Page 7 of The Family Across the Street
‘You won’t be going anywhere, Katherine. Don’t be ridiculous.’
He was right about that, terrifyingly right.
‘Guns kill people,’ says George.
She nods her head without thinking and then regrets it. They don’t need to be any more frightened than they already are. She and John had agreed they wouldn’t let the children play with toy guns, not wanting them to think of weapons as something to pretend with, not wanting to encourage any violent ideas. Now there is a real gun in her house, in her home, pointed at her and her children. Even when she was single and working in the city as an administrative assistant to a gruff old man who called her Katie, living in a one-bedroom apartment in a dubious neighbourhood, she had never seen a gun. Until now.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ she says softly to them.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ he repeats, pointing the gun directly at her head, his voice high and whiny.
Is it a real gun? Could he be doing this with something that is not real? But she can see it has weight to it. It’s real.
‘Actually,’ he says, dropping to his knees in front of the sofa they are sitting on, ‘it’s not going to be okay at all. Not for you anyway.’ He laughs, small droplets of spit coming out of his mouth, and Katherine feels a streak of burning hatred rise up from her toes. What’s happened to him? How can he be doing this to them?
He looks at her phone again and then turns it off, slides it into his pocket. She feels a surge of panic as he traps her and the children in here with him, with no way to communicate with the outside world. She already tried this morning, when she answered the door.
The bell chiming had startled him, and for a moment he’d looked unsure. ‘You expecting someone?’ he asked quietly.
‘No.’
‘Then get rid of them, get rid of them quickly. Just talk through the peephole. Do not, under any circumstances, open the door.’
‘Can I take the kids with me?’
He gave his head a long, slow shake, a parent disappointed with a child, his gaze holding her as he allowed the corners of his mouth to raise just a little at her ridiculous request.
‘Apparently you think I’m stupid, Katherine? Do you think I’m stupid?’ He tapped his own head gently with the barrel of the gun.
‘No, no, I’ll go, I’ll get rid of them.’
‘I will be listening to everything you say. Every. Single. Word.’ As he said this, he moved the gun back and forth between her children’s heads. Katherine swallowed so she would not throw up.
She sensed that the delivery man was irritated with her. She couldn’t make him understand and he had left, taking her new computer with him. That had been part of her plan for the day. A swim, some shopping and setting up her new computer. A very ordinary day.
‘What do you want?’ she asks him now, her voice raspy with terror. How will she get the children out of here and away from him?
‘I want… I want you to listen to me. Not to talk over me, not to explain, not to justify. I just want you to listen to me.’
‘I’ll listen,’ she says, ‘and then what? What’s going to happen?’ She wishes she could keep the desperation from her voice, that she could control her body as a tear escapes and rolls down her cheek.
‘You’ll have to wait to see,’ he says and he sits down on the leather recliner, pushes the seat back and raises his feet, relaxed and calm. He has all the time in the world. Katherine knows that she and her children don’t. He doesn’t have a plan. What he has is rage and a weapon and she can sense, in the prickling of her skin, that this makes him more dangerous than if he did know what he was going to do. A lot more dangerous.
5
Logan
Six hours ago
Logan climbs back into the van, setting off and turning the air conditioning vents to face him. He feels like he’s been up forever but it’s only 8.30 a.m. This last delivery was heavy – two boxes of books for what looked like a university student, living in a building with three floors and no lift. The boy had been so eager to open the packages he had started tearing at the tape before he even closed the door. Logan wonders what it must be like to be that passionate about something, to want to read everything and know everything about a subject. He struggles now to remember what he was like when he was that kid’s age, eighteen or maybe nineteen.
Angry is a feeling that comes to mind when he thinks of himself at that stage of life, pissed off with everyone except Maddy, who was eleven years old at the time and had an infectious laugh that never failed to cheer him up.
His phone pings again and even though he knows he shouldn’t look at it while he’s driving, he risks a quick glance down.
Call me NOW.
‘Oh, it’s a command now, is it?’ sneers Logan.
