Page 23 of Survive the Night
The phone went silent, knocking Sarah out of her terrified paralysis. She ran for the back door again, automatically dropping her cell in her hoodie pocket. As she fumbled with the dead bolt, desperately wishing she hadn’t locked it moments earlier, she saw movement outside. Someone was walking between the trees bordering the backyard.
No! Go back! she mentally shouted, sure that it was Jules heading back to the house to help her. The dead bolt opened with a thunk, and Sarah yanked open the door. Before she could cross the threshold, Logan Jovanovic stepped into the open, heading toward the house—and directly toward her.
With an indrawn gasp, Sarah jerked backward, silently closing the door before he spotted her. Aaron was at the front of the house, and Logan was coming through the back. She was trapped.
Stop! A commanding voice in her brain broke through her panic. It wasn’t over. There were other options. If she couldn’t go out the doors, then she’d have to find a window. The police were coming. Otto’s face flashed in her mind, and it gave her courage. She just needed to keep herself safe until Otto arrived. He’d never let Aaron or Logan take her.
Locking the back door again, Sarah forced herself to move to the kitchen doorway. Her heart was racing, and air felt thick in her lungs, making it hard to breathe. She was certain that Aaron was standing right outside the door, waiting for her, but she couldn’t stay in the kitchen. There was no place to hide, and Logan was coming.
Gritting her teeth, she peeked through the doorway. No one was in the hallway, but the front door was wide open, one of its beautiful stained-glass windows shattered.
Moving silently, Sarah darted into the dining room, feeling hunted. It was almost worse that Aaron wasn’t standing there, waiting. Now, she had no idea where he was. He could be around any corner, through any doorway. Her heart rate sped up until the beats started to blur together, and it was a struggle not to gasp for air.
Knock it off, the stern mental voice scolded. Get to a window and get out. Otto will be here soon. She clung to that thought. She’d dealt with Aaron and Logan before, and she’d survived—and escaped. Now, she had friends. She had help, something she’d never had before Mr. Espina had offered to help her. She just needed to hide or escape until her new friends arrived.
The windows in the dining room were the crank-open type, and she knew she couldn’t fit through the opening—even if she wasn’t caught trying to open it. She needed to get into the library. There were two windows in there with sashes that slid up. She’d be able to squeeze through one of those.
“Alice.”
Aaron’s raised voice echoed through the house, freezing her in place.
“You’re just making this worse for yourself, Alice.”
The dining room went gray around the edges as she struggled to breathe. His voice was getting closer. It sounded like he was right outside. Her frantic gaze darted around the dining room, but there weren’t any hiding places, just an uncovered table and chairs.
She was trapped.
Chapter 8
“I’m not happy with you, Alice.”
Aaron sounded like he was even closer. Any second, he’d come through the dining room door and find her. “Do you know how much of my time and money you’ve wasted with your little stunt?”
She spotted the small, waist-high door in the wall that Dee called an elf door. Silently, Sarah darted over to it and pulled the small, glass knob. The old wood stuck, and she had to hold back a frightened sob. There was a creak of a floorboard right outside the dining room door, and Sarah gave the knob a desperate yank. The small door popped open, revealing a serving hatch that opened into the kitchen.
Boosting herself up, she folded herself into the hatch, pulling the small door closed behind her just as the door to the dining room swung open. Scared that Aaron had spotted her, she didn’t try to hide there, but shoved through the other side. Even as the small door leading to the kitchen swung open, her breath caught. What if Logan was in there?
As the opening widened, revealing an empty kitchen, Sarah sucked in a breath. Turning so she could swing her legs down, she lightly thumped her knee against the side of the hatch. The sound seemed so loud, even over her heartbeat drumming in her ears. He’d be rushing in at any second, Sarah knew, and she slid out of her hiding place as quickly and silently as she could.
She held back a terrified, frustrated sob. Now she was trapped in the kitchen again. Her only other options were the hallway where Aaron was, the back door where Logan was, and the basement.
Even as she thought it, her feet were already moving. The door was warped, and she tugged at it, her fingers slipping on the glass knob. It finally popped open with a thunk that sounded much too loud. With a frantic glance behind her, Sarah slipped through the doorway.
Standing on the first wooden step, she carefully pulled the door closed, stopping when it rubbed the frame with a squeak. Even though it wasn’t latched, Sarah left it, hoping it wouldn’t swing open and that Aaron wouldn’t notice the door wasn’t completely shut. She paused for a moment, listening. All she could hear was her own heartbeat and the rasp of her frantic breaths.
Her right hand automatically reached to the side and felt for a light switch, but she only found rough, unpainted wood and something fragile and sticky that she figured were spiderwebs. A faint sound through the door made her go still, her breathing loud inside her head. Had she imagined it, or was Aaron in the kitchen? He could pull open the door at any second.
Swallowing as much of her panic as she could, Sarah searched for the second step with her foot. As she eased her weight onto it, it gave a low creak, and she went still again. When the basement door stayed closed, she started breathing again in short, hard pants. She lowered her other foot onto the step. Her fuzzy socks caught on the rough wood of the step, and she wished she’d worn shoes. Why would she have, though, since she was going to go back to bed immediately after Otto picked up the puppies?
The puppies. Content with their full bellies, they’d been sleeping in their crate, which she’d placed on the living room floor under an end table. If they stayed asleep and silent while Aaron was searching for her, maybe he’d miss them. She’d never seen him be cruel to animals, but then again, she’d never seen him around animals. Sarah’d had a kitten for a few weeks when she was younger, but her father had taken it away from her after she’d broken one of his rules. After that, she’d never asked for another pet.
Aaron was carelessly cruel to people, though. Sarah knew this well, and her stomach churned with worry. She forced herself to focus. If she couldn’t save herself, then she’d be no help to anyone or anything else.
Step by blind step, she crept down the stairs, one hand trailing down the exposed studs of the unfinished wall. The stairs were steep and uneven, some risers narrow and some wider, and the distance between them varied wildly. Her eyes started to adjust to the near-blackness, although she wasn’t sure if the shapes she could barely make out were really there or just her wishful thinking. It would be infinitely less terrifying to be able to see where she was going.
Her foot dangled in space, and she had a moment of panic. What if the stairway ended, and she was going to fall off the edge onto a hard concrete floor below? Her toes finally made contact, and she blew out a relieved, silent breath. The next step was shallower than she expected, and her foot thumped against the wood.
