Shiver Sweet (7 page)

Nicola felt her throat tighten.  “Why isn’t the phone working?”

“You’re mouth’s still bleeding.”  John’s body language emanated no menace, but something brittle about his voice suggested he was not entirely innocent.  Did he do this?  Did he send in the heavies to force Christa to sign the papers?  Nicola didn’t know what to believe.

She swiped her hand across her lips as tears spilled onto her cheeks.  Tonight’s attack was all too much to digest.

John, a good four inches taller than Nicola, tapped his red trainers on the floor, then glanced around and picked up a tablet computer from the worktop.  "Is this yours?"

Nicola’s suspicious eyes roamed John’s, then the computer.  "No.  It must be that guy’s." 

“The guy on the patio?”

"Why did the phone die like that?" Nicola asked, still impossibly confused and gripping the knife for comfort.  How would she phone for help now? 

John shrugged, his eyes fixed on the screen of the tablet, his fingers tapping it.

Perhaps the weather knocked out the phone lines... or...
  A combination of fear and curiosity rumbled through her body while she did a speedy rethink.  Claiming he was here to speak to Sarah could well be true, but it could also be a cover.  “It’s... it’s strange that you turn up right after I’m attacked.”

“Attacked?  I half thought
you’d
-“  Without warning, John gasped in horror at something on the screen.  His protruded, now blazing eyes shot off to a corner of the kitchen.  “Jesus bloody Christ!”

Nicola flinched.  "What’s the matter?  What did you see?"

"It's not what
I
can see, it's what others can see."  He glanced up at another corner, waved a hand in the air.

A faint snap and rustle came from outside.  They flinched and turned to the patio doors.

“Oh, shit,” John said.  Veins pulsed on his forehead as he tapped the screen.  “Two men are outside.  Who are they, Nicola?”

A chilling panic fluttered in her chest.  She bent and fumbled for the knife.

The crunch of feet on snow started in the back garden, grew louder and rapid. 

“Find them,” a man bristled. 

“Oh, Jesus!  They’re wearing ski masks.”  John shut the patio doors, locked them and tossed the keys.  “Move it!”  He grabbed Nicola's hand and dragged her away before she could clinch the knife.  Her elbows banged and scraped against walls as he pulled her down the hall.

In this frantic race for her life, Christa's grand home left Nicola dizzy.  The walls seemed to move in around her.  Where should they hide? 

The patio doors rattled.

“Over there," John whispered, rushing her past several doors.  He stopped outside the office and fumbled with the keycode lock.  "What did Christa change the entry code to?" 

A silent but alarming bell rang inside Nicola’s head.  “How do
you
know she changed it?”

“Just get us inside,” John rasped, and checked over his shoulder. 

Nicola’s fingers shook as she entered the four-figure code on the mechanical keypad. 

Once inside, John closed the door to lock it.  The large room was fairly dark with only a small lamp throwing light onto Christa’s desk.  John clicked it off.  Apart from the glow of the computer, they stood in darkness.

Nicola tried to peek at the screen.  “Why do you keep looking at that?” 

“Hush a minute.  I need to think.”

His thoughtful expression surely hid a cagey scheme. John had made Christa’s life hell recently over negotiating the divorce.  But despite the cold fingers of doubt tightening around her, he seemed to be trying to help.  And she didn’t have a choice but to listen to him unless she wanted to get collared by those men.

Feet shuffled in the kitchen.

“Damn.  They must have house keys.”  John’s nostrils flared as he breathed in heavily.  "Coming in here was a bad idea.  I’ve got a feeling they already know the entry code.”

“W-what?”  Her thoughts whirled in panic. 

“They know every inch of this place.  This is insane.  We should switch rooms." 

“We don’t have time!”  Her vision blurred with tears.  “They’re already in the house.”  If John was also a bad guy, she’d jumped from one devil’s clutch to another. “Oh, god, they’re gonna find us and kill us.”

“Shut up.  Let me think.  Grab anything we can use as a weapon.”  John grabbed Nicola’s hand and led her quickly and quietly around the edges of the room.  “How do I phone or email out on this thing?” he muttered.  “What do I press?”

Nicola picked up an extension lead thinking she could swing the hard end at her attacker’s head.  She stayed close behind John, relieved that the carpet softened their steps, but petrified the men would blast through the door any second. 

