“You’re permitted to.” Laura nodded. “You’re not under arrest. If you want to bring something to make yourself comfortable, or entertain yourself tonight, you’re welcome to.”
“Tonight,” Kevin repeated, as if trying to work out the meaning of the word. “How long do you think I’ll need to stay?”
Nate glanced at Laura. She didn’t seem to have an answer. “We aren’t sure yet,” he said, speaking up for her. “We hope not long. With any luck, this guy will come along and we’ll catch him. But we’ll need to make sure it’s safe before we send you back home.”
“Right.” Kevin hesitated again before walking back into the apartment—and Laura followed, glancing around to make sure that there was no one lying in wait for him.
“We should stay here,” she told Nate in a low voice. “Let the cops take him back. I want to see if this guy shows up.”
Nate nodded grimly. He didn’t see the need to disagree. Right now, he wanted to keep watching Laura—and above all, to see if she was right. Because if she was, then his questions were only going to get more urgent, and he wanted them answered as soon as possible.
If not by her directly, then he was just going to have to be a cop and get to the bottom of it himself.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He settled behind the door, waiting.
This was the worst part of the whole thing. The waiting. He never knew for sure how long it was going to take for them to arrive, even though he did his best to study their routine. People were late for all kinds of reasons. Traffic. Delays on the subway. Stopping to take a phone call. Doing errands on the way home.
They could be early, too, which was why the waiting took so long. He had to be there in good time, get himself situated and hidden in the house. It was hard to work out where to go. That was part of the research, too: spending time figuring out how to get up to their windows, or how he would be able to pick the lock on the front door. He’d spent hours watching videos to try and get it right.
And then there was the time spent looking through the windows before he actually broke in, trying to find the best place to hide, where the shadows would be falling by the time the target got home from work. He wasn’t used to this kind of thing. It didn’t come naturally to him. It just had to be done. So, he took the time, learned, figured out what he had to do to stay hidden for as long as possible.
He’d been inside for so long already tonight. He felt himself almost drifting off, lost in the monotony of it all, when a key finally scraped in the lock. It startled him upright again, making his heart race, adrenaline bursting through his body. He grabbed the knife, set down on a side table so that it wouldn’t get sweaty in his palm, and gripped it hard.
The door opened, and he heard someone come inside and shut it. Just one person, from what he could tell. Excellent. The guy was alone. No need to make this more complicated than it already was.
He tensed his whole body, hearing the sound of someone coming down the hall toward him. He’d chosen the bedroom this time. The best place to wait. Almost everyone ended up coming into their bedrooms after getting home from work—to get changed, to freshen up, or just to lie down on the bed for a moment with exhaustion. Even if they stopped by the kitchen first, they had to come and get ready for the night eventually.
And the footsteps in the hall were coming right this way.
He raised the knife just slightly, steadying his grip, rocking a little on his heels. Ready to spring out and strike. Ready to take him down. It wasn’t a girl this time. It wasn’t going to be as easy. He needed to get in some good hits with the knife before this twin had the chance to fight back. Right into his back, maybe—he’d been trying to study the location of the kidneys, understood that it was a good place to strike…
There was a knock on the front door, resounding loudly through the small apartment, and he almost gasped in despair as the footsteps started to move away again.
No, no, no—this was all wrong. A guest? He couldn’t have a guest! For all the time he’d been watching, this man had never had a guest on a weekday. He just didn’t do it. Now everything was going to be ruined. If there was someone else in the house, how was he going to do what he needed to do?
There was a conversation at the door, muffled somewhat by the intervening space and the walls. Whoever it was spoke in a low voice, but he strained to hear. He thought he could pick out some key phrases: reason to believe… danger… come with us…
He wanted to hiss, but he didn’t dare move or make a noise now for fear of being discovered. It was the police. It had to be. But how had they known? He had thought that at some point, inevitably, someone
would figure out what he was doing. But choosing this twin, out of all the twins in Milwaukee? Had they realized already that he was the one behind it and simply followed him here?
Wouldn’t they have been raiding the place if so, not just asking the twin to leave?
“Okay,” he heard the twin say. His voice was louder, carrying more clearly. Like maybe he was projecting into the apartment instead of out into the hall. It held a note of shock. “Um. Should I bring anything with me?”
There was a murmur of something that might have been agreement, and then he heard the door close. The same footsteps came back down the hall, quicker this time. He gripped the knife tighter again, seized by a sudden rush of realization. The twin had come back inside alone. This was his chance. He could strike now before the police came inside to check up on him.
But, no, wait. The police! They were right outside. Could they be out the back, too? Waiting for him? Could he get caught if he tried to flee?
Staying put, staying hidden—maybe that was the smart thing to do.
But the footsteps…
The twin was coming into the room where he was hiding. He was coming right for him. It wasn’t a big enough room to hide in. He would be seen. And then the twin would raise the alarm, and he wouldn’t get away anyway…
He couldn’t do nothing.