The Girl on the Stairs Read online

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Copyright

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Girl on the Stairs

  by V. J. Chambers

  Has the killer escaped prison... or was she never caught?

  True crime writer Samson Black remembers the trial and the headlines... twelve-year-old Lola Ward cowering on the stairs, paralyzed by fear, while Nicholas Todd murdered her parents and took her hostage. She barely escaped with her life and later testified against Todd.

  Nicholas Todd told a very different story. A preposterous tale of a diabolical twelve-year-old with nerves of steel.

  Nicholas Todd went to prison.

  Eleven years later, Lola's all grown up—brash, confident, and alluring. She's ready to tell her story, and she wants Samson Black to write it. Samson would love to reveal the truth about that fateful night and resurrect his flagging career. But before he can make sense of Lola's twisty tale, Todd escapes from prison, seeking revenge against the woman-child who betrayed him.

  Now, Sam's life is in danger. But from who? The escaped con hot on his heels, or the woman at his side?

  **Originally published as Rough Edges**

  THE GIRL ON THE STAIRS

  © copyright 2014 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won’t get mad.)

  The Girl on the Stairs

  a chilling psychological thriller

  by V. J. Chambers

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dear Samson Black, (read the email)

  You don’t know me, but I’m quite familiar with your work.

  Samson Black smiled. He was sitting in his office, sipping at his coffee and checking his morning email. Honestly, he wasn’t sure why he bothered having an office at all anymore. The original idea of the room had been so that he would have a place to isolate himself from the rest of his life, a place where he could focus. Nowadays, however, there was no rest of his life. Not really. His writing was the only thing he had left, and he didn’t even really feel like he had that anymore.

  But here was a letter from a fan. He didn’t get them as often as he would like. He’d always figured that, after having written a New York Times best selling true crime book, he’d be positively pelted with adoring fan mail. But despite the fact that his email address was prominently displayed on his website, he rarely got contacted at all.

  You may have heard of me, however. My name is Lola Ward.

  Sam squinted. Lola Ward? The name did sound familiar to him for some reason.

  If not, don’t feel too bad. I was making headlines eleven years ago, and I was a lot younger then. So were you, I suppose. That’s the way time seems to work. In the past, we’re all younger.

  Wait. Was this a fan letter? Where were the accolades, the claims to have enjoyed his work?

  At any rate, I only recently got around to reading your books. I’ve enjoyed all of them, especially Stolen, which I’ve read three times.

  This was starting to sound more like it.

  Sam heard something—a loud scraping noise. He probably wouldn’t have heard it at all if he’d had his music on. He usually worked with music blaring. He even spent hours of time creating perfect playlists for whatever project he was working on. He deluded himself into thinking that was a productive use of his hours.

  This morning, though, he hadn’t put any music on because he wasn’t working on a project anymore. His latest book wasn’t going forward. He was two weeks from finishing it, maybe less, but he wasn’t going to be able to finish now. So, this morning, he’d gotten up, made his coffee, and come into the office without bothering with music.

  He’d pulled up his email instead.

  And now, the scraping noise.

  He got up from his desk. Was it an animal? Even though it was early January and very cold outside, there was still wildlife active out here near the country house. The house was at the top of a mountain, flush up against the woods. It wasn’t exactly isolated. He lived in a big housing development—Shannondale, it was called—so there were houses on either side of him and houses across the road. But he did have a nice acre-and-a-half lot surrounded by pine trees, so it often felt isolated. And he was up at the tippy-top of the mountain, which meant that there were no houses behind his. Nothing but woods and then the mountain top, only a little bit higher.

  When he and Daphne had bought this house, they’d conceived of it as a vacation home, a place they could come to get away. He’d never thought he’d be living here full time.

  Alone.

  When the noise got louder and more persistent, he realized that it wasn’t an animal after all. Curious and a bit concerned, he wandered out of his office, into the hall, and listened.

  The sound was definitely coming from the living room.

  He padded down the hall in the direction of the noise, still in his pajamas and slippers. It was practically noon, but he tended to sleep in late now that Daphne wasn’t around to wake him.

  Daphne had decorated the living room. She’d been going for something rustic, or so he thought. Of course, she couldn’t quite drown her cosmopolitan sensibilities. So the room was an unsettled blend of country and city. A leather couch with a patchwork quilt thrown over the arm. A fireplace with unlit square candles on the mantle.

  He never came in here these days. He mostly stayed in his office, except for the times he wandered into the bedroom to sleep or watch TV. He used the kitchen a little bit too. Not to cook, but to make coffee and to heat up leftover takeout.

  The house was cut into the side of the mountain, so when he looked out the windows, he didn’t see his yard. The yard fell away from the house at a steep incline. Usually all he could see was the tops of trees and the sky. And the patio furniture on his porch, of course.

