And then it happens in an instant, sneaking up on him, how, how it could have happened he isn’t sure, because he’s so cautious and careful, but he hears footsteps bounding down the stairs and suddenly those footsteps are in the dining room, adjacent to the kitchen, where he is. He moves very quietly toward the opening, hoping, praying that nobody heard him, and peeks into the dining room.
It’s the blonde, the taller one with the short hair. She’s unplugging the stereo resting on the windowsill. She looks good bending over, just wearing a bra and panties. So firm and lean. So … so special.
Oh, God, if I could just …
He ducks back, just on the off chance that she might cast a glance in his direction. His heartbeat is drumming so loudly that he can’t hear, he can’t think straight, but he prepares just in case, he’s had it planned out just in case, and he recites it to himself now. I’m the owner. This is my house. Just in case.
And he reaches into the Fun Bag, also just in case.
He slowly steps back into the recesses of the kitchen and holds his breath.
It’ll be okay, he thinks. This will be better. It will enhance the whole experience, make it more real, more vivid.
That’s what he’s telling himself when the blond girl walks into the kitchen.
34
THE BLOND GIRL doesn’t see him at first. Her head is down and she’s balancing the remnants of the meal—the champagne and water bottles, the plates of food and the Tabasco—and turns toward the counter in the center of the kitchen to plop it all down before she even realizes she’s not alone.
She recoils in an instant, her breath whisked away in surprise, her hands rising up defensively, everything she’d been holding crashing to the tile floor. Glass shatters everywhere. The sound only amplifies her shock.
Be indignant. This is your house. She’s the intruder. Say that. Say that!
“I’m the … owner,” he manages. He raises a hand in peace.
The girl is too stunned for a moment, but Holden planned this out well. The words did the trick. She doesn’t turn and run, not immediately.
“Oh—oh. I—you’re the own—”
“Dede? Is everything okay?” It’s the other girl. “Dede?”
The blonde looks back toward the living room, then back at Holden.
“How … many of you are … here?” he asks. Excellent! Just what an indignant owner would say.
“Just two of—oh. Oh.” Her eyes dart downward just as Holden feels the warm stain spreading across his crotch. He just pissed himself. He looks down, and then back up at her.
“We’ll leave right now, mister. I’m really sorry.”
She spins on her heels to leave. Holden closes the distance between them in an instant. She senses his approach and starts to run and is nearly out the door when he reaches her, stabbing the Taser into the back of her neck. She goes down hard, her body suddenly limp and unable to break her fall, her face smacking against the kitchen wall and landing hard on the ceramic tile.
“Dede?” comes the voice from upstairs.
Holden drags the blond girl—Dede—into the kitchen, away from the view of the dining room, a trail of blood smearing in her wake. Is she … dead? The fall was nasty. She’s bleeding from the nose and forehead.
What has he done? What’s he going to do? He’s thinking fast, but the adrenaline is catching up with him now and he can’t let it paralyze him, he’s got to think-think-think—
Hearing the urgent footfalls in the living room, Holden grabs a frying pan from the overhead rack and raises it above his head. The brunette gasps before she’s even entered—seeing the bloodstain first, no doubt—and when she rushes in, her eyes are already cast downward at her lover. She lets out a horrific scream as she looks up to meet Holden’s eyes, but by then the frying pan is already crashing down on the crown of her skull.
The pan almost bounces out of Holden’s hand from the harsh impact. He’s never hit anything so hard. The brunette is stunned, reaching for support but unable to find any. She sinks to her knees, still upright but precariously so, and before she falls like a tower tumbling over, Holden raises the pan and cracks it against her skull a second time. When she crumples to the floor, she is lifeless, like a balloon figurine that the air has been let out of. Her eyes are open but still.
Is she dead?
Holden bounces on his toes, looking at each of them. The blonde is still breathing. The brunette is not.
“It was a … accident,” he says. “I didn’t … I just wanted …”
What does he do now? Panic sweeps over him. Run, he thinks, but No, too many clues left behind. The blonde knows what he looks like.
She moans. Her shoulders move. She’s trying to turn over.
Holden watches her. Watches her struggle. Watches her suffer.
But this is their fault. They shouldn’t have surprised him. They made him do this.
“No … no …” The blonde is making noise on the floor. He taps her with his foot. She groans in response. He bends down and rolls her over on her back. Turns her bloodied face to the left, so she can see her girlfriend.
“Look at her,” he says. “Look.”
Her eyes widen in horror. She manages a low, guttural, garbled wail.
It’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard.
35