The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [142]
He headed for the attic.
The access panel was in the closet of the master bedroom. He grabbed the handle in the ceiling, and pulled down the rickety folding stairs. Then he clicked on a flashlight and headed up into the pitch black gloom.
The attic space was only three feet tall, meant for storage, not comfort. He crawled along the plywood floor, shuffling around boxes of Christmas decorations until he reached the far corner. He counted two rafters over to the left, then shoved aside the exposed insulation and reached in for the flat metal box.
He pulled it out, thinking it felt lighter than he remembered. He set the flashlight down on the floor, raised the lid….
The metal box was empty. Cash, IDs, all gone. Cleared out.
Police? Sandy? Someone else? He couldn’t understand it. He’d never told anyone about his emergency escape kit. It was his little secret, one that kept him from having to bolt awake screaming every night. He was not trapped. He had an escape plan. He always had an escape plan.
And then, while his mind was still frantically trying to process what had happened to him, how it could have possibly happened to him, he became aware of something else. A noise, not far below him.
The creak of a floorboard.
Coming from his daughter’s room.
| CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE |
As family vacations go, Jason’s choice of hotel shocked me. I had expected some moderately priced, kid-friendly establishment. Instead, we arrived at a five-star getaway resort, complete with a full-service spa and yawning indoor pool. A bellhop in a red coat with gold-braid trim led us up to the very top floor, which could only be accessed by inserting the room key into the elevator key pad. Then, he escorted us to a two-bedroom corner suite.
The first room contained a king-sized bed with sumptuous white bedding and enough richly brocaded pillows to furnish a harem. Our view overlooked Boston Harbor. The bathroom featured wall-to-wall rose-colored marble.
In the adjacent sitting area, we discovered a sleeper sofa, two low-slung camel-colored chairs, and the world’s largest flat-screen TV. When Jason announced that this would be Ree’s room, her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. So did mine.
“I love it!” Ree squealed, and immediately went to work disgorging her overstuffed suitcase into her deluxe chamber. In five seconds or less, the room was covered in bright pink princess blankets, half a dozen Barbies, and, of course, Lil’ Bunny, given the perch of honor in the middle of the sofa. “Can we watch a movie?”
“Later. First, I thought we’d put on fancy clothes and I would escort my two favorite ladies to dinner.”
Ree’s scream of delight threatened to shatter the bank of windows. I continued to regard my husband with shell-shocked surprise. “But I didn’t bring anything fancy … I wasn’t expecting …”
“I took the liberty of throwing in a dress and your boots.”
My eyes went wider, but Jason maintained his inscrutable features. He was up to something. I just knew it. And for a moment, Wayne’s warning came back to me. Maybe Jason knew what I’d been doing. He’d guessed that I’d been tracking his online activities and he was … wining and dining me to death? Spa-ing me into submission at a sumptuous resort?
I retreated to our half of the suite, where I put on the shimmering blue dress Jason had packed for me, as well as knee-high black leather boots. I hadn’t worn this dress for Wayne yet. I wondered if Jason had known that, and I felt uneasy all over again.
Then Ree came barreling into the room, spinning around in a cranberry-colored dress sprinkled with embroidered flowers and finished with a giant looping bow in the back. “Mommy, do my hair. Hair time, Mommy. I want to look fabulous!”
So I fashioned Ree’s hair into a bun on top of her head, with curly wisps springing around her face. And I spritzed and styled my own golden curls, even finding some makeup packed away by my clever husband for our family getaway. I did eyes, cheeks, and lip gloss for me. Lip gloss only for Ree, who then pouted because she