SURVIVAL INSTINCT

CHAPTER: 2

"A few weeks ago, I have met you?" Sarah questioned the stranger who had called her to show the property at 102 South Massachusetts Avenue.

"That would be telling," he replied. Another grin curved his lips and Sarah felt as if she was about to remember, but then was not able to tell for sure, where she had met him.

"You could not give me a hint, could you?" Sarah asked him. She smiled hopefully. He contemplated her in silence for a few seconds before he said accommodatingly, "Sure. Affton High School."

Sarah nodded. Of course. He was someone she had gone to high school with. That explained how he knew her, she thought. But it was very long ago, and she would not necessarily remember him immediately, though it was not so long ago that she might have forgotten entirely. But there had been hundreds of students in her school, from all over St-Louis in Missouri and beyond. How in the world did he expect her to recognize him after all this time...?

And then it struck her suddenly, her memory did not fail her. She jumped back. "Oh, my God! Ryan Johnson. You are..."

"Guilty as charged." He made a little half-bow, mockingly. His voice was pleasant, although his eyes were anything but that. They had turned as dark as the motorcycle he had been riding, and approximately twice as hard. Sarah then put her foot in her mouth by telling him, "I thought you went to prison." 

He lifted an eyebrow. "That was twelve years ago, darling. I got out."

Obviously, Sarah thought. She swallowed again and took another step back. Ryan Johnson had been a senior in high school when she was a fresher, so their paths had nevermore crossed often. She knew who he was, of course; everyone did, but they had never much to do with each other. She did not think they had ever exchanged three words in the year they both attended Affton High School. She still remembered his comment "Looking good, sweetheart!" followed by a wink. He had graduated the following spring, by some miracle of God, or maybe because some of the teachers passed him so they would not have to deal with him for another year.

It, therefore, was not surprising that Ryan was the typical example of a small-town bad boy, who had been updated for the new millennium. Gone were the days of tight jeans and leather jackets; Ryan had worn his jeans baggy and wore thick gold chains around his neck, to post bail for murder one. She had known he had been arrested the summer after he graduated, and seeing as he was as a kid, whose yearbook entry had identified him as 'most likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars' Sarah had assumed he would be shuffled from one correction facility to the next until he dropped dead and saved society the expense of keeping him. She certainly had not expected to come across him now.

"What are you doing here?" Sarah asked with more curiosity than tact.

"Looking at this house." He nodded towards it. She glanced at it too.

"You must have done pretty well for yourself if you have half a million dollars to spend on a   dilapidated hundred-year-old house in a not very good locality of Kansas City, Missouri. 

Though it was a narrow escape there for Diana Walter, the Real Estate Queen would have had Sarah's head on a platter if she had heard her refer to the property as being 'not in a very good locality.' Diana is the queen of puffing (advertise with exaggerated or false praise) which is a good quality in a Realtor for making something sound better than it is without actually lying about it. Lying outright is called intentional misrepresentation and is illegal, but puffing is considered a necessary evil.

Ryan did not take the bait about his finances. "Nice saving," he said instead, though mildly. Sarah grimaced. He added, with a look around, "What is so bad about this place? Looks better than where I grew up."

Sarah glanced around, too. "It does not look like any part of St-Louis I have ever seen."

"You probably did not come to my side of locality, a lot," Ryan said dryly. "You grew up in that big mausoleum on the hilltop, right?"

Sarah was not sure she would classify her ancestral home, the Miller Mansion, as a monument, but it was definitely very big, with white pillars and sat on a little hill just outside St. Louis County, so she assumed he was talking about the same thing. "I guess," Sarah replied to his question.

"You probably still have slave quarters out back and brought in black slaves to do the housework," he said.

His voice was flat. She shrugged. She would not have put it exactly like that, but yes, her mother sometimes employed some of the young women in the area; black and white both; to clean the house or help with the cooking or serving for one of the many parties she held. Ryan's own mother had been among them, if she remembered correctly, though it did not seem diplomatic to bring it up at the moment.

"Thought so," Ryan said.

There was not much either one of them could say after that, so the silence prolonged. Black youth in a shiny Red Honda Odyssey, and a sound system that threatened to shake her bones to the core, passed by staring at them from a half-reclining position in the front seat. It looked like the same car she had seen on her way to the property and had avoided a head-on collision with it. Ryan followed it with his eyes until it was gone before he turned to her. "So when you say the house is not in a very good locality, you mean it is full of black folks?" he asked.

