She poured herself a glass of water, keeping her eyes on him as much as possible. “You just found out you’re trapped in a town where no one has been able to leave for five years, and you’re worried about the mail?”
He shrugged. “Not worried. Curious. You’ve got electricity. Who’s paying the bill?”
“I don’t know. It just never turns off. Water neither. Some people think we’re frozen in time, but I don’t buy it. The physics teacher over at the high school held a town meeting to explain it once, but he’s gone now.” She took a swallow from her glass, her slender throat moving as she did so.
Usually, that would have been a temptation, especially on a woman as good-looking as she was. But while the package was sexy, what was inside was annoying as hell, and he wanted no part of it. “I thought you said no one had left in five years.”
“Not ‘gone’ gone. Gone. He put a gun in his mouth over on Pleasant Creek Road.” She looked down sadly. “He didn’t live here. Just worked here. His family was over in Bucksville County. He hadn’t seen them in a year when he finally gave up hope and did it.”
Graf couldn’t bring himself to actually care. “That would suck.”
He looked at the refrigerator, where a magnetic chore list adhered to the door. Someone had written on it in dry-erase marker: MOM, DAD, JONATHAN, and another name half swiped off and unreadable. “So, I know you’re not ‘Dad’ or ‘Jonathan,’ so should I call you ‘Mom'?”
“What?” She looked in the direction he pointed, and she stiffened. “Oh. That’s just … old.”
He studied the stilted way she moved as she went to the refrigerator and pulled down the chart, scattering little round magnets with pictures of dishes and brooms all over the floor. She opened a drawer and shoved the whole thing in, then slammed it closed.
“So, I’m going to guess that Jonathan, not being a feminine name, belongs to someone else. Maybe someone who used to live in this house, but doesn’t anymore.” He drummed his fingers on the island. “Is this really your house?”
“Yes, it’s my house.” She didn’t turn to face him. Her shoulders were tense and she gripped the edge of the counter as though it supported her. “Jonathan was … Jonathan is my brother.”
“‘Is’ or ‘was'?” Graf asked absentmindedly, examining the carved wooden chickens in wacky poses on the windowsill. A family had lived here. A family with very bad taste in interior decorating. “That’s kind of crucial to the story, I’m guessing.”
“Is. He’s dead, but he’s still my brother.” Her voice trembled. She was crying.
Oh, this is just precious. He rolled his eyes and managed a semi-interested-sounding “I’m sorry.”
She turned, a fake smile on her face. She didn’t need to pretend anything. Graf didn’t care. And smiling was the exact opposite of what she’d been doing to him all night. She killed the lying expression and pushed away from the counter. “You’re probably tired. Let me show you where the basement is.”
To his left was the outside door, the window covered in a red-and-white-checked shade. Perpendicular to that, a door covered with too many coats of thick, white paint, with an antique porcelain knob. About a foot above the knob there was a chain lock, attached by two measly screws. That wasn’t going to keep him out, no way, no how. But he wouldn’t tell her that. “I have some stuff I need to get out of the car, before it’s too late. I’ll meet you down there.”
Nocturnal though he might be, he wasn’t prepared to descend into his tomb yet. He already felt trapped. In the basement he would feel completely claustrophobic.
As he unloaded his bags, he caught sight of his BlackBerry lying on the passenger side floor, and he dove for it. Miraculously, four bars glowed reassuringly on the screen. He redialed the most recent call—if anyone would know how to get out of this mess, Sophia would—and held his breath.
It never connected. It rang—once, twice, four times, five—and the voice mail never picked up. Seven, eight rings, ten and still nothing. He waited out twenty rings, then cursed and hurled the phone to the ground.
“I know the feeling.”
Graf whirled to face the girl. She stood behind him, an expression of true pity on her face. He didn’t need her pity. He needed a way out.
“When we first all started to realize that we were stuck here … we didn’t know how long it had gone on. We thought there was something wrong with the phone lines.” She looked down at her hands. “You’ll get used to it. We don’t really rely on each other here, but you’ll learn to rely on yourself.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake, I had to get trapped in a Lifetime original movie, didn’t I? He couldn’t take any more homespun wisdom from the woman who appeared to be the queen of all mood swings. “Well, that basement is sounding awfully comfy right now. You can lead the way.”
He carried his overnight bag and cursed his light packing. Not only would a pair of jeans and change of shirt not last him for eternity, if he was really trapped here that long, but he hadn’t brought an eternity’s worth of blood with him. He’d fed off a waitress when he’d stopped earlier in the evening, but he’d been planning to gorge himself like a tick at the Independence Day party, so he’d only brought emergency rations. Like her or not, he’d be tearing into this woman before too long.
He followed her down the basement stairs. It was not the kind of basement that the word basement described in his mind. A “basement” was a place where somebody puts the aforementioned pool table and maybe a miniature refrigerator. They put up drywall and maybe some wood paneling and called it a den or a family room. This place, with its bare rock walls and dirt floor, was more like what someone would call a cellar. Or a hole. “You’re seriously going to keep me down here?” He wiped a finger through the cobwebs clinging to visible floorboards of the house over his head.
“I’m not going to serve you breakfast in bed, if that’s what you were hoping,” she called over her shoulder as she tugged futilely at a mound of various, unrelated objects stuffed in a corner.
That’s what you think. He watched her struggle for a while with whatever it was that she was doing, then reached past her, shouldering her out of the way.
“Very gentlemanly of you,” she griped, wiping her hands on her jeans.
“I never claimed to be a gentleman.” The metal frame and musty canvas of an army cot pulled free from the rubble of tent parts and Christmas decorations. He untangled a string of colored lights from the cot and set it on the ground at his feet. “Is this what I’m sleeping on?”
“That or the floor.” Beneath the moldering wooden stairs was a stack of plastic totes. She pulled one out, examined the label, and popped open the lid. “Blankets in here. They’re old, but they’ll do.”
“Your hospitality amazes me,” Graf quipped, snapping open the cot’s folded frame.
“I’m sorry, I must have missed the Holiday Inn sign at the end of my driveway.” She put her hands on her hips, where she might as well just keep them permanently, they ended up there often enough. “I could always rescind my invitation, you know.”
I’d like to see you try.
“Sorry.” The word left his mouth almost less frequently than please, and it had to make its way past his clenched back teeth this time. “You have to understand, you’ve had five years to get used to this whole ‘being trapped’ thing. I’ve had five minutes.”
“You’ve had an hour. Suck it up.” She went up the stairs. They creaked, and a fine rain of sand fell from each step. “This isn’t permanent. At sundown, you start looking for a new place to live.”
The door closing at the top of the