Home Sweet Murder

by James Patterson

  He grits his teeth.

  “I swear to Christ,” he growls, “if that goddamn fire alarm goes off, I’m going to kill both of them and be done with it.”

  Chapter 14

  Sue hears the clatter of the casserole pan in the sink.

  She’s tired of arguing with Leo. She has to do something. She turns away from her husband and begins shuffling across the room. Her leg restraints keep her from moving fast, but all she has to do is get close enough to the panic button to lunge for it.

  She expects Leo to whisper for her to stop, but he is silent. Maybe he’s finally given in and realizes she’s right.

  The timer on the oven is still bleeping from down the hall.

  Beep…Beep…Beep.

  Sue assumes she’s safe as long as the beeping noise is audible. She knows that’s a risky assumption—the man could be headed back right now, without bothering to turn it off—but it’s a risk she’s willing to take.

  Halfway across the room, she pauses for a glance over her shoulder. She freezes when she sees Leo.

  He isn’t being quiet because he agrees with her course of action. He’s quiet because he can’t breathe! He’s gone as pale as a sheet, and he’s pulling at the collar of his shirt. His chest heaves, and a wheezing sound escapes from his throat.

  “Oh, Pie,” Sue says, and she freezes.

  What should she do? she thinks.

  Help Leo?

  Or go for the alarm?

  Chapter 15

  The man waves the towel in front of the fire alarm a few more times and is finally satisfied that there isn’t enough smoke to set it off.

  He heads back toward the office.

  Beep…Beep…Beep.

  He stops—the goddamn timer is still going off.

  “Son of a bitch,” he snaps, stomping back to the kitchen.

  The room is still filled with smoke. He’s just lucky there isn’t a smoke alarm in here.

  He looks over the buttons, trying to figure out what to press in order to shut the goddamn stove up. He presses something, and the oven turns off, but not the timer. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he starts pounding buttons.

  Beep…Beep…Be—

  Suddenly, the house is silent. But not completely silent. He can hear whispering coming from the office where he left Sue and Leo.

  Furious, the man storms back through the house.

  He puts his hand on the gun in his shoulder holster.

  Chapter 16

  Sue makes her decision. She turns back to help Leo.

  Almost as soon as she starts his way, his breathing seems to relax a little. He was just so scared that she was making the wrong decision that he worked himself into a frenzy.

  “Are you okay?” she whispers as she arrives at his side.

  He nods. Instead of talking, he concentrates on taking long, deep breaths. He inhales through his nose, exhales through his mouth.

  He looks terrible. The last time she saw his skin look this pallid was when he had his heart attack.

  Oh, God, she thinks. I don’t know what to do.

  She looks back over her shoulder at the panic button across the room. Is there still time? Suddenly, she notices something.

  Silence.

  The beeping noise has stopped. How long has it been since he turned it off? The answer comes with the sound of the man’s footsteps stomping through the house, getting closer. Just by the clomping of his feet, Sue can tell the guy is mad.

  A wave of nausea runs through her body. She feels like she could throw up.

  This gives her an idea.

  “Just relax,” she whispers to Leo. “I’m going to try something else.”

  “What are you going to do?” Leo wheezes.

  “Pie.” She grabs his hands and clutches them to her chest. “You’ve got to trust me.”

  Chapter 17

  “What the hell is going on in here?” the man barks as he enters the room.

  Sue is on her hands and knees on the carpet.

  “I’m going to throw up,” Sue says, contorting her body in a retching motion.

  She is acting, but only a little. She does in fact feel ill, so she only has to exaggerate. If she had to go so far as actually vomit, she could probably do it.

  “Please,” Leo says in a hoarse voice, “you have to help my wife.”

  Thank you for going along with my plan, Leo, Sue thinks.

  She had been worried he wouldn’t.

  The man stands over her. She can feel his irritation radiating from his skin.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he says in a huff, like a parent exasperated with an uncooperative child. “Come on,” the man growls, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her to her feet. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  She points across the hall to their bedroom, where the interrogation began. He drags her toward the door. Her ankles are still in restraints, so she has to hobble. The man is impatient, pulling her along. At the doorway, she loses her balance but catches herself on the wall. Finally, they get to the bathroom door. Before shoving her inside, the man looks around in the room, as if to make sure there aren’t any weapons or a big window she can climb out of.

  “If you need to puke,” he orders, “then go ahead. Or splash some water on your face. Whatever. Just get your shit together, woman.”

  He slams the door, leaving Sue inside.

  Now what do I do? she thinks.

  She pretends to make dry-heaving sounds as she looks around the room frantically. She uses the gagging noises to cover the sound of her opening drawers and the doors underneath the sink. She finds a small pair of fingernail clippers. A plunger. The pink razor she uses to shave her legs. A nail file.

  If she was James Bond she might be able to use one of these as a weapon, but there’s nothing here that would help her stand up to this guy, with his stun gun and what she is sure is a very real handgun.

