No Safe House

by Linwood Barclay

  “So what? Won’t matter then.” He still had his phone in flashlight mode, guiding them through the house. “People usually keep their car keys somewhere near the front door, like in a drawer or a dish or something.” They’d reached the front hall, where a long, narrow table with four drawers was pushed up against the wall.

  “Yeah,” he said. “This’ll be the spot. I can guarantee it.”

  He pulled open the first one, held the illuminated phone over it. “Just gloves and shit here.”

  When he pulled on the handle of the second drawer, it stuck, and he bumped himself with his hand as it broke free.

  Something heavy hit the marble floor.

  “What was that?” Grace asked.

  “I just dropped something.”

  “What the—is that a gun?”

  “No, it’s a tuna fish sandwich. The hell you think it is?”

  “You keep a fucking gun in your car?”

  “It’s not my car, and it’s not my gun. It’s my dad’s. Hold it for me while I do this.”

  “I’m not holding—”

  “Just fucking do it!” Stuart said, shoving the gun at her. “You’re starting to be a total pain in the ass—you know that?”

  “What are you gonna do? Shoot somebody?”

  “No, but if somebody tries to mess with us, they’ll think twice when they see this.”

  She still resisted as he pushed the gun on her, but she could tell he was getting angry. Would he hurt her if she didn’t hold it? Punch her in the face? How would she explain that when she got home? A bloody nose, a black eye?

  “Okay,” Grace said.

  The gun was heavy and warm and foreign in her hand. She couldn’t remember ever holding one before. It felt as if it weighed fifty pounds, pulling her arm toward the floor.

  “Just don’t put your finger on the trigger,” he said. “You have to know what you’re doing before you start shootin’ one of those.”

  “Like you do,” she said. “Like you’re some sort of expert.”

  “Don’t turn all bitchy on me, okay? Shit, no keys in this drawer, either.” He opened the third one and shook his head. “Damn, where do they keep those friggin’ Porsche keys? It just makes sense for them to be—”

  “Did you hear that?” Grace asked.

  Stuart froze. “Hear what?”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Listen.”

  The two of them held their breath for a good ten seconds.

  “I don’t hear anything,” he whispered. “What did you hear?”

  “I thought I heard somebody moving around. Like a floor creaking or something.” Without thinking about it, she tightened her grip on the gun, but kept it pointed at the floor.

  “You’re just imagin—”

  He stopped. He’d heard something, too.

  “Shit,” he said, looking toward the kitchen.

  Grace moved toward the front door. On the wall, just next to it, the security keypad, a small green light glowing.

  Green? Doesn’t that mean—?

  “No!” Stuart hissed. “Open that and the alarm’ll go off!”

  “But the light is—”

  “The noise sounded like it was in here,” he said quietly, moving on the balls of his feet toward the kitchen.

  “No!” she whispered after him. “Let’s go.” She was thinking, even if they went out the front door, and the alarm was set to go off, and it did, they could still get to his car before the police or the security company showed up.

  “It’s probably nothing. I’m not runnin’ out of here for no good reason. We’re gonna find those keys.”

  He held his phone at arm’s length, casting light on the floor head of him.

  “Please,” Grace said.

  “Stay close to me,” he said, inching forward, reaching out an encouraging hand to her.

  “I’m scared.”

  He grinned. “You’re the one with the gun, Grace. What’s there to be worried about?”

  SEVEN

  TERRY

  ONE phone message and a text. No response to either.

  I struggled to remember the name of the girl Grace said she was going to the movies with. Sarah? Sandra? I was pretty sure it was Sandra Miller. Sandra’s mother was going to be dropping Grace home on the way back from the theater. But I had no number for Sandra, or her mother, and how many Millers would there be listed in Milford? I didn’t even have to look. These days, now that every kid on the planet had a cell phone, we were letting down our guard when it came to getting info on how to reach their friends.

  Cynthia would’ve known. She’d have been able to tell me who Sandra Miller was, where she lived, her favorite pop star, how long she and Grace had been friends. She’d have probably talked to Sandra’s mother at some point, too, and had the woman in her phone’s contact list. Whenever Grace met someone new, Cynthia would manage to get all their particulars in case she might need them later.

  Maybe, if I’d been through what Cynthia had, this kind of thoroughness would be second nature to me, too.

  I liked to think I kept a close eye on Grace, but there was no doubt I didn’t watch her the way her mother did. I cut her some slack. If she was ten minutes past curfew, I didn’t launch into the Spanish Inquisition. I kept the waterboarding to a minimum. I wanted to be able to trust her. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I wanted to trust that she had some common sense. But no teenager is trustworthy. I wasn’t at that age, and Cynthia was the first to admit she wasn’t, either.

  So much about being a parent is holding your breath and hoping everything will be okay.

  So yeah, I gave Grace more freedom. I made deals with her. I told her I’d cut her more slack if she’d promise me that even while her mother was living elsewhere, that when we were all together as a family, she’d dial it down. Not everything had to be an argument.

  Grace said okay.

  But now she’d burned me.

