like it, but he understood it. It could be dangerous, too dangerous.
He just didn’t know what to do.
“I’m coming,” she said, and he knew she was committed. “I have
to, Adam, just have to.”
He wished he didn’t understand, but he did. He nodded. He
heard Savich snort. “Becca will cover me from the woods,” he said.
“No, no arguments, Becca. That’s the deal.”
Sherlock took the walkie-talkie and spoke to Chuck and Dave
at the back of the house, told them what was going to happen.
Becca’s heart was pounding hard and fast. The night was chilly
but she was sweating. She felt faint nausea in her stomach. This was
real and it was scary and she was terrified, not just for Adam and
her, but for that poor woman inside the house, that poor woman
she prayed was still alive. Sherlock and the men looked calm, alert,
ready. Tommy put his pipe back in his pocket and handed Becca a
Kevlar vest. “It’s the smallest one, after Sherlock’s.” He shrugged.
“Let me help you with it. You’re going to stay under cover in the
woods, remember. You’ll be out of the line of fire, but hey, it always
pays to be careful.”
Once she was strapped into the vest, she pulled her Coonan, and
checked the clip three times. Adam took one look at her and didn’t
say a thing, just mouthed at her to stay a bit behind him. Her heart
was pounding harder and faster than it had just five minutes before.
Her hand was shaking, no good, no good. She stuffed her left hand
in her pocket. Keep steady, she thought, as she looked down at her
right hand, which held her pistol. She looked over at Sherlock,
who was frowning at one of the Velcro fastenings on her Kevlar
vest. No one was taking any chances at all.
“Show time,” Savich said after he checked his watch. “Go,
Adam. Good luck. Becca, you keep down.”
Adam, with Becca on his heels, made a wide berth to the east
side of the house. He walked slowly, quietly, Becca just as quiet,
through the pine trees. When they got to the edge of the woods,
Adam pulled up. Twenty feet, he thought, not more than twenty
feet. He looked through the window at the other end of those
twenty feet, right in front of him. There were curtains, thin, see-through
white lace, but they weren’t drawn over the single wide
window. It was probably a bedroom. He turned to look at Becca,
her face as pale as the fat moon overhead. He cupped her neck in
his hand and pulled her close. He whispered against her cheek, “I
want you to stay right here and keep alert. You stay hidden, do you
hear me? You see him, you blow his head off, all right?”
“Yes. Please be careful, Adam. Your vest is on correctly? You’re
protected?”
“Yeah.” He touched his fingertips to her cheek, then dropped
his arm. “Stay alert.”
It seemed to Adam that it took him damned near an hour to run
those twenty feet. Every step was long and heavy and so loud it
shook the earth. It seemed to him that every night sound, from owls
to crickets, stopped in those moments. Watching, he thought, they
were all watching to see what would happen. Nothing from the
house, no movement, no sound, not a single quick shadow. He flattened
against the side of the house, his pistol held between both
hands, then slowly, slowly, he looked around into a bedroom filled
with old white rattan furniture with cheap faded red cushions, a
dim-watted bulb shining from an old Lava lamp on a nightstand
next to a single bed. He saw nothing, no movement, no one. The
cover on the twin-size bed barely covered the top of the mattress.
He could see that there was nothing beneath the bed except big-time
dust balls. No, no one in the room. If anyone was in there, he
was in the closet, on the far side, the door closed. He saw that the door
to the bedroom was also shut. He quietly tested the window, paused,