The Stolen - Jason Pinter [65]
had been disinfected of humanity.
I looked around. Didn't see anything.
Then I went to the other door. Stopped in front of it.
This one was different. It was painted white like the others,
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but the paint seemed duller. I touched the surface, immediately recoiled. The other doors were wooden. This one
was metal. And I knew right away that one of the keys on
my chain would open the dead bolt.
I thrust the key inside, got it on the first twist, but then
froze when I heard someone coming up the stairs.
The lock unlatched and I pushed the door open.
And then I was standing in what looked like the dream
room of any young girl. There were toys everywhere.
Coloring books. A large dollhouse filled with tiny furniture. Tapes and CDs and games were stacked high in a
corner. Pink wallpaper, and every book a child could ever
want to read. And there, sitting on a made bed, her face a
mess of fright and relief, was Amanda.
She jumped up and threw her arms around my chest. I
winced as she pressed on the cigarette burn, then took her
arm and said, "We need to go. Right now."
Then I noticed something. On the floor. A small scrap
of paper. I picked it up, unfolded it. It was a receipt. It was
from a store called Toyz 4 Fun. I clenched my jaw. At that
moment I knew where we were. I knew what this house
was.
Panic welled inside me as I shoved the receipt into my
pocket, grabbed Amanda's hand as we went for the door,
still slightly ajar. I heard someone running down the hall,
shouting, "Ray, where the hell are you, buddy?"
I waited until the footsteps were right outside, then I
slammed the heavy metal door closed as hard as I could.
There was an audible oomph as whoever was on the other
side was knocked flat off his feet.
I flung open the door and ran past, my heart hammering when I saw that the man I'd just knocked down had a
gun in his right hand.
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We sprinted downstairs and toward the front door.
Turned the knob. It was locked. One more key left.
I inserted the last key in the lock, let out a breath when
it caught, then turned the handle and opened the door to
the outside.
As soon as we stepped onto the front porch, Amanda
let out a bloodcurdling scream. There was a body in the
driveway. It was lying in a pool of blood. The beard gave
it away. It was Dmitri Petrovsky, and he was very dead.
"Run!" I shouted.
We ran down the driveway, and I recognized that we
were in the exact same place that we'd cornered Petrovsky. The high brick walls and trees obscured the view
beyond the house. There was nobody to hear us scream.
We sprinted around the bend, wind whistling past us,
and saw the metal gates up ahead.
They were closed. And I had no keys left.
When we reached the brick wall, I knelt down, cupped
my hands and said, "Climb on."
Amanda stepped onto my hands.
"One, two, three. "
I heaved up as she jumped. Her hands caught the rim
of the wall. I pushed from below as Amanda pulled herself
up, managing to straddle her legs across the wall.
"Come on!" she shouted.
Just as I got ready to jump, I heard a loud bang and a
chunk of brick exploded right beside me.
"Come on, Henry, they're shooting at us!"
I jumped up, managed to get hold of the wall. Amanda
gripped my wrists and began to pull. I got a small foothold
in the chunk of wall that'd been blown out, then pushed
off and hoisted myself up. Another shot rang out, and
brick flew apart right where my foot had been.
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We toppled over the wall, landed on the other side in a
tangled mess. I leaped to my feet, helped Amanda up.
Then we ran as fast as we could, until the woods swallowed us.
We arrived panting at the road we'd turned off of when
we followed Petrovsky. Huntley Terrace. It was dark out.
I had no idea where we were or what day it was.
"Come on," I said, taking Amanda's hand again. I
thought back to the last time this happened, the last time
we were both running for our lives. Back then Amanda
was fleeing with a man she didn't know. This time, for
better or worse, she