  But this morning, when he came into the living room and looked outside, he saw Daphne.

  She had pushed the patio furniture out of the way and was hard at work opening the window. She’d managed to get the whole thing up, and she was currently struggling with the storm glass.

  He cocked his head to one side. “Daphne?”

  She jumped. She hadn’t seen him enter because she’d been too intent on her task.

  His first inclination was to go out and help her, but then he realized that didn’t make any sense. There was no reason for her to open the window. Instead, he went over to the front door, unlocked it, and opened it. He stuck his head outside so that he could see her. “You have a key.”

  Daphne looked flustered. She let go of the storm glass and started pushing on the window frame, now trying to close it. “What are you doing here?”

  Shivering against the cold, he came out on the porch and crossed to help her. “I live here.” He shoved the frame shut.

  S
he looked annoyed that it had been so easy for him to close the window. “I thought you were off doing stuff for the book.”

  He rubbed his elbows. Geez, it was freezing out here. “Book’s dead.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  He cast a glance back at the front door. “You want to come in?”

  She drew in a sharp breath, still looking annoyed. Then she rushed past him and threw herself into the house.

  He gazed out at the gray winter sky. Nice to see you too, he thought.

  Daphne stood in the middle of the living room, unbuttoning her coat. “I thought I had the key on my key ring to the Optima, but I got here and I didn’t have it. I wouldn’t have come out at all if I’d known you were here.”

  Sam was standing in the doorway, feeling awkward. He missed Daphne. Acutely. Sometimes, he woke up in the middle of the night, alone in bed, and he thought his heart might be permanently crushed from the loss of her. Without her around, everything seemed empty and lifeless. But whenever he did see her again, he felt clumsy and stupid, like an idiot kid.

  She was still talking. “I was just going to pick up some of those boxes of winter clothes. The ones in the hall closet.”

  He rubbed his chin. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. He thought shaving was sort of a nuisance, but Daphne always liked him whiskerless. He wished he’d done it. “If you take those clothes, you won’t have anything left in the house.”

  “So?” She threw her coat on the couch and started back down the hallway.

  “So, if you come back here, you won’t have anything to wear.” His voice cracked a little bit. Damn it.

  She stopped walking and looked back at him. “Jesus, Sam.”

  He looked down at his slippers. They were covered in lint.

  “You don’t still think I’m coming back here, do you?”

  He raised his gaze to meet hers. She was wearing an expression hovering somewhere between disgust and pity, and he hated it. But he shoved his hands into his pockets and gave her a defiant glare. “You could.”

  “No. I really couldn’t.” She looked away. “It’s over, Sam,” she told the hallway. “We don’t even live together anymore.”

  She’d kicked him out of their house in Frederick, Maryland a few months ago. He guessed they were lucky to have two houses, because otherwise he’d be in a hotel or a crappy apartment. He was also lucky to have the kind of job that he could do from anywhere, so it was possible for him to relocate all the way out to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, on top of a mountain in the woods.

  Well, he had been lucky. His luck had changed when Daphne had left. Things had gotten stranger and stranger with Rachel, until she’d finally pulled out of the book. Now he was going to have to pay his advance back to the publisher. Which meant he was going to be left with this house—luckily it was paid for—but no way to pay the rest of his bills. Paying back that advance was going to wipe him out.

  It was funny, really. When he’d met Daphne, he’d been a struggling writer, barely scraping by on the money from Devil in the Dark. But after Daphne, he’d written Stolen, and his agent had started a bidding war amongst several publishers. He’d been paid an obscene advance for the book, but it had earned out the royalties and then some. Then he’d been well-off, even wealthy. Like most people who got money when they hadn’t had much before, he hadn’t handled it well. Most of it had been spent on Daphne. He’d had a hard time refusing her. She didn’t have to ask for things. If he saw that she wanted them, he wanted to give them to her. And he’d had the money, so he’d spent it.

  Naively, he’d thought that now that he was making money, he’d continue to make money. But Daphne had left him, and now he was right back where he started before he met her. A struggling writer, barely scraping by. Alone.

  He went to her. “We could still work this out. If you—”

  “No.” She whipped around to face him. “There’s nothing to work out. When I see you, it makes me physically ill.”

  He winced. “Well, you haven’t served me papers or anything, so—”

  “Is that what you want?” She folded her arms over her chest. “Look, I happen to be busy, Sam. I have to work for a living, and I haven’t had time to see a lawyer. Things at the office have been crazy. But if it’s important to you, I’ll be sure to get divorce papers sent out to you right away.”

  “No.” He sighed. “And I happen to work for a living too.”

