Chapter 197
But it was already too late. Hearing the commotion, the people upstairs rushed down.
Lucas clenched his teeth. The newcomer wasn’t armed, but if those two came down, he and Maxine would be dead meat.
Thinking of this, Lucas shoved her forward and snapped, “Go! Now!”
He spun around and dashed toward the other side of the garden. Maxine cried out in alarm, “What are you doing?”
On the far side of the garden was the house’s circuit breaker box. Cutting the power would buy them precious time. Seeing this, Maxine gritted her teeth and chased after him.
They couldn’t find Lucas. One was upstairs, the other on the far side of the house. Suspecting someone might have broken in, both kept completely silent, so in the dead quiet, the sound of something crashing to the floor was all the more jarring.
Almost instantly, the two men reached into their pockets, drew their handguns, loaded them, and crept cautiously toward the source of the noise.
But just as they reached the midpoint, the overhead lights cut out, plunging the room into instant darkness.
Due to Lucas’s chronic insomnia, he rarely drew the curtains. Besides, they were custom–made, impossibly thick and heavy, blocking out all daylight, let alone any illumination at night.
When the overhead lights went out, it was as if he’d been blindfolded. Startled, the man on the stairs missed a step with his right foot and tumbled down. In the chaos, his finger accidentally pulled the trigger, the loaded gun discharged into the darkness.
The silencer muffled the shot, but the sudden muzzle flash in the pitch black startled the other man. “Who is there?” he shouted.
The man who had fallen down the stairs groaned in pain on the floor for a moment before yelling, “It’s me! Fucking get over here and help me up already!”
He had banged his back pretty hard when he tumbled down, now he couldn’t even get up. The other guy quickly flicked on his flashlight and demanded, “What the hell happened to you?”
Clutching his back, the man glared at the staircase and cursed, “Who the hell builds their stairs like a damn maze? Hope the bastard breaks his neck next
time he takes a midnight piss!”
The man with the flashlight gave his shoulder a quick pat. “Get up, this blackout’s fishy.”
With that, he stepped aside and yanked open the curtains. The streetlights outside were still on, which meant only their house had lost power. No one living in such an upscale neighborhood would ever forget to pay their electricity bill.
That meant that something must have happened to the other guy, and Lucas managed to get away.
The man who’d tumbled down the stairs also flicked on his flashlight and, limping badly, searched the vicinity, certain the noise he’d just heard had come from right around here.
The oldest and most level–headed of the three bolted toward the garden.
The back door had somehow closed, but he didn’t think much of it, just assumed his buddy had shut it while searching. He reached out and pulle door open, only to be blasted by a sudden flood of light that forced his eyes to screw shut.
Before he could adjust to the sudden glare, a jolt shot through half his body, and he collapsed to the ground.
Maxine triumphantly brandished the stun gun, looking down at the groggy man sprawled on the ground. “How’s that? This thing works like a charm, doesn’t it?”
Lucas took a wary step back, raising his hands defensively. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “just… keep that thing away from me.”
1/2
Chapter 197
The man who had fallen searched around, straining his ears, but heard no trace of his companion. After a fruitless search, he limped back out and scanned the sprawling room. The place was eerily silent, not a single sound in the oppressive darkness.
Taking in the bizarre decor, and spotting several wooden racks displaying human thought, his fear intensifying.
keletons nearby, a chill ran down his spine, is this place RaimtedM
AD
Comment
