The measured footsteps overhead had stopped. The silence that followed was worse—a listening silence. Kayla crept into the living room, her socked feet soundless on the floor. Tommy was still asleep, cheeks flushed, one arm thrown over his stuffed dog. She scooped him up, blanket and all, her muscles screaming with the effort of moving slowly. He stirred, mumbling, and she shushed him gently, her lips against his hair. “Just a new game, sweetie. A quiet game.”
She carried him down the short hall, past the closed door to the upstairs, her eyes fixed on the old brass doorknob as if it might turn on its own. She slipped into the bathroom, locked the door with a soft but definitive click, and sank to the floor, cradling Tommy. The small, windowless room felt simultaneously like a trap and a refuge.
“We’re in the bathroom,” she breathed into the phone.
“Good. I’m five minutes out.” Mark’s voice was tight, all business. “Don’t make a sound.”
They sat in the dark, the only light a thin strip under the door. Kayla held her breath, every sense straining. Tommy, now fully awake and confused, looked up at her with wide eyes. She put a finger to her lips. Sensing her terror, he simply nodded and buried his face in her shoulder.
Then, a new sound. Not from above, but from the hall just outside the bathroom door.
A soft, slow *scrape*—like denim brushing against the wall. Then a pause. Kayla’s blood turned to ice. He was downstairs. He was in the hall. He was right outside. She could hear the faint, wet sound of someone breathing through their mouth. She clutched Tommy tighter, her hand over his ear.
The doorknob jiggled.
Not a forceful turn, but a testing, tentative rotation—a quarter-inch.
The lock held. A long, suspended silence followed, so profound Kayla could hear the hum of the phone against her ear. Then, a whisper, so low and close it seemed to seep through the wood of the door itself. It wasn’t a word. It was a sigh, a hissed exhalation of air that carried a tone of frustration, of thwarted intention.