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With a blood-soaked grip, she grabbed the banister and paused for a moment to catch her breath.
This, she thought. This was what happens to other people. People in the news who court or invite misfortune, who make bad choices. What had she done to deserve this wretched, wretched year? She took a step down but again paused.
The second set of stairs, narrow and steep, were finally coming to use. They were the secret service stairs from a bygone era of what architects called “the age of separation,” stairs and corridors, secret rooms and hidden closets built to keep families from staff and vice versa.
Breathe, stay calm, the doctor told herself, like Dr. Shaw said. Slow. Breathe. Respond, don’t react. Don’t pitch forward down the steps. Hold the banister tight. Grip. Feeling dizzy, she closed her eyes to regain her balance.
She had to secure herself heading down, step by step, but move fast. Whatever this was, whatever had happened, someone might find her missing soon and follow her trail of blood like breadcrumbs.
Halfway down, she missed a step, pitched forward, and caught the banister two-handed. She rolled her right ankle, winced in silence, and straightened back up to listen again.
Downstairs, there were more voices.
Who the hell were all these people?
It wasn’t Josh. They weren’t boys, not down here. Not men. These were two female voices. Sophie and Masha? The voices came from the doctor’s study, below her downstairs and to the right.
She had changed the gate and alarm passcodes. She’d changed the locks. Only the housekeepers knew the codes and where she had hidden the new spare keys. But someone got in and now she had to escape her own home. But which way?
Right, toward the study, toward the voices, into the kitchen, and out the back? Left, toward the front and out to the driveway? Right, to the basement, down, and back up into the side yard?
From inside the study, the voices grew louder. More heated argument. Suddenly the doctor’s heart froze. Was it, could one voice be Lulu Belmont’s?
CHAPTER 31
FURY SENT THE doctor off the last step, down the hall, and into the shadow of the living room doorway. She stood and listened.
“Move it out,” she heard Lulu say.
“What? No way,” a second girl said.
“It’s too dark in there.”
“I can’t move it,” the second girl scolded.
Dr. Parks knew the second voice too. It was Amory Banks.
“It weighs a ton,” Amory said. “That’s the point of having a safe. You can’t, like, just lift it and, just, like, leave. They make them heavy for a reason.”
They were trying to open the doctor’s safe? To get what? And how did they come by the combination? She crept closer.
“I can’t hold the flashlight and turn the thing. Come here and help.”
“Seriously?” Lulu scoffed.
“What’s the combo?”
“You don’t remember?”
“What’s it again? Just tell me. Hurry!” Amory laughed.
“Thirty-one, twelve, twenty-nine,” Lulu said. “But Josh said you have to go around right four or five times, and then for twelve, on the way back, you have to skip it the first time around, and then keeping going and land on the twelve.”
“Huh?” said Amory. “I can’t remember all of that.”
“Fine. Hold my phone. I’ll do it.”
“Why?”