Sarah hesitated. Every real estate agent learns about testers, who are hired by the real estate governing body to make sure agents are not violating fair housing laws such as discrimination based on race, religion, gender, national or ethnic origin, family status, etc. Sarah did not really believe that Ryan Johnson was an undercover agent for the governing body, but she could not afford to be careless. "I am not actually allowed to comment on the racial make-up of a neighborhood."

"Afraid I might take it personally?" Ryan smirked. 

Sarah decided not to dignify this comment with an answer, and so she just behaved as if she had not heard it. She said, "But if you would care to take a drive around the area, you will see what kind of people live here. And if you are concerned about crime, you can always contact the police department and ask about their statistics."

Ryan snorted. "Yeah, that is gonna happen."

Sarah shrugged. Ryan did not seem to have anything else to say, and before the silence could lengthen once more, she nodded towards the front door. "You still want to go inside?"

"If it isn't too much to ask, Yeah!" he replied.

His tone was dry. Sarah reverted to her realtor mode, polite and distant. "Of course not. It will just be a second while I get the door open." She headed up the stairs to the porch, with him following, enough behind that she worried that her skirt was too tight and made her buttocks look big. When she reached the heavy front door she stopped, frowning. The little black lockbox hanging from the handle was open and empty. "Where is the key?"

"If I knew that," Ryan said from behind her, "do you think I would have called you?"

It was more of a rhetorical question. The key was not in the lock, but when Sarah reached out and tried the doorknob, it turned in her hand. "You didn't try the door, I suppose?"

"If I had," Ryan repeated, "you think I would have called you?"

Sarah hesitated. Some people would have been too cautious and too law-abiding to enter an empty house alone, particularly when there was a wall hanging above the door, which said, 'No Trespassing' in bold letters, but Ryan Johnson...? "Probably not. You would have just walked in," Sarah stated.

"Like I am gonna do now." He reached out and gave the door a push. It opened with a screeching noise. It might have been decades since anyone had oiled the hinges.

Sarah hesitated for a second on the doorstep. The house was cool and dark, with all the draperies closed against the sun, and there was a certain safety in being outside, in the open. Sarah was worried that inside the thick walls, nobody could hear her if she screamed. Not that she had any reason to think she would be doing any screaming, but she was a woman, and not stupid, so the possibility is usually at the back of her mind.

"After you," Ryan said. She looked back at him. He quirked an eyebrow. She couldn't very well refuse to go in, considering how she had practically begged for the chance to come here. So she forced a professional smile, took a deep breath, and stepped over the threshold. Ryan came in behind her and pushed the door shut. She moved a little further into the hall, out of his reach, before she looked around.

They were standing in a huge hall, giving way to a long hall running the depth of the house, with doors leading off it to the left and right. It did not look as if anyone had lifted a finger in there for at least twenty-five years. Cobwebs were draping the twenty-foot ceiling, and mouse droppings were scattered all around the wooden flooring. There was peeling wallpaper, sagging doors, and everything was overlaid with a thick layer of dust. A faint metallic scent that she knew she had smelled before, but which she could not place, hung in the air, along with odors of darkness, mold, dirt, and dust.

"Know anything about the owner?" Ryan asked, looking around. His nostrils were quivering too, she noticed.

Sarah shook her head. "Not other than that he or she has not been taking care of the place. But when I see Diana Walter on Monday, I will ask her." He did not answer and she added, "There should be six rooms down here, and six more upstairs, plus the third floor and then the basement. Where would you like to begin?"

"We might as well go up." He stepped onto the staircase, just to our right.

The second floor looked much like the first. Ryan wandered down the hall and opened one of the doors. It revealed a room with paint peeling off and a sagging ceiling met their eyes. It was empty except for dust and debris all around, with a soiled mattress on the side. The mattress squeaked and rustled as Sarah walked over it, and she squeaked too in fear and backed up quickly. Ryan shot her a look over his shoulder.

"I don't like mice," Sarah said defensively and he smirked at that.

"Those are not mice, sweetheart. Those are rats," Ryan said.

Sarah took another step back, feeling the color draining from her face. Ryan grinned and closed the door behind him as they moved out.