CHAPTER TWELVE
This was the first time that Amelie Pichou had been alone in the von Ryan family home since she’d come from Lyon to work for them, and it felt a little strange, being in such a huge place without anyone else there.
When she’d first come here, the idea had been to see a little more of the world. Getting paid while she studied just for looking after a couple of children had seemed easy. After all, she had four younger siblings back in France.
It had worked out well. The von Ryans were kind and generous, if busy in those strangely undefined ways that very wealthy people sometimes seemed to be. The children, Adam and Essie, were a delight, and as long as Amelie planned everything carefully, she still got to study.
When she wanted to see more of the sights around the city, she made it into a field trip for the children. A social life was more difficult, but she still got some nights off when the von Ryans were home.
And tonight, the house was hers.
Amelie wandered through it. A part of her wanted to throw a party, but she suspected that would lead to instant dismissal, however kind the von Ryans were.
She got herself a beer instead and started to cook herself a late supper. She could have ordered takeout, but honestly, Amelie had never gotten over what she knew was a very French aversion to American fast food.
There was food in the refrigerator, though, and the von Ryans had said before they left that she was welcome to any of it, since they would be on a skiing trip for a week, the kind of vacation that Amelie had never been able to take as a kid.
Being left behind was her vacation. Maybe tomorrow she would take a trip out somewhere beyond Washington, just to see more of the country she’d come to visit for a year. She couldn’t be away for the whole week, because the von Ryans were leaving her there at least partly as a house sitter, but a day wouldn’t hurt.
It wasn’t as if the house needed the extra protection of one au pair at home. It had an elaborately sophisticated security system, with alarms and cameras that would pick up any intruder. It wasn’t armed at the moment, obviously, because Amelie wanted to be able to move around the house without a private security firm breaking down the door, but once it was, this was probably just about the safest place it was possible to be. At night, it was even possible to arm just the downstairs alarms, making sure that everyone could sleep safe upstairs.
Amelie ate and then settled in to watch some TV, and this was one part of her job that she was somewhat grateful to have a break from. There were only so many cartoons she could watch with the kids before she needed to watch something more sophisticated.
It probably didn’t help, though, that she chose to watch a horror movie. Maybe not the best choice when she was alone in a big house with the darkness closing in around her. It meant that Amelie jumped with every shock, and as the tension rose in the movie, she felt herself glancing around the living room, her eyes chasing imaginary horrors.
Deciding that maybe watching a movie like this wasn’t the best idea, Amelie got up and turned the TV off, then went upstairs. She reached the top of the stairs, and went over to the alarm panel, ready to set the system and go off to her room. After the movie she’d just watched, she found that she wanted to feel secure, even if she wasn’t going to go to sleep just yet. She still had some books to look over.
Amelie’s hand was hovering over the keypad for the alarm when she heard a sound from downstairs.
Instantly, Amelie’s head filled with thoughts of intruders breaking into the house, of burglars and home invasions, there because they’d heard that the von Ryans were away. The movie she’d just watched brought up other images: of some nameless horror creeping around downstairs. The ludicrousness of that thought made Amelie laugh to herself.
She knew what she ought to do. She ought to just set the alarm as she’d been intending, and if the sound downstairs was anything real, then help would be coming soon. Amelie could just hide in her room and let the professionals take care of it all.
If she weren’t quite so creeped out by the movie right then, Amelie might have done just that. The trouble was that she wasn’t entirely convinced that she’d actually heard anything. It might just be her imagination playing tricks on her thanks to the movie. If she set the alarm and went off to her room now, she would lie there in the dark, her imagination refusing to let her sleep.
It was nothing; she was sure of it. It was the effects of being in a dark house alone.
That meant that Amelie had to go downstairs to prove it to herself. She wasn’t going to let herself be afraid of the dark. Even the children weren’t scared of it. Determined to make sure that she could sleep tonight, Amelie went back downstairs, heading for the living room, where she thought the sound had come from.
Amelie was surprised to see that the TV was still on, the rest of the movie playing out in front of her. Had she not turned it off properly? Was that all this was? With a sigh, Amelie went to find the remote to turn it off again, and saw that it had fallen onto the floor, tumbling from the arm of the elegant, modernist chair it had been sitting on.
Amelie bent down to pick it up, and some flicker of movement made her stand up again in a hurry, spinning around to see a man standing there, dressed in black, a mask over his face so that his features were obscured.
Amelie just had enough time to see the flash of metal in his hand before he lashed out with the knife he held there, stabbing her.
Amelie screamed and fell, agony filling her. She clutched her stomach, and then the man was standing over her. She wanted to tell him that she was just the au pair, that she didn’t have anything for him. She wanted to tell him that he could take anything he wanted from the house.
But then he was kneeling beside her, and Amelie could only watch in agonized terror as the knife rose again…