Relentless (18 page)

As Penny rose from her hands and knees, into a crouch, breaking cover, I stood upright, making the better target of myself. I bolted across the room, toward the corner where the entertainment-center wall engaged the view wall, passing in front of the windows.

My wrath was so intense that I half believed a bullet couldn’t stop me, though I didn’t turn directly toward the windows with the intention of catching one in my teeth.

I heard a round
pock
the glass, perhaps two, and prayed that I was the target.

At the corner, I flicked down the wall switch that activated the motorized shades encapsulated within the three-pane windows. Because of the damage to the glass, I worried they might get hung up before fully descending.

As the blinds came down, I turned my back to the windows to look for Penny and Milo.

Somehow, she had flipped the immense coffee table across Milo, positioning it between him and the windows, and she had stood it on end. They were behind it, hidden from the shooter, though from this end of the room I had a narrow view of them.

The table was well made, solid. Nevertheless, a single round had cracked the top, torn out a chunk of wood, and penetrated to the other side, fortunately without striking either mother or son.

As the window shades reached the halfway point and continued to descend, one thing became clear to me. In this attack, Waxx had one target—Milo.

He could have killed me three times as I passed in front of the windows. But he never took a shot when I was most exposed, not even as I stood motionless at the switch to watch the shades come down.

As Penny muscled the coffee table on end, she must have been such an easy target that Waxx could have blown out her brains. And only one shot had been fired at the table after she and Milo were behind it—no doubt because Waxx did not want to risk killing her instead of the boy.

The shades now covered three-quarters of the glass.

Penny rose warily from behind the table, but instructed Milo to remain on the floor.

Just as with John Clitherow and Thomas Landulf, the psychopath intended, before killing me, to take from me those I loved the most. Waxx imagined a specific order to my losses. Milo first. So I could witness Penny’s anguish before she, too, was murdered.

I suspected he wanted to reduce me to despair, to the utter abandonment of hope, that I might accept my own murder gratefully, almost as a form of suicide. After seeing his wife and daughter brutalized, Landulf may well have pleaded to be killed. Although John Clitherow appeared to have taken extreme steps to stay alive, he told me that most days he yearned to join his family in death.

If one day I asked for death, I would be denying the value of life in general and the value of my life specifically, which would be as well a denial of the value of my writing. By begging death and receiving it, I would confirm Waxx’s original criticism of my work.

The motorized shades reached the bottom of the glass wall.

Holding Milo close, Penny came out from behind the overturned table, and I hurried to her.

Because of his poor writing, I had judged Waxx an ineffective if influential critic, a curious eccentric. He was not eccentric but grotesque, demonic, not ineffective but a relentless murder machine, his mind a clockworks of meticulously calculated evil.

“Police,” Penny said. “At least they can
stop
this.”

I disagreed: “No. They won’t get here in time.”

   Denied Milo, Waxx would not shrug in resignation and leave. He would come into the house after the boy.

On the densely populated shores and islands of the harbor, houses stood close together. In this wealthy, peaceful community, gunfire would draw startled residents to their windows and their phones.

Already, we should have heard sirens. There were none.

Penny said, “After all that shooting, he’s got to scram.”

“No one heard it.”

Wondering what to do, where to hide, I grabbed her free hand, drew her and Milo into the kitchen, intending to go from there into the downstairs hall.

Lacking wind and thunder, the storm had only rain for a voice, a susurration that could not mask rifle fire. The waterways were largely without traffic, free of engine noise.

The rifle must have been equipped with a sound suppressor. And
in the rain, while cascades of breaking glass might have been heard, the
pock
of bullets penetrating shatterproof windows went unnoticed.

If Waxx had been cautious when positioning himself to shoot Milo, the dismal afternoon light and the skeins of rain would have made him all but invisible to anyone who stood at a window to enjoy the monochromatic beauty of the storm-bathed harbor.

Penny said, “The alarm system. There’s a panic button.”

Inset in a kitchen wall, a Crestron touch screen controlled the house systems: heating, cooling, music, security.

Under my fingertip, the panel brightened with options. I pressed SECURITY. The display changed. I pressed PANIC, which should have set off a loud alarm and also automatically dialed the police with a recorded message declaring an emergency at this address. Nothing happened.

Earlier, I had set the alarm. Now it was off.

I attempted to set it again. The system was down.

“The garage,” I said, “the Explorer, out of here.”

“No. He’ll come in that way, to stop us leaving.”

She was right.

“Back door, front door,” I said.

“Then where? On foot, in the rain, with a dog?”

Lassie whined.

Snatching her purse from the secretary, Penny said, “Upstairs.”

“There’s no way out from there.”

“Upstairs,”
she urged, and I trusted her.

As Penny led us into the hallway, I realized that Milo was carrying one of the mysterious devices of his design that had been linked to his computer. It was the size of a bread box.

“Heavy?” I asked as I followed him.

“Yeah.”

“Gimme.”

“No.”

“I won’t break it.”

“No.”

A loud noise at the farther end of the hall might have been Waxx kicking open the door between the garage and house. Stepping out of sight into the foyer, I didn’t glance back, so I didn’t know if we had been seen.

