She grabbed her phone, pressed the record button, and slid it under the blanket on the cot.
Then she fisted the corkscrew as someone fumbled with the knob.
The door opened, and she sprang forward, lurching through the doorway, lunging with the weapon in her hand. Someone grabbed her shoulders and slammed her to the ground.
A gray film crossed over her vision as she gasped, struggling to breathe.
Above her prone body, Chip scowled. She gulped a mouthful of air as he pulled her to her feet and tugged her hands behind her back.
The hard plastic of a zip tie bit into her wrists, and she twisted, straining to see behind her.
“Get back in there.” Chip pushed her, and she stumbled into the bunker again.
Peggy sat up on the cot, her tiny body trembling. “You can’t do this again.”
Richard entered the fallout shelter and smiled at his wife. “Actually, I can.”
Chapter One Hundred
Kiersten
He stumped around the room with a cane, looking at the shelves and the hole in the ceiling where a black tube now protruded.
“Let me go, Dickie,” Kiersten pleaded.
He froze for a long moment, then turned to stare at her. “Dottie was the only person who ever called me that,” he said softly. “It was her pet name for me. A nickname. Odd that you should use it, too, just before you die the same way she did.”
A hyperawareness filled her body, like a useless superpower. The dank smell. The sweat on her upper lip. The papery folds above Richard’s eyes. “I won’t tell anyone. I’ll pack up and go back to Minnesota. You’ll never see or hear from me again.”
He tilted his head, eyes wide behind his bifocals. “You don’t strike me as the kind of person who would overlook a murder. That’s why you read all of Dottie’s boring diaries. Went to the library. Did your homework. Tried to figure out what happened to her. I very much doubt you would retreat to your dairy farm and forget this ever happened.”
“What are you going to do with me?” Her voice came out shrill, an octave too high.
“The same thing I did with Dottie,” he said simply. “Margaret was right to demand that we leave this room exactly as it was back in 1965. Who knew it would come in handy again, all these years later?”
“It won’t work.” Kiersten swallowed, tried to sound calm. “We know what you did. We know what Chip and Trey are doing with the houses, how they’re trying to scare us into selling.”
“And you can prove nothing without the diaries,” Dickie said. “Which we now have.”
She forced herself not to glance at the pile of board games stacked on the lower shelf.
“If I’m not home in an hour, they’ll come here looking for me.”
“And you’ll be dead by then.”
She needed to stall for time, to keep them talking. If she hadn’t returned by lunchtime, they’d look inside her car and realize she’d never left. Piper would know something was wrong.
“Is Aspen in on this too?” she asked.
“Aspen is a useful and beautiful idiot, like my own wife.” Dickie jutted his chin in Peggy’s direction. “Like most women.”
“They’ll know what you did,” Kiersten repeated.
Trey snorted. “It won’t matter, because they can’t prove it. And in an hour you’ll be buried under the concrete foundation we’re pouring for the second house next door.”
Keep them talking. Stall for time.
“We have you on video. Entering our houses. Vandalizing the construction site.”
