The man grabbed Walter by the shirt collar and pulled him up, then gave a slight push. Walter stumbled back toward her, off balance, and Allie had to reach out for his hand to steady him. She pulled him over to her, keeping her other arm around Lucy.
“You can call me Jack,” the man said.
Jack. Riiiight.
She gave the gun “Jack” was holstering a second look. It was a Sig Sauer 9mm, either a P220 or a P226. Sometimes she got the two mixed up because they looked similar. Not that the model mattered. A gun was a gun was a gun. The fact that he had one and she didn’t was the important takeaway.
“What do you want?” she asked again.
“From you? Nothing.” He nodded at Walter, standing next to her. “From him? Everything.”
Allie looked over at Walter, but there was only confusion on his face.
“Relax,” the man named Jack said. “This will all be over by morning—” He stopped in mid-sentence and tilted his head slightly to one side, listening to something that she couldn’t hear.
The other black-clad man standing next to him did the same thing.
“Is it dead?” Jack asked. Then, at the other man, “Go help him find it.”
“Then what?” the man asked.
“I don’t know, throw it Frisbees and play catch. What do you think?”
“It’s a dog.”
“And your point?”
“My point is, it’s a dog. What’s it gonna do, run and tell the cops someone’s stuck in a well?”
Jack sighed and pointed across the room, past her and Walter and his daughter. “Go help him find it, then put it out of its misery. If I have to say it again, we’re going to have a problem. Are we going to have a problem?”
The other man didn’t so much surrender as he decided it wasn’t worth arguing about and walked around them, saying to no one in particular, “Are you foaming at the mouth yet? You want me to take you to the hospital for rabies shots?” The man chuckled, his heavy, booted footsteps echoing along the foyer behind them.
She put all of her focus on Jack, on the holstered sidearm at his hip. It had been a while since she had touched a gun, but you never forgot how to use one. The last time she had one in her hand, she had taken a life at close range. She would have been perfectly happy if she never had to repeat that harrowing moment ever again. That might have been possible, if she had only stayed out of the goddamned woods.
Then the man did something she had been hoping against hope that he wouldn’t do: He began pulling the balaclava off his head.
Oh, dammit.
The man ran gloved fingers through short blond hair. He was square-jawed, and though she couldn’t tell earlier when Walter was kneeling in front of him, he had a few inches on Walter’s five-ten, but a smaller frame than the man who had brought Lucy out of the back hallway.
“Don’t be a hero, and you’ll all get out of this alive,” Jack said.
He had stared at her as he said it. That shouldn’t have happened. People were supposed to look past her, especially when she was holding a sobbing teenager in her arms and a taller and stronger man was standing next to her. Between the two of them, Walter was the potential troublemaker, not her. That was how it was supposed to work.
So why was “Jack” staring at her as he made his promise, as if he knew she was the threat and not Walter?
“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Jack continued. “Stay cool and do as you’re told, and this will all be over by morning. We’ll be out of your hair, and you folks can go back to your vacation. Sound good?”
She didn’t say anything, because she was too busy crunching the numbers in her head. She remembered glancing at her watch when they finally reached the house after a five-hour drive from the city.
“Stay cool and do as you’re told, and this will all be over by morning.”
Morning was nine hours away, which meant she had that long to get them out of here alive, because regardless of what “Jack” had promised them, they weren’t going to be able to just go back to their vacation after this. Because Jack had done the one thing she was hoping he wouldn’t do: He had shown them his face, which meant he didn’t expect them to leave the house alive now that they could identify him.
Chapter 2
His real name wasn’t Jack, the big man wasn’t Jones, and the third one wasn’t really Jerry, either. But real names weren’t important tonight, and it wouldn’t be when they went their separate ways, (hopefully) never to see each other again. And considering the payday he had coming, Jack wouldn’t need to work with strangers ever again if he didn’t want to.
“Fucking dog,” Jerry was saying, cradling his right hand in front of him. “It was hiding in the backseat. Came out of nowhere and bit my ass.”
“Your ass or your arm?” Jack asked.
Jerry snorted. “Funny guy.”
Jack grinned. He wasn’t really a funny guy, but it helped to keep a sense of humor when you were on a job. Things were usually tense enough on a regular gig, but for this one the client had to double Jack’s anxiety by forcing him to work with these two jokers.
“What’d it look like?” Jack asked.
“Huh?”
“The dog.”
“Oh.” Jerry shrugged. “It was white. With brown fur.”
“What kind of breed was it?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Do I look like a dog person to you?”
“Not particularly.”
“It was big.”
“How big?”
“Big enough to almost take my whole arm off. Luckily, it let go when I grabbed for the Glock.”
“Why didn’t you shoot it?”
“Which part of ‘it almost took my whole arm off’ didn’t you understand?”
Jack didn’t bother answering that one.
Jokers and clowns. Dear God, why couldn’t you have given me professionals? Was that too much to ask?
Of course, Jack hadn’t built up enough cred with the big guy upstairs to be asking for favors, but it never hurt to ask. Most of the time, anyway.
Jerry was bleeding from the dog bite, but the damage wasn’t too obvious against his all-black wardrobe. There were plenty of lights to see with in the front yard around them; the lamps were solar-powered and equipped with motion sensors. It was a pretty sweet setup, but considering what Walter did for a living, probably chump change to the guy.
“Better take care of that,” Jack said, nodding at Jerry’s arm.
“Yeah,” Jerry said. He opened one of the pouches around his waist and took out a first aid kit.
Jack glanced over his shoulder as Jones came out of the house. He knew who the hulking figure belonged to even before Jones appeared in a ring of bright LED lights, walking toward him. Jones was the muscle; not that Jack thought they’d need one for tonight. Then again, you could never go wrong with having a meathead like Jones around on standby, just in case.
“We good?” Jack asked.
The big man nodded. “Got them settled.”
“What about the girl? Did she try anything?”
“Not a chance. She didn’t stop crying until I left.”
“The other one.”
“You said ‘girl.’”
“I meant the woman.”
Jones shrugged. “She didn’t try anything, either. You worried?”
“We need to keep an eye on her.”
“More than the guy?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“You saw her back there?”
Jones shook his head. “So?”
“How many times have you seen a civilian in that kind of situation? How many of them just stand there, calm as shit?”