Chapter 4 - The Man by the Stairs
I stayed flat against the stone and listened to the shoes on the marble above me. My wrists had gone numb inside the rope, and the air down there smelled like damp concrete and old dust. The hatch was open only a crack now. Light cut down in a thin line and caught the edge of my cardigan. I could hear Mia breathing fast up there, and I could hear him trying to keep his voice even.
He had shifted his weight. I heard the sole of his shoe scrape as he moved, and I knew without seeing it that he was putting himself between Mia and the stairs. Between us and whoever was still standing back there.
For a minute there was only the sound of the house. The vent humming. A car passing far off outside.
Then he spoke, light, almost friendly. “You work here long?”
A pause. The other man did not move right away. I heard a soft step on marble, then a stop.
“Couple months,” the man by the stairs said. His voice was low and flat. Younger, maybe. Careful.
The suited man let out a breath through his nose. “Nice place. Quiet.”
“Yeah. Real quiet.”
I pressed my forehead to the cool stone. Up there, the light was bright and white and hid everything. Down here, I could hear every small thing. I heard his shoe shift again as he bent a little toward Mia. I imagined his hand on her shoulder, keeping her close without holding her too tight.
He kept talking. “You been around the last few days? Must get boring, just watching the front.”
A longer pause this time. I heard the faint creak of the stair rail, like the other man had leaned on it.
“I’m mostly nights,” he said. “In and out.”
“ Hear anything weird? Kid crying, pipes knocking, anything like that?”
My heart knocked hard against my ribs. I wanted to call up, to tell him not to ask it like that, not to give it away. But I did not have the air, and I knew Mia was right there.
The man by the stairs cleared his throat. “Nah. Nothing. House has been empty.”
Empty. He said it too fast. Three days my daughter had been asking for her mom, three days she had heard me knocking through the floor, and this man standing ten feet away said he had heard nothing at all.
I heard Mia suck in a breath. It was small and sharp. Then nothing. No crying, no words. The kind of silence a kid makes when she is trying to disappear.
“Mia?” the suited man said quietly. “You okay?”
She did not answer. I knew that freeze. I had seen it at the grocery store once when a cart came too fast around the corner, and at the park when a dog barked too close. She went still and stared and waited for someone else to move first.
I wanted to reach up through that crack and pull her to me. My hands twitched in the rope and the fibers burned my skin.
“She’s shy,” the man by the stairs said. “She doesn’t talk much.”
The suited man’s voice changed. Still calm, but lower. “You know her name?”
Another pause. I could hear my own breathing now, too loud in my ears. Dust got in my throat and I had to swallow a cough.
“I’ve seen her around,” the observer said.
Shoes moved on marble. Two steps, coming closer. Then the suited man spoke again, and this time he was not making small talk. “Why don’t you go tell Nathan his guest is here. Tell him I found the kid alone in the hall.”
I went cold. The stone under my back felt suddenly wetter, colder. He said the name plain, like he already knew.
The man by the stairs hesitated. “He’s not — I don’t know where he is.”
“Then go find him,” the suited man said. “This can’t wait.”
For a second nobody moved. I heard Mia’s bare feet shift on the cold floor, a tiny squeak of skin on marble, and then the soft sound of her pressing into the suited man’s leg. Hiding behind him. That told me everything she could not say. She knew that voice from the stairs. She was afraid of it.
Finally the other shoes turned. Heel, toe, heel, toe, heading back toward the stairs. Slow at first, then faster. Then the sound of steps going up, fading.
The suited man waited until they were gone. I heard him crouch down fast, his knee hitting the floor. His hand came back to the edge of the hatch.
May you like
“She knows him,” he whispered, more to himself than to me. “He’s going straight to Nathan.”
Above me, the bright hall went quiet again, and the countdown started ticking in my head louder than the vent.
