the lead and my hand in the middle of his broad back, we were marching into the house. Through the mudroom, with Christina’s and Andy’s jackets hanging from pegs on one side, and muddy work boots against the baseboards of the other. Like domestic bliss.

We stepped into the next room, and Ryder did that same thing as before, where he moved in little intervals as he checked around the corners. Both, this time. Gun lowered for a moment, he held up a hand and waved me forward. He moved forward with that weird gait of his, walking with surprising, practiced quickness as we swept into the little den together.

“Nothing,” he said, looking around.

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

The inky blackness was as thick as it had been outside, and I could barely see a thing despite my eyes adjusting. On the couch, I could just barely make out a discarded tissue box, and a wastebasket overflowing with used tissues on the floor.

“Trust me. Where’s their bedroom?”

“Upstairs. Stairs are down that hall, on the left.”

We were out of the den, moving forward to the next hall. Ryder and I stalked through the house of one of my best friends like a SWAT team, a soft wind whistling over the storm windows as it blew out of the southwest. In the near silence, I could almost hear the house settling into itself. Like it was trying to run for its own form of cover from the horrors going on in town.

We moved up the stairs, our footfalls quiet on the old carpeting. She’d never been able to afford all the updates she’d wanted on the house. Had never been able to spend the time and money she’d dreamed of. But, still, it had been enough for her, even if it wasn’t perfect.

Not like me. Even Stan & Sons wasn’t enough for me. I still wanted so much more out of my life. A place, maybe, where I could fit. Where I could be comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, life in Camelot was good. Predictable. And I wanted to save it.

But I didn’t really belong here, and I knew it.

I leaned close against Ryder’s back as we reached the top of the stairs, and whispered, “Left.”

Like a machine responding to my commands, he swept left and kept moving, his shotgun raised like a trained professional. Funny thing was, if I hadn’t seen him in action so many times tonight, I never would’ve believed he was a veteran, or a Special Forces guy. But, it was hard to deny he had the training when you saw him move like this, could feel the muscles of his back as he walked with grace and speed through the house.

“End of the hall,” I whispered as we were presented with a series of doors, all of them just barely visible because of the warm yellow light coming from the crack beneath Stephanie and Andy’s bedroom door.

Ryder lowered his shotgun as he got to the end, but remained slightly hunched. “Ready?” he whispered.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. My fingers twisted up in the plain shirt he’d borrowed from Esther, gathering the cloth tightly in my hand. I didn’t know what to expect on the other side of that plain wooden door. I fought my mind, trying to keep the ideas buried as deep down as possible.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding as I ducked my head down, instinctively closing my eyes.

He twisted the doorknob and shoved the door open, moving like when we’d first come into the house. Quiet, stealthy. Like a jungle cat, but armed to the teeth.

“Clear,” he breathed.

I stepped out from around him, expecting more than what I actually saw.

Everything seemed normal. Like they’d turned on both lamps on the nightstands, had turned down the bed in preparation for going to sleep. But then just hadn’t. Like they’d just wandered out past the staircase, into the living room beyond, and out the front door.

“Where are they?” I asked.

There was nothing.

Just a life they’d decided to not live anymore.

Ryder walked up to the bed, looked down at the left side. From the lotion on the nightstand, and the cheap romance novel with a frayed and torn cover, I suspected it was Christina’s. “Here,” he said, reaching down to the bed. He pulled up an oversized red nightshirt. “This hers?”

I swallowed. It was one of those old Looney Tunes shirts with the Road Runner on the front, his grayish and purple body mid-sprint. The words “Meep Meep!” were emblazoned across the top in crackling yellow letters, where the print was flaking off from years of trips through the spin cycle. I’d been here for enough early morning coffees and breakfasts in their kitchen, either because I’d stayed over the night before, or because I’d come by early to take Christina grocery shopping in the next largest town over, to recognize it.

The shirt belonged to her. Without a doubt.

Suddenly, the room shifted. Like someone had tilted it a fraction of an inch to the right, just a matter of degrees, as the walls closed in around me. The ceiling seemed to drop a foot. Everything just became darker, smaller, more frightening, as they crowded in on me.

My chest tightened, my heart quickened. My hands clenched at my sides, released, then clenched again as my mouth dropped open.

“Stephanie?” Ryder asked, his words distant. I realized he’d turned back to me, was touching my arm. He rubbed a thumb over my numb skin like he was trying to encourage it to come back to life. “Stephanie? You there? You with me?”

If Jeff had been the closest thing I’d had to an uncle, Christina was the closest thing I had to a sister. More than just an employee, she was my friend. My family, too.

Her and Andy gone? Both of them?

Who would touch her arm, like Ryder was touching mine? Who would coax it back to life? Back to solid reality?

“Stephanie,” he whispered, touching my cheek with the backs of his fingers. He’d set the shotgun aside, placed it against the wall. “Hey, girl, you gotta snap out of this, okay? We’re gonna figure this thing out.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding, the words meaningless even as they left my lips. Like when I was a kid and my mom would get upset about something, like my leaving the hairdryer plugged in, and I’d just nod and agree with her, tell her I’d never do it again.

“Stephanie,” he said, grabbing my shoulder and squeezing it gently. He put a finger beneath my chin, redirected my eyes up to his. “Girl, snap out of it. I’ve been through worse, okay? This ain’t my first rodeo.”

“Rodeo?” I asked, shaking my head. Why was he talking about the rodeo?

“At least you’re responding,” he said. He rotated his wrist and glanced down at his watch. “Almost sunrise.”

“What rodeo?” I repeated, giving him a glassy-eyed look. Between Mom, what was happening to Jeff, the cat-things outside the hotel, and then Christina and Andy disappearing, this was all a little much to process.

He looked down into my eyes, nodded a little. “I think we need to hole up here for a while. When was the last time you slept?”

I blinked up at him for a moment, before I looked off to the left. When had I woken up? God, it felt like ages. “I think I woke up a little before noon, yesterday. Why?”

“Yeah,” he said, drawing out the word, “we’re gonna stay here for a little bit and relax. I’ll try calling Tabitha again, and you get some sleep. Is there a guest room somewhere?”

I shook my head.

“No room?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t need to sleep. I’m fine. I can handle this.”

He clucked his tongue twice. “It’s not that I don’t think you can handle this,” he said. “It’s that you need to sleep, and there’s nothing I’m going to do right now. Wanna know what the number one rule of being a soldier is?”

“Not really, but you’re probably going to tell me anyways.”

“Get your sack time when you can, because you’ve got no idea when you’ll be able to next.”

I frowned. His words made a certain sort of sense. “All right.”

“Now, come on,” he said. “Let’s get you some rest.”