listened intently. Still nothing. The window wasn’t locked. He raised it
slowly, the sounds of creaking and scraping against old paint as loud as
thunder in his head.
The window was some five feet off the ground. Because he had
to, he stuck his pistol in the waistband of his jeans. He’d always
hated doing that ever since he’d heard the story some decades back
that an agent had stuck his gun in his pants and hit against a car
fender in some weird way that pulled the trigger. He shot off the
end of his dick. Damn, no, he didn’t want to do that. He pulled
himself up and eased his leg over the windowsill. He waved back at
Becca, motioning for her to stay back and keep hidden. But, of
course, she didn’t. She trotted right up to the house and stuck out
her hand for him to help her through the window.
“Only if you stay hidden in here while I check the rest of the
house.”
“I promise. Pull me up, hurry. I don’t like this, Adam. She was
alone here. I know he’s done something bad.”
A lone owl hooted fifty feet away, from the safety of the woods
and a tall tree. The moon glistened down on her face. Adam pulled
her over the ledge and she swung her legs to the floor.
She watched him walk toward the closet door, listen intently,
then jerk it open. Nothing. Then she watched him walk to the
closed bedroom door, staying to the side, never directly facing the
door. He slowly turned the knob, then smashed the door open,
sending it banging back, and stepped into the hallway, his pistol up.
Then he was gone. She stood there shaking, wishing she wasn’t, listening
to that owl, loud and clear, sounding from the forest.
Where was he? Time passed as slowly as it did in the dentist’s office.
Maybe even slower.
Finally, she heard him shout, “Becca, go back out the window
and tell Savich it’s okay for everyone to come in. He’s not here.”
“No, I want to come out–”
“Out the window, Becca. Please.”
When he was sure she was outside, Adam stepped out onto the
sagging front porch with its scarred and peeling railing and said,
“He’s gone. Savich, come here a moment. The rest of you just stay
outside and keep watch, okay?”
“Yeah, we’ll keep watch, but this is nuts,” Tommy said and pulled
out his pipe. “No one moved after we got here and we converged
on the place not ten minutes after you called, Adam.”
Savich said slowly, “Then he knew, of course, that we’d tapped
the phone.”
“Yes,” Adam said. “The bastard knew, all right. In the kitchen,
Savich.”
“I don’t like this,” Becca said to Sherlock as she pressed toward
the front door. “Why can’t we go in the house?”
“Just stay there for the moment, Becca.”
Several minutes passed. No one said anything, but one by one
the men walked into the farmhouse through the open front door.
Becca didn’t know what to do. Sherlock, who was standing on
the small front porch, her 9mm SIG drawn, sweeping in a wide arc
around her, scanning the perimeter, said, “I’ll go check. Becca, why
don’t you wait out here just a while longer?”
Becca stared at her. “Why?”
“Just wait,” she said, her voice suddenly sharp. “That’s an order.”
Becca heard the men talking, knew all of them but her were in
the house. Why didn’t they want her in there? She ran around to
the back of the house and slipped in behind one of the men who
was standing in the middle of the back door. The kitchen was
painfully bright with two-hundred-watt bulbs hanging naked from
the ceiling. The kitchen was small, the appliances were harsh white,
clean, and very old. There was an old wooden table, scarred, a beautiful
old vase holding dead roses in the center. It had been pushed
against the wall. Two of the chairs were overturned on the floor.
The refrigerator was humming loudly, like an old train chugging
up a hill.
She slipped around the man in the doorway. He tried to hold