  She considers the lid on the back of the toilet. It’s certainly heavy enough it could knock a man unconscious, but it’s not something she could wield easily. It’s not as if she could hide it behind her back as she came out of the bathroom. She realizes there is nothing in here that she could use as a weapon.

  She flushes the toilet and then stands by the door to listen.

  She has another idea.

  Chapter 18

  Sue is thinking of the phone in the bedroom. If the man is preoccupied with Leo, she might be able to sneak out and make a quick, quiet call to 911.

  All she needs to do is dial the number, whisper that they have an intruder, and tell them the address. Or maybe she doesn’t even need to do that—maybe they can trace the call.

  Either way, a phone call will alert the authorities without sounding a loud alarm inside the house that might send the man over the edge.

  Sue listens at the door. She hears the man shuffling back and forth in the hallway, muttering.

  He’s on the phone again.

  This means he is preoccupied. The only problem is he is pacing in front of the bedroom door. She can’t leave the bathroom without him seeing her.

  “Uh huh,” he says into the phone. “Yeah.”

  His voice fades. She thinks she hears his footsteps farther away in the house.

  Is this my chance?

  She eases open the bathroom door and peeks out. There is no sign of the man. She takes a step into the bedroom, but then something catches her eyes. Outside the window in their bedroom, a light is going off and on.

  Sue takes a moment to hop to the window and look out. The bedroom window faces the front of the house, and she can tell that someone—the man, presumably—is flicking the front porch light off and on.

  The unfamiliar SUV is still parked on the side of the road, and Sue sees the light come on inside as someone opens the door. A person—a woman—steps out of the car and walks up the driveway, briskly but coolly.

  Whoever she is, she has an air of confidence about her.

  This must be the man’s accomplice, t
he person he’s been talking to on the phone. Sue wants to hear what they have to say to each other, but she’s wasting precious time.

  She has a phone call to make.

  She takes two shuffling steps toward the nightstand and the phone on top of it. Then she freezes. She hears something coming from the office—a low, agonizing moan. Then the sound of a loud thump resounds through the corridor.

  Sue can tell what the sound is—Leo has just collapsed onto the floor.

  “Pie,” she calls, her voice thick with panic.

  She shuffles as fast as she can across the hall to her husband, forgetting about the telephone that was only a few steps from her reach.

  Chapter 19

  Leo is lying on his side on the carpet, wincing in pain and clutching his chest.

  “Oh, my God, Leo!”

  Sue collapses to his side.

  “Breathe, Pie, breathe.”

  The man’s footsteps clamor down the hallway. He bursts into the room like a bull let out of the chute.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?” he growls.

  “You have to call an ambulance,” Sue says. “Leo could be having a heart attack.”

  The man freezes for a moment, studying Leo and Sue. He smirks.

  “He’s not having a heart attack,” the man says. “He’ll be fine.”

  The man leans over and grabs Leo’s arm.

  “Sit up,” he orders, and between the man and Sue, they get him to sit upright, leaning against the foot of the love seat.

  “Is it a heart attack, Leo?” Sue says. “Is your left arm numb? Do you feel shooting pains?”

  Leo looks clammy and sick—on the verge of puking or passing out—but Sue can see that he is not having a heart attack. Not yet. He is having chest pains. No doubt about it. But they haven’t reached the level of cardiac arrest.

  “Please,” she pleads to the man. “This has to stop. He can’t take much more of this.”

  “Leo,” the man says, snapping his fingers to get his attention. “I need you to hang in there. This is almost over.”

  His demeanor is different. The anger has subsided for a moment.

  “There’s been a change of plans,” the man says. “I just talked to my boss. She’s not happy with how things are going. She wants me to question Leo alone. She thinks maybe he’s holding something back because you’re here, Susan.”

  Sue stares at him in disbelief.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want you to know about all the shady business he’s been up to,” the man says.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Sue says, but her mind is racing.

  Could it be true? She knows this psychopath is not with the SEC, as he claimed, but for the life of her, she cannot figure out who he is or why he might be here. Is the firm caught up in something illegal?

  She doesn’t believe Leo would willingly do anything unscrupulous, but maybe his hands are tied.

  Sue is still trying to figure out what she thinks about all this when the man grabs her by her arm and tugs her to her feet.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” the man says, his voice now calm and, for the first time tonight, sounding almost professional. “You’re going to go back into the bathroom for fifteen minutes. Leo and I are going to have a little chat, just the two of us. And then I’ll get out of your hair and this will all be over. Capiche?”

  As he’s talking, the man is pulling her toward the door. She looks back at Leo, who is leaning against the couch. They lock eyes, and she can see the terror in his expression.

  She has never seen someone so frightened.

  “It’s almost over, Pie,” she says, trying to sound as reassuring as she can. She hopes he can hold on for fifteen minutes. “Just try to stay calm. Remember: deep breaths.”

  The man pulls her into the hallway, and she feels the overwhelming need to cry. She has the same feeling she did when paramedics wheeled Leo into the ambulance after his heart attack.

  She feels with terrifying certainty that she will never see her husband again.