“So long as the lights are off, we should be okay.” 

“Okay?  I think we’ll need more than the dark to protect us.”

“I’ve got an idea.  Follow me.”  John slid along the right wall, tablet in hand as though using it as guidance.  “Over there.”  He pulled her to the full-length window seat on the far wall.  He lifted the cushioned lid, emptied out some magazines from inside, then pointed down.  “Get in.”

“In there?" she squeaked out.  "This is your amazing plan?”

He cocked his head.  “Got a better one?”

The front door was locked.  Her keys were in the kitchen.  No time to run upstairs.  And if they tried to bust the painted-shut window, the men would hear exactly where they were.  “Guess not.”  Nicola climbed inside.  She molded herself into what felt like a narrow curved coffin, on top of cables and books, silently cursing.

“Which way did they go?” a man’s voice rasped from the hall that she didn’t recognise.

“Check downstairs.  I’ll search upstairs,” another replied, more muffled and Nicola strained to hear.  “And you...  Run... and check the feed.  See if you can spot...  This is a bloody mess and it needs sorting.”

Footsteps, centred in the hall, thumped away in three different directions.

"Scoot down."  John climbed in after Nicola, tossed a magazine on top of the lid and pulled it closed.  He lay squashed against her, thighs in a spooning position.

“Where’s your phone?  Call the cops,” Nicola whispered.

“In my car, charging.”

“Nice one,” she muttered, irritated.

The office door rattled and a light clicked. 

“Shush,” John whispered.

Hell.  John is right about them knowing the code.

A set of footsteps tapped, barely audible, into the room and began walking the perimeter.

Nicola tensed and held her breath.  Whoever was hunting her down passed by the window seat because the curtain scraped on its pole above.  Every muscle bunched.  She lay beside John in the soft glow of the tablet, shaking and twitching with every footstep.  Her shoulder jutted up against the metal pins of a wall plug.  John's chest heaved against the small of her back. 

Nicola wished she had stayed in the car with Brian and Christa, rather than play cupid and be so foolishly vain.

Cupboards rattled in the office. 

What were they looking for?  Documents?  Money?  Computers?

Sweating and shaking in equal measures, laying in silence in the confined space, Nicola tried to get her brain in gear.  Perhaps this was just a robbery gone wrong, a second attempt like Christa had feared.  But what on earth was on the tablet computer that had freaked John out so much?

CHAPTER 10

NICOLA

Nicola shook as if on vibrate.  Tonight was scaring the crap out of her.  Footsteps faded out of the office.  The room fell silent save for humming pipes and a ticking clock.

“What now?” Nicola asked John who was squashed against her inside the window seat. 

“Do you have any idea who they are?”

“No.”

Someone ran upstairs saying, “No one leaves until we find them.”

John pushed the seat lid up and climbed out.  “C’mon.  Quick.  The windows in here are painted shut.  We need another way out.”

Limbs numb, Nicola got to her feet.  Shadowing John, she sprinted across the carpet and they stopped behind the door. 

“This is a blind spot,” John whispered.  “Stay close.”

Floorboards creaked overhead.

John inched the office door open and stuck his head out.  “Follow me.”  He dragged Nicola across the hall, and pressed his back against the wall opposite the office.  One more glance at the screen and he raced into the coat cupboard.  He parted the coats and shoved Nicola into the hidden cove on the right onto her knees.  Its sloping roof went around the corner and under the stairs.  “We should be safe here.  I know this house better than they do.”

With her heart pounding in her ears, Nicola realigned the hanging coats.  She placed some tall boots and oddments in front of them and squashed up against John in the darkness.

Pallid light from the tablet softly lit John’s creased face.  He craned to look at Nicola and gulped.  “I’m not sure you’re ready for this,” he whispered, then flipped the tablet around to show her the screen. 

Her jaw dropped. 
Bombshell!
  Christa’s kitchen was displayed on the screen.  On the floor near the splattered cake was the knife she’d dropped only moments ago. 

John tapped the back button and the entire screen filled with snapshots of rooms around the house. 

“Cameras?”  Nicola whispered.  “All over our friggin’ house?”

“I’m afraid so.” He tapped the screen and zoomed in on real-time, full colour moving footage, flipping from one room to the next, showing men searching them. 

Nicola gasped. 
Holy crap!

