First Impressions Read online

  Chapter Eight

  EDEN awoke to the horror of someone’s hand pressed firmly over her mouth. Her first impulse was to lash out, but a face and a warm breath were near her ear. “It’s me, and please don’t hurt me again,” came the unmistakable voice of Jared McBride. “I’m still bleeding from the last time. There are people downstairs. If I take my hand away, will you be quiet?”

  Eyes wide, Eden nodded. It was too dark to see his face, but McBride’s tone of voice told her this wasn’t serious. She first thought, What is he up to now? Slowly, he moved his hand away from her mouth, as though he didn’t want to move. He was very close to her, leaning over her so that he was practically in bed with her. She rolled away from him and reached for the telephone by her bed, but Jared stopped her. Silently, he pointed to the cell phone in a case on his belt, letting her know it would be better to use that. He motioned to the door, gesturing that they should get out as soon as possible. As far as she could tell, he meant for her to leave the room as she was, which meant running off with this man who she didn’t trust while wearing only her nightgown. She was glad that she’d been in too much of a hurry to put her clothes away the night before when she’d dressed to meet Brad. Draped across the end of the bed were her jeans, a sweater, and a T-shirt. She stuck her feet into her running shoes as she grabbed her clothes, then tiptoed out of the room behind McBride.

  Since Eden had seen or heard nothing and had only McBride’s word that anyone was in the house, Eden couldn’t feel very cautious. In fact, she felt nothing but annoyance. What time was it anyway? She was glad to see that last night she’d been too tired to remove her watch. The house was dark, but the watch had a little button on the side that she pushed, and it lit up the dial. Ten minutes until five A.M.

  McBride was crouching down like a character in an Xbox game and moving stealthily along the chair rail. Eden gave a yawn, then a shiver. Her nightgown had been fine under the covers, but now she was getting cold. She hugged her clothes to her and thought about stopping to put them on.

  “Are you sure—?” she began, but McBride cut her off. In an instant, he had grabbed her and put his hand over her mouth to keep her from talking. What she wanted to say was a very sarcastic “I see that you recovered well.” But she said nothing. Last night she’d seen that the wounds she’d given him were bleeding. And he’d held his arm that was still in a sling as though it hurt him very much. She’d felt so sorry for him that she’d been tempted to spoon-feed him again.

  But right now, he had one arm around her waist and the other around her head with his hand over her mouth. So where was his sling? Why wasn’t he limping? If he was lying about his injuries, just as he’d lied about everything else, then he was probably lying about someone being in her house. She lifted her foot with the intention of slamming it down on his instep. Her plan was to run for the phone while he held his foot in pain. She figured she could punch the buttons for 911 before he could get to her.

  But in the next moment she heard whispered voices from downstairs and became rigid with fear. McBride was still holding her, but Eden was no longer fighting him. He said one quiet word: “Cellar.”

  She nodded, and he dropped his hand from her mouth. At the end of the wide corridor upstairs was a door to what looked like a closet. It was true that there were brooms and mops in there, but behind them was a little door that opened to reveal an old staircase that was so narrow it was dangerous. It had been the fate of the poor overworked servants in centuries past to have to use those stairs, rather than the wide stairs in the front of the house.

  As Eden pushed aside the handles of half a dozen old mops and a vacuum cleaner that was probably in use in 1910, she felt anger run through her. McBride had searched her house enough that he knew about the stairs down to the kitchen, which led to the other staircase down into the old cellar. Even when she’d lived here before, the narrow stairs to the kitchen had not been used. And only Eden had used the cellar. Mrs. Farrington had been accidentally locked in the cellar when she was nine, so she’d refused to ever go down there again. She’d wanted to fill the thing up with sand. But it seemed that Snooping McBride knew where the cellar was.

  There was no light in the narrow staircase, so Eden went first and felt her way along the wall. Behind her, she heard McBride readjust the mops and brooms, then carefully close the little door. Eden had to repress a yelp when her face ran into a thick cobweb, a cobweb that made her realize that if McBride had seen the old staircase, he hadn’t been down it. Gingerly, she felt each step before putting her foot on it. She didn’t know if the staircase had been restored or was still made of rotting wood, as it had been when she lived there.

  At the bottom of the stairs, McBride touched her shoulder, letting her know that he wanted to go first into the kitchen. When she stepped back into the tiny space, of necessity his body pressed against hers. She held the clothes over her arm tightly between them. Cautiously, he opened the door. Eden was relieved that the hinges didn’t squeak.

  McBride stepped out into the dark kitchen and looked around. For a moment he disappeared from sight, then he came back. Putting his finger to his lips, he motioned for her to follow him.

  When Eden stepped into the kitchen, she gasped. Outside a security light shone through the curtainless windows and showed her that her clean, tidy kitchen had been ransacked. Doors and drawers were open, canisters of food had been overturned. Through the window in the kitchen door she could see what looked to be a flashlight moving about on the screened porch. To her right, through the dining room, she could see the glare of another flashlight, and she could hear things being moved. There were at least two of them, and they were quietly shifting things around. She heard what sounded to be a sofa cushion hitting the floor.

  Why aren’t they afraid of waking me? she wondered. She glanced up at McBride to see that he was frowning so hard that the furrows between his eyebrows were an inch deep. He didn’t like what was going on, and she had an idea that if she weren’t with him he’d confront the people in her house. In a gun battle? she wondered.

  He pointed to the door that led into the pantry. It was a small room between the dining room and the kitchen. Inside was a trapdoor in the floor that led down into the cellar. Rarely did people see that trapdoor, as it was usually covered with boxes of cans. But Eden hadn’t bought enough food to fill the kitchen cabinets, much less the pantry. As she reached for the ring that was flush with the floor, McBride caught her hand. She looked at him and he shook his head no.

  When he reached for a bottle of cooking oil, Eden nodded and took it from him. Feeling her way along the dark floor, she felt for the rusty old hinges, then uncapped the oil and poured it on the tired old metal. Setting the bottle down, she turned to him and nodded, then he picked up the ring and lifted the door into the cellar. He wanted to go first, but Eden pushed him away. She knew the stairs better than he did. There were ten of them, and they had been replaced just before she left—which meant that they were now “only” twenty-plus years old.

  Taking a deep breath, she started down the stairs, cautiously putting her foot down before she applied her full weight. They held. When she reached the bottom, she turned to McBride, who was right behind her. He’d lowered the door above their heads.

  Eden felt along the damp walls of soft old bricks and tried not to shiver when she touched the dirty shelves. When she’d lived there she’d kept the cellar clean because she’d used it for what it had been built for: storing produce from the garden. She’d wrapped up green tomatoes, apples, potatoes, and carrots, and had kept them in the cellar for months. And even though one wall looked as though it had been rebuilt, the room was full of the nests of insects and rodents. Bath, she thought. When I get out of this I want a long, hot bath.

  Finally, she found what she was looking for: candles and matches. Because of the dampness of the cellar, the matches were always kept in a tight metal box. Now she hoped that they’d kept dry for all these years. Holding her breath, she opened