She slowly crept up the stairs. It couldn't be this easy. Either the door would be locked, or Vivian would be waiting on the other side, seated in a chair with a double barrel shotgun in her lap.

The stairs creaked with each step, which terrified her, even though Vivian almost certainly knew where she was without the sound.

At the top of the stairs, Charlene turned the knob. The door was locked.

She looked at the keypad. She had no idea what Ken might use for his four-digit code. She might as well try something, and it had letters underneath each number like on a phone, so she punched in 2-2-4-3.

C-A-G-E.

The display reset and the door did not unlock.

"Vivian" and "Jared" both had more than four letters. And though Charlene wasn't sure how these kinds of locks worked, a computer would lock you out if you got the password wrong too many times, so she didn't want to keep trying and risk a scenario where even Vivian couldn't get them out of the basement.

She again considered the idea of shooting the lock.

But, again, she didn't know what would happen. Obviously, if she blew apart the keypad the lock wouldn't conveniently slide open. If she tried to shoot the lock itself, she might make it worse, jam it to the point where it couldn't open. If she had a double-barrel shotgun, yeah, she'd blow the shit out of it, but with a revolver it seemed like a dumb thing to do.

So she crept back down the stairs.

Vivian didn't have a gun. That seemed obvious. Otherwise, she would've shot Charlene by now. That was a small consolation as she glanced around the dark area, trying to figure out where Vivian might be hiding if she was actually down here, but at least it was a consolation.

It occurred to her that she hadn't tried to negotiate. It probably wouldn't work this time, either, yet it was still worth trying.

"Hey!" she called out. "Are you down here?"

Vivian didn't answer.

"You didn't do anything," said Charlene. "We'll tell that to the police. We'll tell it to everybody. You tried to stop them. We can end this without you getting shot."

No response.

Charlene wanted to sit down. All of that talking was exhausting.

Damn. She really was going to bleed to death.

Without the ticking clock of bleeding out, she could just perch herself upon the top step and wait for Vivian to eventually reveal herself. But now she didn't think she had a choice but to go on the offensive.

Left or right?

She didn't know where either direction led, so it didn't matter. She walked to the left. After a couple of steps, some shards of glass crunched underneath her shoe. Probably a light bulb. If Vivian had bothered to knock out the light bulbs, she most likely was indeed hiding down here.