So how did he see things? I longed to ask, but when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t think of any way to word it that wouldn’t sound like prying.
Jack slanted an expectant look my way. “You gonna ask? Or you don’t want to know?”
“Uh, sure, I’d love to know. I just didn’t want to-Well, it didn’t seem right to just come right out and ask, but I’m certainly interested if you want to tell me.”
A slight downturn of his lips. A frown? Didn’t he just offer-?
“Better not,” he said after a moment. “Not my place. Ask him. He wants you to know. Tried to tell you. Shouldn’t have interrupted.”
Huh? What was he talking-?
I replayed his first comments, about him not being like Quinn or me. That’s what he thought I’d want to know, more about Quinn, how he was like me. I’d assumed he just meant because we’d both been cops.
When I said I was interested, he thought I meant in Quinn’s story, the one he’d interrupted at the motel. Was there a way to clear up the confusion? To say “Oh, I thought you were talking about yourself”? Ask him about himself. But if that wasn’t what he’d been offering…
Before I could figure out a way to continue, Jack passed me the map and put me in charge of finding our destination.
We found the new condo complex-so new it wasn’t even finished. A security van was parked at the far end, the lone occupant’s head down, reading or dozing. Jack pulled in, headlights off, and slid the car into the equipment lot between a crane and a bulldozer.
Across the road a billboard exhorted home buyers to “Experience the adventure. Live life in the heart of the game.” As I cracked open my window, I was hard-pressed to feel the adventure…or the life. The stale stink of dust filled the air. Empty window frames stared out like dead eyes. Sheets of plastic covered the board studded walls, the eerie slap-slap of the plastic the only sound.
I closed my window.
“Not quite the scenario we expected,” I said. “Too open. Too…empty.”
He nodded, gaze scanning the complex.
“Do you have a plan?”
“Working on it.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
“Always.”
I proposed we handle this as a two-man police raid, using a variation on standard procedures for infiltrating un-occupied buildings. Unlike an occupied area, here there was a good likelihood that our welcoming party wasn’t at 510 H.G. Wells Boulevard at all, but in an adjoining town-house, or even across the road, watching for us through a sniper’s sight.
The condos were row houses, with two basic styles-carport to the left and carport to the right. That meant we could investigate the one beside it, and expect to find the same floor plan reversed at 510.
Jack removed his gold; I put away the blond wig and jewelry-things that could catch the light. Then I scooped up dirt from the unfinished roadway, added bottled water, and we daubed it on our faces. I would have loved a Kevlar vest, but apparently the wire in my push-up bra was all the body armor I was getting. So I donned my gloves, took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Forgetting something?” he said.
I looked at him.
“Gun.” He reached under his jacket. “Here. Take my backup.”
“That’s okay-”
“Take it.”
As he thrust the gun at me, I opened my jacket and showed him the Glock. “See? I didn’t leave it back at the hotel.”
“Yeah. Just in the car.”
He got out. I followed.
Desolate. Some words evoke images; others, emotions. Desolate is a shivers-up-the-spine word, full of loneliness and emptiness. And, as we approached unit 510, the word sprang to mind and lodged there.
Empty houses stood stark against the darkness, looking not half finished, but half ruined. Tarps over the windows and roofs billowed like spirits chained to the houses, flapping and slapping in the wind as they struggled to fly free. Behind us lay the desert, sand blowing in to reclaim the subdivision.
I shivered. Jack glanced over at me.
“Cold?” he whispered.
“A little,” I lied.
“It’s the wind. Better inside.”
The modern condos loomed around me, scarier than any moldering Victorian mansion. I knew they weren’t haunted-stuff like that doesn’t bother me. You have to believe in the supernatural to be frightened by it. What spooked me was the desolation, as if it were a force that could reach up and swallow me.
We started at the last house in the row, secreting ourselves in its rear shadows, and creeping toward unit 510. We stopped at the unit to the left, and slipped behind the tarp to the largest window. Like most of the others, the glass hadn’t been installed yet and the frame stood open.
Jack laced his fingers to help me through.
THIRTY-NINE
Inside, I paused to let my vision adjust and give me time to focus, pushing past the frustration. My heart was thumping.
We had work to do, a solid lead to follow-a name even-but we were stuck here chasing down another would-be attacker. Somewhere out there, Wilkes was stalking his next mark and I would fail, again, to stop him. Fail to save another victim, not through my inexperience or ineptitude, but because some two-bit thug was holding me back. Well, this thug wouldn’t walk away.
When my eyes adjusted, I looked around to locate all the entrances-all the ways someone could sneak in here and see me-but the whole main level was a big entry point. The interior walls were naked stud-work. There was one front door, one back door, a basement door, a half-dozen open windows and a stairwell leading to the second level.
I moved to the wall adjoining this unit to the next-the route I hoped to take into unit 510. It was drywalled. Figures. The compound hadn’t been added yet, so I moved my gloved fingers over the boards, testing their resilience and peering through the cracks. The drywall was securely fastened. Jack could probably rip off a piece, but not without creating enough racket to alert anyone waiting for us next door.
Something whispered behind me-the soft sound of a carefully placed foot. I wheeled, gun going up. Jack lifted his free hand. He’d come in the window, obviously deciding I needed closer backup. I nodded and motioned for him to follow, so he could stand at my back while I examined the wall farther down. We slipped through the wall studs into what looked like the kitchen. There, alongside the counter, the drywallers had left a bare two-by-three-foot section, presumably waiting for something to be roughed in.
While Jack covered my rear, I crouched to examine the hole. The gap was partly drywalled on the other side, but there was a spot big enough to squeeze through-big enough for me. I straightened and gestured at the hole. As Jack ducked for a better look, something thumped overhead.
I froze, eyes narrowing as I looked up. For a moment, all was quiet. Then it came again, the faint thump of a foot on uncovered floorboards…right over our heads.
Jack’s gaze shot left. I gestured at the stairwell, the only obvious route to the second floor. I mentally raced through my image of the exterior, then leaned over to Jack, and whispered an idea.
“Where?” he mouthed.
I took a moment to figure it out, then pointed. His gaze flicked up, and I could see him processing the second-floor plan, working out the logistics. Then he nodded and waved me off.
Once I was through the hole between units, Jack hunkered down beside it, giving me cover while protecting his own back. For a minute, I didn’t go anywhere, just stood there, looking and listening. Just because we knew someone was upstairs in unit 508, didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone in 510.