Penny climbed the stairs, and Lassie scampered ahead of her.

By the time I followed Milo into the upstairs hall, Penny was quietly pulling a door shut. Farther along the hallway, she closed another door. She was giving Waxx places to search before he got to the room in which we actually took refuge, which was the third room on the right, into which she disappeared with Lassie at her heels.

Although I couldn’t be certain, I thought I heard someone coming up the stairs behind us.

When Milo and I entered the third room, Penny closed that door as silently as she had closed the others, and she engaged a deadbolt.

If Waxx was prepared to shoot his way inside, a mere deadbolt would not long delay him.

We were in the master bedroom.

Paneled corner to corner in black marble, the wall opposite the bed featured a stunning contemporary fireplace.

On the hearth stood a handsome set of stainless-steel fireplace tools. The poker would have been an acceptable weapon—if Waxx had been armed with a Wiffle bat instead of a gun.

From her purse, Penny fished the ring of keys that Marty and Celine had given her. She selected an electronic key: a plastic wedge about as big as a corn chip.

Elsewhere on the second floor, Waxx kicked open a door.

The face of the fireplace mantel featured a ring motif carved in the
marble. The center ring was the largest, and all the others were the same, smaller size.

Penny held the electronic key to the large ring. A code reader beeped, and to the left of the fireplace, a concealed door—one of the panels of marble—swung open on a pivot hinge. A light brightened automatically in the space beyond.

Years ago, during construction, Marty mentioned that the house would have a panic room, but he never said where it would be located. Evidently, he recently walked Penny through it in case she needed to show it to a qualified buyer.

Another crash, elsewhere on the second floor, sounded nearer than the first.

Lassie padded through the secret door as if she knew all about such things and was not in the least surprised or impressed, and Milo followed his dog.

As disrespectful of other people’s property as ever we had known him, Waxx kicked the master-bedroom door, but it held.

“Hurry,” Penny whispered as I stepped through the marble wall.

Beyond lay a windowless shaft and a spiral staircase. The steel landing and treads were covered with textured rubber to facilitate a quiet descent.

In the bedroom, Waxx kicked the door again.

Milo followed the dog down the winding stairs.

As I stepped after Milo and as Penny came onto the landing behind me, I didn’t hear gunfire, although I heard what must have been the consequences of it: the hard crack of splintering wood, the metallic bark of bullet-scored metal. Waxx was shooting out the lock.

In spite of the rubberized treads, a silent descent was not possible. Our passage sent vibrations through the spiral structure, an insectile hum that echoed off the walls.

Glancing back, I saw Penny descending. The secret door was closed
tight at the top. I hoped sufficient insulation would prevent the noise we made from being heard in the master bedroom.

But it might not matter if Waxx heard us. He wouldn’t have an electronic key, wouldn’t know where the door was hidden, and could not shoot his way through marble.

Perhaps I should have felt safe. Instead, I felt trapped.

   Because he needed both hands to carry the electronic device, Milo could not use the handrail. Watching him descend unsteadily in front of me, I worried that he would fall. Although the treads were sheathed in rubber, the spiral stairs were steep and tightly turned, and bones could easily be broken in a tumble.

“Come on,” I said softly, “let me carry that, Milo.”

“No.”

“I promise not to use it. I won’t turn it on.”

“No.”

“I don’t even know what it is.”

“I remember the vacuum cleaner.”

“That could happen to anyone.”

“Not to just anyone,” he disagreed.

“It wasn’t operator error. The vacuum malfunctioned.”

“Who said?”

“I’m speculating.”

“Lassie had nightmares for months.”

“She’s too sensitive. She needs to laugh at life more.”

“Anyway,” Milo said, “no more stairs.”

At the bottom of the shaft stood a steel door. It could be opened only with the electronic key held close to a key-code reader.

Beyond the door lay the panic room: a fireproof fourteen-foot-square space with a dedicated phone line, a toilet closet, a sink, a bed, and two cases of bottled water.

I snatched up the phone. No dial tone.

“We aren’t staying here,” Penny said. “While he’s searching upstairs, we’re getting all the way out.”

Another steel door offered a second exit from the panic room. When Penny opened it, we were confronted with what appeared to be a blank wall.

This was in fact a tightly fitted pocket door that rolled aside. Beyond lay a utility closet that contained the house’s water softener and filtration system.

Penny led us around the equipment, cracked the door at the front of the closet, reconnoitered the way ahead, and revealed to us the garage that contained the three restored classic pickup trucks and our Explorer.

Milo said, “Cool,” and I echoed his sentiment.

As boy and dog scrambled into the backseat, as I got in the front passenger seat, Penny settled behind the wheel. She handed me the house keys, from which dangled the fob that operated the garage doors.

“Top button, but don’t press it until I tell you. The moment he hears the garage door going up, he’ll come running.”

Milo had buckled himself into his safety harness. I warned him to hold Lassie tight.

Penny released the emergency brake before starting the engine.

She switched on the windshield wipers. As she shifted into reverse, she gave me the go-ahead.