Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

end of this bridge the hall continues on, mirroring my side. But just before that there is one key difference: a stairway going down, ending in the foyer beside the front door. It’s so damn close. Twenty feet, then down, then freedom.

Just one problem. I’ll be completely exposed as I cross that twenty feet. Everything depends on how distracted my captors down below really are.

Outside the note of the chopper’s blades begins to diminish into a dull rhythmic whump under a high-pitched whine, growing quieter by the second.

I get down on all fours and peek around the corner, looking past the fireplace toward the back wall of the house. It is comprised entirely of glass panels from floor to ceiling. I hadn’t realized it before, but each panel is not just a window but also a door of sorts. They’re installed on rotating pillars, allowing the whole back of the house to be open to nature if the occupant desires. They’re all closed now save the middle one, which is rotated exactly halfway. Ang, Doc, and their broken-nosed henchmen all wait there, watching the spectacle of the helicopter landing.

This is my moment. All eyes on the helicopter, and whomever is getting out of it.

I should run, now. Get away. But I hesitate. My gaze is pulled outside as the rotor finally comes to a stop. The aircraft rests on the lawn exactly in the center of the stone circle. All the candles are still lit, a detail that, despite all that is going on around me, I find stunning. Then I notice the pattern in their flickering and realize they’re fake. Little LED tea-light candles meant to mimic the real thing.

People are getting out of the chopper, but I can’t see them from this vantage point. Ang walks out the back door, though, and I hear him call out a warm greeting.

“Welcome, Mrs. Conaty,” he says. “Welcome.”

And there she is. Sandra Conaty.

The woman who used to own this town. The woman, I now realize, from the video. The woman who’d said the words at the heart of all this: You will do whatever I say.

To Ang, Doc, and all the rest, Mrs. Conaty says, “Prepare rooms for my guests. We’ve had a rough flight. The demonstration can wait until the morning.”

Like dutiful staff, they all turn and set about their tasks. Even Greg—my boss, the chief of police, the man who brought down the Conaty family and drove them from Silvertown—hops to it.

I duck behind cover just in time. There’s a flurry of activity as Conaty’s wishes are seen to. People moving through the house. Back against the wall, I hold my breath and consider options. Crossing this “bridge” to the other wing seems out of the question now. My best chance has vanished.

Words float up from below. Conaty is talking to someone. “… for the use of your beautiful home, Senator.” Then, “Have you all met before?”

A man’s mumbled reply.

Then four clear words, from the senator. “An honor, Mr. Secretary.”

Secretary? My mind races as my stomach goes hollow. This is big. This is really fucking big. I start to lean back, hoping for a better look at the guests. I need to see them. I need to remember faces. But a sound stops me dead. Footsteps on the stairs. Someone’s coming up.

On tiptoes I dart back down the hall toward my room, quietly trying doors as I go. They’re all locked, but from this side. Dead bolts, no doubt installed recently because who the fuck builds a mansion with six guest rooms that lock from the outside?

Choosing one at random, I flick the dead bolt and slip inside, closing it behind me. No way to lock the door from within, so I’ll just have to hope no one notices. Maybe they won’t, but what’s definitely not going to go unnoticed is the smashed door to my room, with its splintered jamb and shards of wood on the carpet. Nothing I can do about that.

The room I find myself in is identical to my own, but on the north side of the hall. Its window blinds are open, and I can see the long paving-stone driveway snaking off through the trees into the distance, little pools of yellow from landscape lights dotting its length.

I’m alone, the bed empty. I check the bathroom just to be sure. No one here.

The room is like mine: a bed, nothing more. The bathroom contains the bare minimum of supplies. Soap, toilet paper.

I check the window. This room is, if anything, worse than my own. A similar drop, but with rosebushes waiting at the bottom, and nowhere to go except the well-lit circle where the driveway reaches the front door. Someone stands in that doorway, just a shadow. The woman I saw earlier, I think. Keeping watch. Armed, probably.

The fountain in the center of the driveway’s circle glistens in the moonlight, patterns of light pushing up from beneath the water’s surface to dance across the sculpted statue and the facade of the mansion. Beyond, the six-car garage is exactly as before. All doors closed, the lone Ferrari parked in front, its red paint glinting as light from the fountain plays across it.

Where would the keys be? Kitchen, hanging on a hook? In Ang’s pocket, or on his bedside table? Of course, from what Conaty just said, this isn’t Ang’s house after all. It’s not even hers. So perhaps the keys are with this Senator. No, I think. Who walks around their own house with keys in their pocket?

With a six-car garage I imagine a set of hooks mounted on a wall inside, probably even labeled so the senator doesn’t have to suffer the inconvenience of trying to remember which key is for which supercar. The question is which wall? In the garage itself? His den? The kitchen?

The garage, I decide. Even if there are no keys, I can’t go deeper into the house,