I don’t know what moved me to do it, but I found myself on my knees in front of one of those boxes, digging through it until I found a dog-eared paperback I didn’t even remember owning. Had I ever read it? I didn’t remember, but someone had certainly read it. If it was falling apart from being read so often, it must be good, right?
Hoping a book would absorb more of my attention than the TV had, I started to read.
I woke up with a start, sitting in the same armchair I’d sat down to read in, though my book was nowhere in sight, and there was a pad of paper on my lap.
Val is not your friend!!!
Morgan, wake up. Fight me. Hurry. There’s someone downstairs!
I’d say the note made a chill crawl up my spine, but that doesn’t do the feeling justice. It was more like an ice age. My heart leapt into my throat, and I clutched the arms of my chair. I had about two seconds to try to convince myself once again that it was just my subconscious. Then I heard the distinctive sound of footsteps downstairs.
My alarm most definitely had not gone off, but I knew I wasn’t imagining it.
You might think a tough broad like me would go pull an Uzi out of a closet and charge down the stairs to confront the bad guys like Rambo on hormones.
Well, I’m tough, but I’m not stupid.
Walking very quietly, I moved to the window that looked out over my minuscule backyard. Pulse pounding wildly, I eased the window up. From downstairs, I heard what sounded like a whisper. A whisper that was answered, so there were at least two of them down there.
I sat on the window sash and swung my legs out. My yard is bounded by hedge roses, but I’ve also got a trellis of climbing roses outside my bedroom, which is just below the second-floor storage room. I grabbed the trellis, hoping it would hold my weight, and eased the window back down.
I scratched the hell out of myself on the way down because I hadn’t had the foresight to plant thornless roses. I dropped to the ground and peered around the corner of my house.
There was a black SUV with tinted windows parked in my driveway. I’d never seen it before.
I didn’t see anyone sitting in the SUV, but there could be an army in there behind the tinted windows. Still, the intruders in my house would eventually check upstairs, and I didn’t want to be squatting here in plain sight when they did.
I made a dash across the yard, a tight fist of fear in my stomach as my ears strained for the sound of a shout, but all was silent. I hurdled the hedge roses-sometimes being tall and leggy can be a real advantage-then kept going. My neighbor’s son has a tree house, and I thought that was the perfect place to hide and watch. I briefly considered knocking on someone’s door to use the phone, but it was some ungodly hour of the night, and by the time I convinced someone to come to the door-if I even could-the bad guys would be long gone. Or they would have heard me knocking and come to get me.
I was probably leaving bloodstains on the poor kid’s tree house, but it couldn’t be helped. I hauled myself up the rickety wooden slats nailed into the trunk and piled into the tree house. A small window faced my house, and I had a good view of the driveway and my front door. Holding my breath, hoping that staying still wasn’t a piss-poor idea, I watched and waited.
I didn’t have long to wait. Not three minutes after I’d put my face to that window, my front door opened and three black-clad figures exited. I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle my urge to gasp. All three of them were wearing ski masks, so all I could see were eyes, noses, and mouths, and even that wasn’t very clear in the dark from this distance. From their size and shape, I guessed they were all male, though looks could be deceiving in the dark. What was clear was that all three of them were armed to the teeth.
I’m not a gun nut, so I couldn’t tell you exactly what weapons they were carrying, but each of them had one big-ass rifle or shotgun strapped across his back and a sidearm holstered at his waist. Whoever they were, whatever they’d wanted, they’d been damn serious about it.
They climbed into the SUV and drove away. The driver didn’t pull off his ski mask until he’d backed out of the driveway. I caught a faint glimpse of short hair through the front windshield, but that was it. I couldn’t even tell you what color his hair was. I sure as hell couldn’t read the license plate.
I don’t know how long I sat up in that tree house, shivering from a noxious combo of fear and cold. Eventually, I decided the bad guys weren’t going to come back, so I climbed down and cautiously crept back to my house. I kept expecting someone to jump out of the bushes and grab me, but no one did.
They’d locked the front door behind them-what kind of ski-mask-wearing home invader locks up afterward? — but I had a spare key hidden in the bushes. Not under one of those phony rock things that any idiot would know to look under if he was up to no good. My spare was under a real rock.
After I let myself in, the first thing I did was grab my Taser and arm it. Feeling mildly less skittish that way, I stepped into the living room and dialed 911.
I spent the next fifteen minutes scoping out the house, trying to see if anything was missing. I wasn’t terribly surprised that nothing was. If those guys were burglars, then I was Santa Claus.
Just before the cops arrived, I slipped upstairs and tore the note I’d written to myself off the notepad. I tore the next three sheets off, too, just to be sure. I didn’t think the police were going to search my place that thoroughly, but I still didn’t want them finding the note. It would be too hard to explain.
By the time the cops left, it was five in the morning. I’d told them everything I could remember.
The “burglars” had rearmed the alarm when they’d left the house, just like they’d locked up. I’m betting they were trying to make it look like no one’d ever been there. When I thought about it, I realized that not only was nothing missing, nothing’d been moved. Great. Stealth burglars.
Stealth burglars who didn’t steal anything, who carried two guns apiece, and who got into my house without destroying the alarm. The cops said they probably had my security code and had simply turned the alarm off when they came in.
You can bet I changed my code the moment the cops were finished with me. You can also bet I didn’t go to sleep afterward, tired as I was. I spent the wee hours of the morning sitting on my couch, glassy-eyed, scared, and confused as all hell. And there was no one I could turn to for help. Not Val, who according to my demon or my subconscious — take your pick — was not my friend. Not my brother, for the same reason. And not Brian. Because if my already fucked-up life was going to hell in a handbasket, I refused to take him with me.
By the time night rolled around again, I knew I had to back off my “don’t involve Brian” stance.
I spent most of the day at my office, writing up my reports on the exorcisms of Lisa Walker and Dominic Castello. Paperwork usually takes me longer than it should anyway, but in my state of sleep deprivation, it was a miracle I got done in eight hours.
Usually, Brian and I don’t see each other much on weekdays. He’s often working late, and I’m often traveling, and when we both have to get up early the next morning, it takes some of the fun out of it. But when I thought about going home, I thought about watching those three masked men leaving my house, locking up behind them, and my blood ran cold.
What were the chances that was just a one-time deal? Break in, find she’s not home, go away, stay away. Yeah, right.
Could I count on escaping a second time? No. I’d been damned lucky last night. Even with my subconscious early-warning system in place, it could have gone much worse.