  I could sit here and wait for her to show up, or I could strike out looking for her. Trouble was, I had no idea where to begin. And the odds were, the moment I left, she’d show up here. I wanted a word with her the moment she came through that door.

  I was standing in the kitchen when the phone rang. I had the receiver to my ear before the end of the first ring. But before I said a word, I saw from the caller ID that it was not Grace.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “You must have been sitting on the phone,” Cynthia said.

  “Just in the kitchen, sneaking a cookie,” I said. “What were you doing?”

  “Nothing. Just . . . I felt bad about the beer.”

  “The what?”

  “When you came by. I didn’t offer you a beer.”

  “I didn’t even notice.”

  “When you left, I realized what I’d done. Sat there and had one right in front of you. It was rude.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  She hesitated. “It was deliberate.”

  “Oh.”

  “I needed that time, just for me. I thought if I offered you a beer, you’d have—I feel sick about this.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “The thing is, the moment you left, I burst into tears and hated myself for not getting you one. Because I realized then I didn’t want you to go. Jesus, Terry, I’m a mess. I really am.”

  “Have you seen Naomi this week?”

  “Yeah. I look at her sometimes and think she must be so fucking tired of me. Listening to me still whining after all these years.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “It’s just, I can’t shake this post-trauma. That’s what’s making me hell to live with for Grace.” A pause. “Is she back from the movies yet?”

  “No,” I said honestly.

  Even though she wasn’t here, in this house, Cynthia often needed to know that Grace was safely home before she could get to sleep at her place.

  “When was she supposed to be back?”

  “Cyn,” I said.
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  “I know, I know. All I was thinking was, since she works tomorrow, I hate her to be out too late, to go to work tired. You can get hurt in a kitchen if you’re not paying attention.”

  Grace had a summer job at the Milford Yacht Club, waiting tables in the dining room.

  “Don’t worry. She’s only a few minutes late. I texted her a couple of minutes ago. Everything’s fine.”

  Not quite a lie.

  “Okay,” Cynthia said.

  “What’d you do tonight?”

  “I had to go over and see Barney. I forgot this was the day I was supposed to pay the rent, and he likes cash, so I went to an ATM a couple of hours ago and drove over to his place to pay him.”

  “He offer you any marital advice?”

  Cynthia laughed, but not hard. “He says to me, ‘I’ve been alone my whole life, never had anyone. You don’t know how lucky you are to have somebody, so don’t throw that away.’ That’s what he said.”

  And she went silent.

  “Cyn?”

  Nothing.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine,” she said.

  “You’re not throwing anything away. I know that.”

  Unless I was wrong. Had I misread things? I’d believed Cynthia when she’d said she needed some space because of how she’d been dealing with Grace. Did her concerns extend beyond that issue? Was she having second thoughts about me?

  Which led me to think about what Nathaniel had said. About another friend dropping by to visit her. I was about to ask who it was when the line beeped. It’s was Grace’s cell.

  “Hang on a second. That’s our girl on the other line.”

  “Sure.”

  I hit the button.

  “Grace?” I said, an edge already in my voice. “You know what time it is?” I wasn’t yelling, however. It was as if I somehow thought Cynthia could hear me on the other line.

  “Dad? Dad? You have to come.”

  She was talking rapidly, her voice shaking.

  I could tell, instantly, that something was not right, so I switched from Angry Dad to Concerned Dad.

  “Honey, you okay? I thought what’s-her-face’s mom was bringing you home?”

  “You have to come. You have to come right now.”

  “Where are you? What’s going on?”

  “Something’s happened, Dad. Something’s happened.”

  EIGHT

  TERRY

  SHE told me I could find her in a small store attached to a gas station at the corner of Gulf Street and New Haven Avenue. I tried to get her to tell me what was going on, but all she’d say was that I should hurry.

  And one last thing.

  “Don’t tell Mom.”

  “I’m on my way,” I said, then clicked back to Cynthia. “Hey.”

  “I wondered when someone would say, ‘Your call is important to us.’ Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “There was a problem with her ride, so she’s asked me to pick her up.”

  “If you want, I could pick her up, bring her home.”

  “No,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. “That’s okay.”

  I was thinking about those two words Grace had said. Something’s happened. Just what a parent wants to hear. The mind races. If she were old enough to drive, I’d have guessed fender bender or a speeding ticket. But I could rule that out, given that she was only fourteen, unless she’d decided to get behind the wheel of one of her friend’s cars illegally.

  Jesus, don’t let it be that.

  Maybe she’d been stopped by the cops for drinking underage or having alcohol in her possession. Maybe she’d smuggled beer into the movie theater. I wasn’t naive enough to think Grace was an angel in that regard. A year ago, when she was thirteen, her mother had discovered a liquor store receipt in the front pocket of her jeans while doing the laundry. We needed the intervention of a UN peacekeeping team after that one. We finally got her to confess she’d gotten a girlfriend’s much older brother to buy her some Baileys Irish Cream—the girls felt very sophisticated adding it to their coffee—and he’d given her the receipt so she knew how much to pay him back.

  Yeah, it could easily be something like that tonight.