  She rolled her eyes, stalking back down the hallway and pulling open the closet door. She thought he was lazy. She always had. Back when they’d first got together, she’d seemed charmed by his lack of rigidity, but after they were married, she’d thought he was simply a procrastinator.

  The hell of it was that she was right.

  She bent down to pick up the box.

  He debated offering to give her a hand. On the one hand, it would help her get her stuff out of the house, making the separation between them even more intense. He didn’t want that. He wanted her back. He wanted to find some way to fix all the mistakes he’d made, to make her love him again. On the other hand, he didn’t think he could watch her struggle with that big box like that.

  He’d always wanted to save Daphne. To protect her.

  He went down the hallway and took the box from her. “Let me take that.”

  She surrendered it to him.

  He carried it back to the living room but had to balance it against the wall to open the door.

  Behind him, Daphne sighed. “You know what? Fine. I know you’re begging me to ask. Why’s the book dead?”

  He hadn’t wanted her to ask at all. He fumbled with the door knob. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Sam. Just tell me.”

  He managed to open the door. A gush of cold air hit him in the face. “Rachel killed it. She looked at some of the draft and said I was revealing too much about her personal life and that she thought I was going to exploit her.”

  Daphne snorted behind him.

  He trundled out onto the porch and hurried to her car as quickly as he could in the cold. It wasn’t easy carrying the big box and walking in slippers.

  She opened the trunk for him.

  He set the box inside.

  She closed the trunk. “I’m sorry about the book.”

  He shook his head. “No, you’re not.”

  She considered. “Okay, maybe I’m not.” She started for the door to the car.

  “Daphne?”

  She turned to him. “What?”

  “If I’d given the book up before, back when you found out? If I’d dropped it then, would it have made a difference?”

  She fiddled with her keys. “Probably not.”

  *

  Sam didn’t get back to his email for a good half hour after Daphne left. Her visit had put him so much on edge that he’d gone to the convenience store for a pack of cigarettes. He’d quit years ago, but since the breakup with Daphne, he’d been flirting with starting again. He didn’t smoke all the time, but after particularly bad things happened, he felt like he wanted one. Or ten.

  He was trying not to smoke in the house, so he shivered on the front porch while he had the cigarette.

  When he got back to his office, his coffee was cold.

  He took a slug of it anyway.

  He turned back to his email.

  Most of it was junk. It wasn’t technically junk, of course. There were emails from places that he’d ordered things before—advertising sales and such. And there were things he’d signed up for at certain points in time, like a ridiculous course on how to get your ex back. The course had advised to not contact your ex for thirty days and try to work on yourself. Then your ex would miss you and take you back.

  Sam couldn’t believe he’d paid forty bucks for it.

  Now, he got various emails from the guy who’d made the course, offering him certain add-on courses on things like how to meet new people—as if the guy knew that his original course was bullshit and that it wouldn’t actually
work to get anyone back.

  He wanted Daphne back. He wanted her back badly. The problem was that Daphne hated him, and that she probably always would. He took another drink of his coffee. It was still cold.

  He glanced at the screen, and then he remembered.

  The email from the fan.

  Sam smiled to himself. Well, that might be a nice change of pace after the way his morning had been going. He reread it, especially the part about how this Lola person (who he was supposed to have heard of but couldn’t place) had read Stolen three times.

  Then he came to the next paragraph.

  I’ve never told my story to anyone, Sam, but after reading your books, I think that you might be just the person to write a book about me. In case you don’t know who I am, I’m the Lola Ward whose parents were killed by Nicholas Todd.

  Nicholas Todd. That name sounded familiar too. Sam ran a finger around the rim of his coffee cup, trying to place the name.

  And then it came to him.

  Of course!

  Nicholas Todd had been a spree killer. He’d been youngish—early twenties. One of those weird goth kids. Sam remembered the pictures. Todd had stringy black hair that hung in his heavily black-outlined eyes. In all the pictures, he was glaring at the camera like some kind of demon—teeth bared in some kind of half-grimace, half-smile. Todd had started his tri-state murder frenzy by killing the parents of a twelve-year-old girl. He’d then kidnapped the girl and taken her along for the ride, forcing her to watch while he’d killed gas station clerks and hitchhikers.

  And the girl’s name was…

  Lola Ward.

  Holy shit.

  Sam stood up, almost knocking over his coffee cup.

  He picked up his phone and selected his agent’s name from the list of contacts.

  He waited as the phone rang.

  “Petra Landon Literary,” answered the chirpy voice of a secretary.

  “Annie,” said Sam. “I need to talk to Petra.”

  “Who’s calling, please?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Annie, it’s Sam.” He bounced on the balls of his feet, feeling better than he had in weeks. Maybe months.