  Chapter 20

  The man drags Sue toward the bathroom door and then shoves her into the room. He pushes her harder than he needs to, and she has to catch herself with the counter to avoid falling.

  “Fifteen minutes,” she says. “Then I’m coming out.”

  She tries to come across as strong, but the words sound more like questions than statements. She is using all of her willpower not to cry.

  The man nods, as if bored by her.

  Sue checks her watch.

  It’s 9:04.

  The man says, “If Leo does what I want, and you stay in the bathroom, this will all be over soon. If not…” He gives Sue a sinister grin. “Who knows?”

  Sue’s skin goes cold. Her mind reels, thinking of the possibilities. What exactly is the threat he’s making?

  Does he mean he’ll kill Leo?

  Kill both of them?

  Rape her?

  The way his beady eyes are staring at her, she isn’t sure what his intentions are.

  She can’t believe she’s living through this nightmare. She feels as if her whole world has been turned upside down. She’s lived sixty-one years only to find out that the world she thought she understood doesn’t exist.

  She knew that the world wasn’t always fair, but she didn’t know that it was crazy. One minute you could be cooking dinner for your husband. The next—a madman forces his way into your house.

  “Don’t hurt Leo,” Sue says to the man. Her chin quivers. “He’s a good man.”

  “Ha,” the man huffs. “He’s got you fooled just like everyone else.”

  With that, he slams the door so hard the walls shake. Sue flinches from the sound and jerks away.

  “Don’t hurt him!” she shrieks and pounds on the door with her fist.

  The sound of her voice reverberates within the small bathroom, and the terror she hears in her own voice frightens her even more.

  She catches sight of herself in the mirror and does a double-take. She hardly recognizes the woman reflected back at her. Behind the lenses of her glasses, her eyes are red and puffy from crying. Her hair is a tangled, sweaty mess.

  No use feeling sorry for herself. She has to remain strong.

  She puts her head against the door and listens. She can hear muffled voices, the loud bombast of the man and the softer, pained sound of her husband.

  The phone in their bedroom is only about ten feet away. Should she risk going for it? Or should she wait the fifteen minutes to see if the man really does leave?

  She knows what Leo would want her to do.

  Wait.

  He wouldn’t want to risk antagonizing the man. Play along, Leo would say. Don’t do anything to push him over the edge.

  Okay, Sue thinks. I’ll wait.

  But I’m not going to sit here idly.

  She pulls open the drawer next to the sink and finds the nail file she spotted earlier. She sits down on the toilet, leans over, and begins sawing at the zip tie on her ankles.

  When fifteen minutes is up, she thinks, I’m coming out and calling the police.

  Or I’m going to die trying.

  Chapter 21

  Leo hears the footsteps of the man coming back to the office. Leo feels a minor relief, knowing that Sue is in the bathroom, away from the man.

  He hates to see Sue suffering because of him.

  “Okay, Leo,” the man says, standing over Leo. “Last chance to confess. Is there anything you want to tell me without the wife around? Something you know you did wrong?”

  Leo is sitting on the carpet, slumped against the love seat. He feels incredibly weak. He wants to fall over, put his face into the thick carpet, and close his eyes.

  The man kneels down next to Leo.

  “Did you hear me, old man?” the man snaps.

  “I have no secrets from Sue,” Leo says slowly, making a great effort to speak. “I really don’t know what you’re—”

  The man’s hand lashes out
like a whip and smacks Leo hard across the face. Pain shoots through his jaw and cheekbone.

  The man grabs Leo by the collar and holds Leo’s face inches from his.

  “Listen here, you lying little parasite,” the man snarls through gritted teeth. “If you don’t tell me what I want to know, you’re going to feel more pain than you’ve ever felt in your life.”

  Leo is speechless, terrified—his heart pounding a hundred miles a minute—as he stares into the face of his assailant.

  The man growls, “Your heart attack will seem like a vacation compared to what I’m going to do to you.”

  Chapter 22

  The blade of the nail file breaks through the plastic strip, and suddenly Sue’s legs are free.

  She checks her watch.

  It’s 9:12.

  “It’s been more than ten minutes,” Sue yells through the bathroom door. “Can I come out now?”

  “No,” shouts the man. “We agreed on fifteen minutes. Stay in there.”

  She checks her watch again, unable to view the hands of the clock because of her trembling arms. She clutches her hands together to try to stop her wrists from shaking. The second hand on her watch seems to be moving at a glacial pace.

  She places the blade of the nail file over the plastic strip binding her wrists. It’s harder than it was with her ankles because she can’t get a good grip on the file. She has it squeezed between her fingers and can’t seem to saw against the plastic with any strength.

  “Come on,” she whispers.

  A rivulet of sweat crawls from her hairline and rolls down the side of her face.

  She tries to listen, but she just can’t make out what Leo and the man are saying. The man’s voice is the most distinguishable, but it sounds like a series of grunts and growls instead of actual words.

  She can’t really hear anything from Pie.

  He might be talking, she thinks, but with his heart about to explode, he’s probably not speaking much above a whisper.