Creep - Jennifer Hillier [126]
But there was nobody. Just the tasteful entryway of a big house.
“Sheila!” Morris stage-whispered. It sounded ridiculous somehow. “Sheila!”
He walked down the hallway, his finger hovering over the trigger. The Remington’s trigger pull was heavy. It minimized the possibility of unintentionally firing a shot. He was especially happy about this since his hands were shaking. He moved swiftly from room to room, continuing to whisper Sheila’s name. Nobody responded.
The door to the master bedroom was open, and he entered. Turning the light on, he let out a breath when he saw that nobody was waiting for him, ready to blow his head off. In actuality, the bed was neatly made, the furnishings surprisingly nice even though the large room was minimally decorated. He crossed to the bathroom ensuite, but nobody lay in wait there, either. The room was spotless and smelled faintly of disinfectant.
Three more bedrooms yielded nothing—two were empty, and one held a desk and nothing else. Another bathroom, also pristine. At the back of the house, the enormous kitchen displayed state-of-the-art appliances, gleaming as if they had never known the joy of cooking.
Something was off about this house, and Morris couldn’t put his finger on it. It came to him a moment later.
The entire space was completely devoid of personal items. No photos on the walls, no clothes in the closets, no dishes in the sink.
Did Wolfe even live here? Why buy a house like this and then rent a crappy one-bedroom apartment in Seattle? What was the point?
Back in the main hallway, he spied a connecting door to the garage. He opened it and poked his head inside, his eyes widening at the sight of Wolfe’s vintage Triumph motorcycle.
The kid was here somewhere. But where? Morris had checked the whole house. Frustrated, he shut the connecting door and stepped back into the main hallway.
Something flashed in the corner of his eye and he turned toward it. A little green light was blinking on a keypad that was mounted to the wall a few feet away. Beside the keypad was a door he must have passed earlier, but apparently hadn’t noticed. It looked out of place. Keypads belonged on the outside of the house, to keep folks out, but this one was inside. Frowning, he walked toward it and tried the handle. Locked.
His heart, already well into tachycardia, kicked into an even higher gear. No locked door had ever seemed so sinister. The goddamned front door had a crappy lock and no alarm system, but this one was bolted with a keypad? Why? What was behind it? Closet? Crawl space? It was impossible to know without either looking at the blueprints or looking inside. Morris wished he had the blueprints.
He rattled the handle again but it didn’t budge. There was only one way to find out what the door was concealing. Insanely, Monty Hall’s voice from that old game show Let’s Make a Deal echoed in his head. What’s behind door number one?
Damp with sweat, Morris stood back as far as he could before hitting the wall behind him. Aiming the Remington, he took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.
The sound was louder than anything he could have anticipated. Bits of wood flew everywhere, one fleck hitting Morris’s cheek just below his eye socket. The rifle’s crack was scary and exhilarating. Obviously, he’d never fired a rifle inside a house before; it was crazy to think he’d just done it in Wolfe’s house in the middle of the night. The neighbors had to have heard that. The old biddy next door was probably ripping out her curlers.
The door handle was gone. In its place was a huge, gaping hole. Morris kicked out his foot and the door swung open easily.
It was a basement. Morris was stunned. Nothing on the outside of the home indicated the house even had one. A set of stairs covered in gray