“Someone’s guarding the back door,” he said.  “He’s wearing a mask so I can’t see his face.  Another guy’s in Sarah’s bedroom right now.  Damn.  That room’s our best way out.”

How’s he figure that?
  “Sarah’s?”

“Yep.  Why are they here, Nicola?”

“I wish I knew.”

He clicked through to the home page.  Beneath a vibrant red and turquoise banner were a mass of thumbnail-sized video feeds from various houses.  Each screen was a frozen teaser, titled and with a brief blurb underneath.  Some had flashing red borders showing current activity or perhaps popular feeds.  “Whoa.  This isn’t the only house they have cameras in,” John explained.  “This is a website full of them.”

“My God!  Perverted... peeping Toms.”  Nicola flushed in anger as she read the title of her and Christa’s video link: Hot Mansion Girls.

“It’s sick.”

Nicola shuddered and hugged herself.  Countless strangers had undoubtedly watched her undressing, bathing, and at bedtime had probably witnessed her...  “Oh, Lord.  This can’t be true.”  She cushioned her face with her hands.  Had every private moment in this house in fact been public?  And for how long?

“From the angle, I’d say a few look like webcams,” John explained, tutting and shaking his head in disgust.  “But the rest, well... these monsters have actually installed fixed cameras into people’s bedrooms, bathrooms...  See?  Just like in here.” 

“But how?  Why?”

“For money.  People pay to subscribe to the site.”

“P-pay to watch us?  No... n-no!”

“Just like you and Christa, those being filmed are probably unaware.  I guess that gives the voyeurs a bigger thrill.”  He clicked on the camera in Nicola’s bedroom; a man was upturning her room right here and now.  “People bathing, having sex, arguments...  There’ll be kids on here too.  It’s outrageous.”

Nicola’s heart clenched at the thought of Sarah being filmed.

“You name it, and they’ve probably watched it.  It’s a voyeur’s paradise.  Even I’ll be on there, peeing behind the—”

“What?”

“Shush.  Someone’s coming.”

Footsteps rapped down the hall.  Several doors banged open and closed.  Lights clicked on and off.  “Can’t see ‘em.  Where the hell did they go?” a man rasped, then opened the coat cupboard.  Light pooled on the row of boots shielding their feet.

John clutched the tablet to his chest to dull the bright screen. 

Nicola huddled on her knees against John in the shadow of the coats, digging her nails into his wrist.  A hand came through the rack of coats, blindly sweeping the air an inch from the top of her head.  She dipped lower and leaned sideways, held her breath and bit her lip to lock in a whimper.  The man’s fingers brushed the sloping roof.  Some seconds later, he closed the cupboard and raced upstairs.

“Sick bastards.”  Nicola gulped air, heart thundering.  “We have to tell the cops.”

“Absolutely,” John whispered.  “I’ll email the police on this, if I can work out what to press.  It must be 3G seeing as the phone line’s out.  Or cut.”  He fumbled with the screen.  Eventually several rows of apps appeared.  “Safari.  That’s the internet, right?”  He opened the app and Nicola watched him type ‘police’ into the search bar.  Just as the results page loaded, the screen blacked.  “Oh, crap!”

“Idiot.  What did you do?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.  Nothing.  It’s locked!  I’m frozen out.”  A passcode entry box showed in the centre of the screen.  “Double crap.  It’s timed out or...”

“No, it can’t have done, you were just using it.” 

He stared at her.  “Well then, someone’s locked us out.  Remotely.”

Nicola swallowed.  “Can they do that?”

He shrugged.  “I think you can on smart phones, so maybe you can on this.  But without the passcode this computer’s no use to us.  We’re blind now.”  John ditched it and crept through the hanging coats in the cupboard.  “But there was no one in this part of the house on the footage a minute ago.”

“I can hear someone moving around upstairs, but not in the hall.”

“We’d better get out while we can.”

“No.”  Nicola grabbed his arm.  “Let’s stay here.”

“And what about Christa or Sarah?  What if they come back?  We have to get out and call the police.”

Nicola bit her lip.  Yes, Christa could be on her way.  Oh, crap.

“Besides, if they phone more people to help them search then we won’t stand a chance.”

Nicola’s mind hopped back a couple of sentences.  She tugged his sleeve.  “Why would
you
be in the footage?  Peeing?”