  And even though Cynthia had said she didn’t need to be protected, that she could handle it if there was a problem with our daughter, she sounded fragile tonight and she didn’t need this. If I took Cynthia up on her offer to pick up Grace, we might be into World War III within the hour.

  “Are you sure?” Cynthia asked. “I don’t mind.”

  I thought of inventing some excuse. Telling her we might be coming down with the flu and there was no sense exposing her. But if that were the case, why had I allowed Grace to go to the movies? Anything I could think of seemed incredibly lame, and I didn’t want to start spinning a whole web of lies over something that, for all I knew, and hoped, wasn’t that big a deal.

  Besides, I needed to get going. I’d been off the phone only a few seconds with Grace but was feeling an urgency to get in the car and fetch her.

  “No,” I said firmly. “I got this. But thank you.”

  “Okay, then,” Cynthia said, sounding slightly miffed.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said.

  “Sure, fine, whatever. Go get our girl.”

  She hung up.

  I grabbed my keys out of the dish and bolted out the front door. I hit the remote to unlock the Escape, got behind the wheel, and backed onto Hickory. From there, it was a short distance to Pumpkin Delight Road. I headed north on it to Bridgeport Avenue, then east, down through the Milford Green, and in only about five minutes was at New Haven and Gulf. The gas station was on the northeast corner.

  As I wheeled into the lot, Grace came charging out of the convenience store. Head down, brown hair hanging down over her eyes. She ran to the car. She pulled on the door handle before I had a chance to unlock it. I hit the button, but she grabbed for the handle too quickly and a second time couldn’t get into the car.

  “Wait!” I shouted through the glass.

  She dropped her arm, waited to hear the click, then swung open the door and got into the front passenger seat. She wouldn’t look at me, but the brief glimpse I had of her face revealed damp cheeks.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked.

  “Just go.”

  “Where’s your friend? How did you end up here? Why are you alone?”

  “Just go,” she said again. “Just drive. Please.”

  I drove out between the pumps, got back onto New Haven, and headed west.

  “Grace,” I said, firmly but gently, “you can’t expect me to drive out to some gas station in the middle of the night to pick you up without your offering up some kind of explanation.”

  “It’s not the middle of the night,” she said. “It’s only after ten. Ten fifteen. You always exaggerate.”

  “Okay, it’s ten. What’s going on? You said something happened.”

  “I just want to get home. Then . . . maybe . . . I can tell you.”

  We rode in silence the rest of the way. I kept glancing over at her. Her head hung low, her hands were in her lap, and she appeared to be studying her fingers, which she laced together, took apart, laced together again. It looked to me like she was trying to keep them from shaking.

  She was getting out of the car before I had it in park, then made a beeline for the front door. By the time I’d caught up to her, she was trying to unlock it with her own key, but her hand was shaking so much she couldn’t slide it into the lock.

  “Let me,” I said, edging her out of the way and using mine.

  Once the door was open, she ran up the stairs as fast as she could.

  “Grace!” I shouted. If she thought she was going to hole up in her room and close the door and avoid an interrogation, she was very, very wrong. I chased her up the stairs, but she didn’t run into her room. She was in the bathroom, on her knees in front of the toilet.

  She attempted to pul
l back her hair as she retched once, then a second time. I had mixed feelings about whether to help her. When your kids experiment with drinking, maybe they need to endure the consequences without sympathy. Although if Grace had been drinking, surely I’d have smelled it on her breath when she got into the car. I hadn’t noticed anything.

  Grace gave it a third try, but hardly anything came up. I handed her a thick wad of tissues to blot her face, squatted down next to her, and reached over to the handle to flush the toilet. Grace slid back from the toilet and propped herself up against the wall.

  It was my first real look at her, and she did not look good.

  “You going to be okay?” I asked her.

  No response.

  “What did you drink? I didn’t notice anything on your breath.”

  “Nothing,” she whispered.

  “Grace.”

  “Nothing! Okay?”

  Maybe she really was coming down with the flu or something, and I was giving her hell for being sick.

  “You sick? Did you eat something bad?”

  “I’m not sick,” she said, so quietly I could barely hear her.

  I said nothing for the better part of a minute. I took the wadded tissues in her hand, tossed them in the basket, then ran a washcloth under a cold tap. “Here,” I said. She wiped her mouth again, then put the cool cloth on her forehead.

  “It’s time,” I said.

  Grace fixed her wet eyes on me. I thought I saw fear in them.

  “You weren’t with Sarah,” I said.

  “Sandra.”

  “Okay. You weren’t with Sandra, were you?”

  Her head moved side to side half an inch.

  “And you didn’t go to the movies.”

  “No.”

  “Who were you with?” I asked. When she didn’t respond, I added, “What’s his name?”

  Grace swallowed. “Stuart.”

  I nodded. “Stuart what?”

  She mumbled something.

  “I didn’t catch that,” I said.

  “Koch.”

  I had to think a second. “Stuart Koch?”

  A furtive glance my way, then she turned away. “Yeah.”

  “I taught a Stuart Koch a couple of years ago. Tell me it’s not that Stuart Koch.”