John Manning - The Killing Room

Chelsea made a face. “We have to stay up there a couple of weeks? In that backwoods? There are no clubs, no happening places…”

“Do you want to be in the will or not?”

She nodded. “Okay. You’re right.” She narrowed her eyes. “But will Douglas still be there?”

Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know. Uncle Howard didn’t say how long he was staying. But he may well be. But all the more reason for us to get our asses up there! Douglas may be planning to stay up there buttering his toast for as long as he can. He knows he has to work on Uncle Howard. He has to prove that he’s more than just a wandering hippie.”

“That will be difficult,” Chelsea said.

“Yeah, but he’s always been able to wrap Uncle Howard around his finger. Remember when we were kids and he’d convince Uncle Howard to let him play in the attic? You and I were never allowed to run free through the house.”

“It’s true,” Chelsea grumbled. “Douglas was allowed to go anywhere he wanted.” She thought a moment. “Except the basement.”

“Well, no one was ever allowed in the basement,” Ryan said.

“What’s down there anyway? Why is it always closed off?”

Ryan grinned. “Probably the family jewels. Which can all be ours, dear sister, if we can charm Uncle Howard in the next couple of weeks.”

She laughed. “But Daddy has already made us rich. Why would Uncle Howard want to leave us more when Paula or Dean or especially Douglas need it more?”

“Uncle Howard is a businessman,” Ryan insisted. “He is a shark. He’d have to be, to accumulate the fortune he has. He respects businessmen. He’s told Daddy that many times. He admires the way Daddy has run his business. If he thinks we are just as shrewd and smart and capable as Daddy, he’ll make sure we get a good chunk of his change.”

“Is he really all that richer than we are?” Chelsea’s voice dropped into a whisper. “Does he really have that much more money than Daddy?”

“He makes Daddy look like a pauper,” Ryan assured her. “Think about what we could do with Uncle Howard’s money. We’d have access to everything and everyone.”

Chelsea laughed. “Still burning over the fact that Paris dumped you?”

Ryan’s lips tightened. “If we are Uncle Howard’s main heirs, we will have so much more money than the Hiltons.”

“Well,” Chelsea said, heading back toward her room, “I need to sleep off this hangover a little longer. When do you want to get on the road?”

“I have a few things to finish up at the office today, so let’s head out first thing tomorrow morning.” He was planning on a quick jaunt into Manhattan to issue instructions to his assistants and then to enjoy a late supper with one of his girls. Of course, he’d need to make sure it was the best restaurant and the prettiest girl he could find. If he was heading up to Maine tomorrow, it would be a while before he got back to civilization. “Be ready bright and early tomorrow,” Ryan called after his sister. “I mean it! Like eleven o’clock!” She groaned. “Okay, no later than noon!”

She shut her door without answering.

Ryan bolted down the stairs and into his father’s study. There were files in here on a couple of business deals he was working on. He’d bring them into the office and dump them in his assistant’s lap. He could do things like that. He was the boss. Or more accurately the boss’s son. Which was the same thing.

He was standing at his father’s desk, riffling though the pages of several spiral-bound files, when he heard the door behind him gently click shut.

He turned. He had left the door open. Now it was closed.

It must have been a breeze. He thought nothing more of it and continued leafing through the files.

Then he heard the unmistakable sound of the lock being turned on the door.

“Dad?” he called out. “Are you there?”

He set the files down on the desk and turned toward the door. Gripping the handle, he saw that it was indeed locked.

“Dad? Hey! I’m in here! Did you lock the door?”

But then he remembered his father was in the Hamptons. “Mom?” he called out instead. But his mother was at their townhouse in the city. She’d been spending more and more time there ever since Dad had hired Melissa. “Melissa?” Ryan called out. But he assumed Melissa was with his father in the Hamptons. As far as Ryan knew, only he and Chelsea were in the house. The servants had all gone home.

“Well, clearly not all of them,” he said under his breath. Obviously someone had come back and, finding the door to the study unlocked, thought he or she was doing the right thing by locking it. Ryan began to pound on the door. “Hey! Who’s out there? Consuela? Maria? Max? Carlos?”

But there was no answer. The house was eerily silent.

Ryan banged harder, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Hey! Somebody! Open this door!”

But still nothing.

“Jesus Fucking H. Christ,” he growled. He turned away from the door, glancing over at the windows. He’d have to crawl out through the window. It wasn’t a very high drop; he’d be fine. It was just a frigging nuisance. And very undignified to have to crawl out a window of his own house. Whoever locked that door was going to have his or her ass fired. How irresponsible to lock a room without first checking to see if anyone was inside.

Ryan was barefoot, wearing just a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. He worried that he might cut his feet on the gravel outside the window. Plus there were rosebushes. Crawling out of the window meant he’d land in a thicket of thorns. There was no way around it. He groaned. He was really going to fire somebody!

“Hello?” he called one more time over his shoulder. “Anyone hear me?”

Chelsea, he was sure, was sound asleep again. He knew how zonked out she could be when she had a hangover. There was no choice but the window.

Except that it wouldn’t budge.

“Jesus Fucking H. Christ!” he shouted again. He tried the second window. Same thing.

Had Dad permanently sealed these windows closed? Was it an antitheft thing? He knew Dad kept important papers in the study. But he had a fucking wall safe. Why would he seal off windows?

They were just stuck. That had to be it. Ryan tried again. Once more, the windows wouldn’t move.

Ryan Young was not a patient man. In college, one of his girlfriends, a smartass psychology major, had said he suffered from “LFT”-low frustration tolerance. Ever since he was a kid, Ryan had always expected to get what he wanted exactly when he wanted-and ninety-nine times out of a hundred he did. But when things didn’t go his way, he got pissed. Instantly. And completely.

“Get me out of this room!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. He picked up a vase and hurled it. It smashed against the door into hundreds of shards of glass.

Maybe that would bring someone running.

But it didn’t. The house retained its eerie calm.

Which only infuriated Ryan more.

As a kid, he used to throw temper tantrums. Mom always gave in and let him have the candy bar or the extra bottle of Coke after he started screaming and kicking. Sometimes he still threw tantrums. At the office, if his assistants didn’t do everything they were supposed to do, or had failed to call a client or move stocks or trade shares, Ryan was known to rip them new assholes right in front of everybody. Often he threw things, like he’d just hurled that vase. Once he threw an assistant’s iPhone out the window when it rang while he was speaking. It smashed the glass and dropped twenty-three floors to land on top of a parked cab on Wall Street. Good thing it hadn’t hit someone in the head.

But as much as Ryan wanted to pitch a hissy fit, wanted to throw a few more things and break them against the door, he sensed this time a tantrum would do him no good. If he was going to break anything, it would have to be the glass in one of the windows. Then he’d have to crawl out, risking getting cut on the broken glass and rosebushes. This was just too terrible for words.