He crept toward the door then hesitated, returning to the bedside. “Suzette?” he whispered, leaning over, giving her shoulder a slight shake.
She grumbled something inarticulate and turned her head away from him, hidden beneath the nest of her hair.
“Suzette?” he tried again, shaking a bit more. She answered with a snore.
“Shit,” he muttered, because he figured that’s what she’d think he was when she woke up and found him gone. A big, steaming pile of shit.
On her bedside table, next to the empty bottle of tequila and an opened pack of Marlboro lights, he saw a notepad and pen. He jotted her a quick note: Thanks for supper. Then, as an afterthought, because this still made him sound like a callous jackass, he added, And the rest.
He started to sign his name, then shook his head. She’d know it was from him. Who the hell else would it be? How many other guys did she invite for dinner and a fuck tonight?
Biting back his breath as he eased the bedroom door open, he slipped out into the hallway. He stole toward the living room, watching as the front doors came into view around the corner of the wall.
Almost there, he thought, passing the kitchen, hugging the wall, his gaze darting about. Just a few more steps.
“It’s locked.”
Alice Moore’s voice, coming from the shadow-draped living room, was loud enough to startle him.
Andrew whirled, eyes wide. “Jesus!”
In the gloom, he could see her, a small silhouette sitting on the floor by the coffee table. He didn’t need light to know what she was doing. The soft scritch-scritch-scritch of her pencil tip against her notebook page was a dead giveaway.
“Alice,” he whispered, managing a shaky laugh. His heart was jackhammering beneath his sternum. “Hey, hi. I didn’t see you there. I was just…uh, I…”
“I know what you were doing.”
He blinked. “You do?”
“Yes. You and Suzette were having sex.”
“What?” This came out as little more than a gulp.
“Sex,” she said again. “I’m not stupid, you know.”
“No, of course not,” he fumbled. “I just…I didn’t think that.”
“I have an IQ of one seventy-five.”
Andrew blinked again, impressed enough to momentarily forget his mortification. “One seventy-five? That’s pretty good.”
“It’s considered high genius,” she said.
“Really good,” he amended.
“Benjamin Franklin is estimated to have only had an IQ of one sixty. Charles Darwin, only one sixty-five.”
Only? he thought.
The scritch-scritch-scritch resumed in earnest as she worked on her mathematics equation and Andrew forced himself to move, to hurry for the door.
“I told you. It’s locked,” Alice said.
Andrew froze. “What?”
“The door. You need the key code to get out.”
By this point, Andrew was at the threshold. Turning, he grabbed the knobs and turned them futilely. “Shit,” he whispered, his panic level rising.
Suzette would know the code. He turned again, meaning to retrace his steps, return to her room.
“She can’t help you.”
Frozen again, Andrew sought out Alice’s form among the overlapping shadows. “Suzette knows the code, doesn’t she? I mean, she goes in and out of here all the time.”
Alice stood, setting her pencil aside. “She’s been drinking. She’ll be out until the morning. I said she can’t help you, not that she couldn’t.” Padding around the side of the sofa, she drew near enough for the dim light to cut across her face. “You don’t listen very well, do you?”
Andrew frowned. “I listen just fine.”
“No, you hear just fine,” she said, her expression impassive, her eyes fixed on him. “You don’t listen for shit.”
As he stood there, startled into silence by this, she turned to the key pad. “Each person here sets his or her own pass code, a four digital decimal number between 0000 and 9999. That leaves at least ten thousand available combinations.”
Andrew stifled a groan. “Ten thousand?”
“At least,” Alice said.
“I don’t suppose mine will open this door?” he asked, hopeful.
She shot him a look. “Not likely.”
He couldn’t hold back a groan this time.
Reaching up, she punched in a series of four numbers. To Andrew’s surprise, the red light meaning the door was locked switched over to green and he heard the soft click as it unlocked.
“You know the code?”
“Daddy always chooses binary numbers, using only zeroes or ones. He says they’re easier to remember. That means there are only eight possible combinations within the four-digit limit. I guessed the right one my first day here.”
“Thanks,” he said, impressed.
She turned and walked away, returning to the living room.
“Uh, right.” He reached for the door. “I should go now. Good night, Alice.”
All he heard in response was the ghost-like scritch-scritch-scritch of her pencil.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lila had fucked him one last time before dumping him, and to Andrew, that had been the most painful and humiliating part of their breakup. When they’d finished, he’d tried to kiss her, but she’d turned her face away. “Gordon and I… he’s been calling me again and we’ve decided to go to counseling,” she’d said.
“What?” Stricken, he’d sat up in the bed, looking at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Andrew, he’s my husband,” she’d begun.
He had shaken his head. “You’re getting a divorce.”
“He’s asking for another chance. He wants to try. We’ve been married fifteen years. I owe him that.”
He’d left her apartment and driven home, not the dormitory room he’d shared at the time, but his childhood home, the house in which he’d grown up and where his parents still lived. His father had been gone on a flight and his mother hadn’t come home from work yet. When she’d arrived, Katherine had found her son curled in a fetal coil on the couch in the darkened living room. Even without him saying a word, she’d known somehow, had understood. She’d gone to his side and knelt, drawing him into her gentle embrace. He hadn’t cried since his sister’s death, but he’d wept in that moment like a grief-stricken child, mourning the loss of his first love.
The next morning, Andrew woke to a heavy, fervent pounding on the door to his room. He peeled back his eyelids and blinked blearily, bewildered at the bedside clock. Ten minutes after seven. He’d drawn the curtains closed before turning in, and a pale seam of new morning sun cut a crooked diagonal across the floor.
“Mister Braddock?” he heard someone call, then more of that incessant thud-thud-THUDDING.
With a groan, Andrew sat up, swinging his legs around until his feet hit the floor. No more tequila, he promised himself, because Suzette’s one-hundred proof variety was doing a number on the inside of his skull. His tongue felt leaden and tacky, like he’d been sucking on a sweaty gym sock in his sleep. Stumbling out of bed, he limped toward the door, raking his fingers through his hair.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. That had been one of his mother’s favorite sayings. With this in mind, along with memories of Dr. Moore’s face twisted with murderous intent as he’d brandished that chrome-plated pistol, Andrew didn’t immediately open the door. “Who is it?”