Rooms: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

built it.
    He reached the master bedroom, and his palms started sweating. The entire house was exactly as he would have done it. It was laid out as if someone had been inside his head and picked his favorite colors and styles and dropped them perfectly into place.
    His dream home, straight out of his dreams.
    He didn’t like the idea of someone he had never met knowing his tastes with this much precision. His mind spun. The construction had to cost millions, let alone the cost of the land. Add the home’s contents and it was probably one of the more expensive homes on the Oregon Coast.
    Why spend that kind of money? And build it for anyone, let alone him? It didn’t compute. Micah returned to the main floor, walked out on the deck, and looked up at the house. Rough guess, it was nine thousand square feet. And it was his. Unbelievable.
    That was the problem. The home was not believable. There had to be strings. They had to be attached somewhere.
    Good thing he wouldn’t be around to find out.
    Micah glanced out over the ocean. He was going to sell the place. As soon as possible.
    His stomach growled and he glanced at his watch. Ten o’clock. He walked back inside and grabbed his keys off the granite countertop with the intention of heading to town. Just before stepping outside, he stopped himself. A door at the end of one of the ground-floor hallways was slightly open, a shaft of bright light spilling out of the room onto the carpet.
    A feeling washed over him. The feeling of a string about to be pulled.

CHAPTER 4
    The door hadn’t been there the day before. Had it? Micah pushed his front door closed with a soft click, never taking his eyes off the one at the end of the hall.
    He’d done a full tour of this part of the home the day before and didn’t remember a room even being there, let alone leaving a light on. He hung his leather coat on an oak peg near the staircase, then eased down the hall toward the open door.
    He pushed it open the rest of the way with two fingers and peeked inside. It was well lit. Too well lit; so bright he had to squint. At least twenty spotlights drilled down on a variety of magazine covers sitting on glass pedestals. Other pedestals held plaques; still others had laminated newspaper articles on top of them. Even before Micah’s eyes adjusted enough to see clearly, he knew what the room was.
    How could—? He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, he half expected the room to be gone.
    It was a shrine to his meteoric rise in the world of software. Micah and Julie were on the cover of each magazine displayed: Forbes, BusinessWeek, Wired, Fast Company, and more, as well as newspaper articles from The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times.
    The plaques were awards RimSoft had won, from their first up to an award from last month. Whoever collected them hadn’t missed a thing. Micah shook his head.
    Wow .
    Weird .
    He gazed at the walls filled with photos of Julie and himself, pictures from the earliest days of the company up to the present, just the two of them along with movie stars, athletes, and leaders in the world of software.
    It must have taken months to dig all this up.
    As Micah contemplated how they’d done it, he noticed a small door at the back of the room, only open an inch or two. He walked over to it and pushed, but it scraped to a halt after a foot and a half. He leaned his shoulder into it, and the hinges squealed in protest but opened enough for him to enter. For a new house this door was decidedly out of place.
    The room was dim, and Micah couldn’t find a light switch, but his eyes slowly adjusted from the glare of the room he’d just left. The only light came from an oil lamp sitting on an oak nightstand in a corner.
    More oil lamps circled the room, all sitting on oak stands, all unlit. Their charred wicks were evidence they’d burned once, but all were now out of oil. He turned back to the still-burning lamp. Next to it rested a Bible covered