Her only response was a low, panicked noise. I was right there with her. Footsteps echoed in the hallway as I performed one last-ditch diagnostic test, looking for Aly anywhere I might have missed her.
Come on, come on, I begged as the footsteps drew nearer. The progress bar seemed to slow to a crawl as the doorknob jiggled. Whoever was out there must have beelined straight to this office once they got inside the house. Were they after the same thing we were – Brad’s computer? If so, why? And what would they do with it if they got their hands on it?
“It’s locked,” a low male voice rumbled. “I’m kicking it down.”
Shit, shit, shit.
The voice that answered him was feminine. “Don’t. It will look too suspicious when the search warrant gets executed. I think he keeps a key in his nightstand.”
The man made an angry sound. “If he fled the country, I’m disowning him this time, Vivian. I swear, I’ll do it.”
The vice around my heart slackened. Were Brad’s parents on the other side of the door? I vaguely remembered his mom’s name beginning with a V, and talk of disowning could only come from someone with the power to do it, like his father.
“While I’m at it,” the man said. “I’m firing the housekeeper, too. It smells like the trash hasn’t been taken out in weeks.”
Was it weird that I took Brad’s parents not recognizing the smell of rotting corpses as a good sign?
The sound of their retreat was such a relief that I nearly collapsed, but I fought through it and, trusting my instincts, plugged another thumb drive into Brad’s computer and started making a copy of his machine, hard drives, search histories, and all. If his parents planned to hide the evidence of his crimes by destroying his computer, I’d find some way to get the backup files to the cops without getting caught.
The downside was that it would take several minutes. I grabbed a chair and braced it beneath the door handle like I’d seen Aly do all those nights before. For good measure, I found a nearby candelabra with a wide base and quietly wedged it against the bottom of the door like a jamb. At least all the antiques in Brad’s English gentleman’s office were good for something.
A peek at the computer screen told me I still needed to stall for time, so when I heard footsteps reapproach the door, I sidled over to it and grabbed the lock from my side, praying my finger strength was up to the job.
The sound of metal-meeting-metal filled my ears as the key slid into place on the other side. Pressure on the lock told me someone was trying to turn it, but I gritted my teeth and pinched it in place. The pressure increased, and sweat began to bead on my forehead as I tried to force all the strength in my body down into my fingers.
“Damn it, this is the wrong key,” the man – Brad’s father? – said.
“What do you mean?” Vivian asked.
“It’s not working.”
“Here, let me. You might have been forcing it too hard.”
“Fine,” the man barked. “You try while I go look for another.”
He stomped away, and I held my ground while the woman tried to open the door politely and, when that failed, attempted to force it even harder than her partner-in-crime had.
“Josh, I can hear people talking,” Aly said. “Please be okay. I need you to be okay.”
I held her words close while the woman put in one final effort. My fingers started getting clammy inside my gloves from pinching so hard, and I didn’t know how much longer I could last without them becoming slippery enough to lose my grip.
Finally, the pressure stopped, and the woman let out a low sigh from the other side of the door before removing the key and following after the man I assumed was her husband. I stood there, stunned for a few seconds, my pulse thundering in my ears. Holy shit, it had worked.
Snapping out of it, I retreated to the computer, where the progress bar on my program had finally reached a hundred percent. I tugged the thumb drives out and erased all traces that I’d hacked my way in. By the time footsteps reapproached the room, I’d killed the computer’s power and was just swinging the office window open.
A rattle told me my time was up.
The moon had risen over the tree line, giving me enough light to make out a drop of ten feet to the pergola below. It was better than nothing. With a silent prayer to any entity who might be listening, I swung out of the window and lowered myself as far as I could, clinging to the window ledge with my fingertips. I took a deep breath and glanced down one last time, trying to aim for the nearest crossbeam as I let go.
The drop was only a few feet, thanks to my dangling act, and I hit the beam just how I intended, feeling a momentary burst of triumph before my boots went skidding off it because of the snow. It was a goddamn miracle that I didn’t let out a shout of panic or a roar of pain as I fell like a human-sized checker in Connect Four. My shins slammed into the beam first, jerking my body forward so my ribs hit it next. That strike bounced me backward far enough that I banged my right shoulder into the opposite beam before finally slipping between them and dropping like a sack of potatoes to the patio beneath.
I sat there dazed for several seconds, trying to figure out which part of me hurt most. Thank fuck I hadn’t hit my head and knocked myself out. Aly was strong, but she wasn’t drag-an-unconscious-two-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound-man-a-mile-through-snow-covered-woods strong.
A tug on my arm had me glancing up to see her panic-stricken face.
“We have to go,” she whispered.
Between her pulling and my piss-poor efforts to stand, we got me mostly upright. Aly immediately threw my arm over her shoulder and tried to drag me toward the woods bordering Brad’s backyard, but I fought her.
“Call Junior,” I wheezed. “Tell his guy to turn the alarm back on.”
“We don’t have time for this,” she insisted.
I grabbed her chin with my free hand and looked at her imploringly. “Please trust me.”
Her expression turned mulish, but she whipped her burner from her pocket and called. “Hi. No, we’re not fine. Someone’s here. We need you to turn the alarm on.” Junior tried to get more information, but she shook her head. “I don’t know. Just fucking do it.”
A second later, she hung up. “It’s done.”
I grabbed a nearby deck chair and slammed it against the French doors leading to the patio.
“What are you doing?” Aly hiss-whispered.
I slammed the chair into them again, hard enough to break them open, hard enough to set the alarm off.
I tossed the chair aside and turned toward Aly. “We have to run.”
She didn’t need to hear anything more, slipping beneath my arm and taking off so fast that I struggled to keep upright as she hauled me toward the tree line.
“Hey!” a man’s voice called out behind us. “Get back here!”
We made it into the woods, where we had to slow down because the shadows were deeper beneath the snow-covered boughs.
Aly glanced behind us. “You want to tell me what that stunt was about?”
“I think it was Brad’s parents in the house,” I said. “They bee-lined right toward his computer. I’d bet you anything they were going to cover up for him somehow.”
“And?” she pressed.
“And in this state, when a home alarm goes off, all the cops have to do is say they believe a crime is being committed to legally enter the house without a search warrant.”
Aly’s eyes flashed wide as she caught on. “You just gave them the excuse to enter the premises they’ve been looking for.”
I nodded. “Once they get inside and smell the bodies, it’ll be all over for the Bluhms.”
She turned toward me and hauled me down to kiss me hard on the lips. The grin that lit her face as she pulled away was bright enough that it felt like the sun had split the darkness. “You’re a goddamn genius.”