by David Bell
She thought about it, tapping her fingers against the cover of her book. “I guess so. It’s just strange the way people can pass in and out of our lives. Maybe that’s all Facebook is good for—reminding us of the people we’re no longer close to.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“Are you sad?” she asked. “If we don’t go or even get invited? I’ve been thinking. . . . You and he were such good friends, and while he’s not my favorite person, he means a lot to you. I know you leaned on him a lot when your dad died, and I can’t underestimate that.” She shrugged and looked reluctant to admit what she said next. “I mean, he has his charms. I have to admit that. He’s always been very kind to me outside of the lampshade incident. He’s funny, for one thing. And thoughtful . . . at times. And I do like Sam a lot. We were really starting to become friends. I guess what I’m saying is if you want him back in our lives, if you want to try to have a better relationship with him, we can do it. We all have difficult people in our lives, and we have to remember all the good things about them too. . . . Am I making any sense?”
“You are.”
“So I could ask Sam about the wedding if you want. . . .”
“I will be very happy not to attend their wedding,” I said.
And I meant every word of it.
Before I went up the stairs again, Amanda said my name. “Ryan?”
I waited. “What?”
But she didn’t say anything. She studied me, her brow creased.
I tried to make my face blank. I tried not to purse my lips or squint my eyes.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Tomorrow night.”
She went back to her book, and I went upstairs.
CHAPTER TEN
It took ten minutes to reach the address Blake had given me. The house sat in the middle of a block in a relatively new subdivision, the houses midsized and almost identical. SUVs and sedans filled the driveways, and soccer balls and swing sets occupied the backyards. Someone Amanda used to work with lived a few streets away, and we had gone to a Fourth of July party at her house shortly after it was built.
I arrived at nine fifty. It wasn’t clear to me if the woman in question was leaving before ten or right at ten on the nose, so I rolled past the house, taking a look. The front porch light glowed like a tiny moon, illuminating the house number, but the rest of the place looked dark. She’d probably already left for her yoga class, but if Blake said ten was the time, I intended to stick to that. I circled the block one more time, hoping against hope I drove in a nonsuspicious way.
The second time around, the stress started to get the better of me. My palms grew wet where they pressed against the steering wheel. Sweat trickled down my side underneath the gym clothes I’d put on to perpetuate the lie I’d told to Amanda. My mouth was dry, my heart fluttering in my chest like that of a scared kitten. I needed gas too, but I ignored the gauge. I could deal with that on the way home when all the nonsense was over.
Between Blake’s request and the looming threat of exposure from Dawn Steiner, I was a jangled tangle of nerves.
I studied the houses lining the street, houses where families slept or watched TV or read together in comfortable family rooms, and I wished more than anything I could be home with Amanda, watching some silly movie, each of us with an ear trained toward the baby monitor and the sound of Henry’s gentle breathing.
Just leave. Just turn around and get out. Tell Blake to go to hell.
I passed the woman’s house, still dark, still empty looking.
Just hit the gas and go.
Did I know for sure Blake would really tell anyone and everyone about the accident from college, the one that had killed Maggie Steiner and injured her sister Emily?
I couldn’t say anything with certainty.
And that was always the problem with Blake—his unpredictability. If he wanted to, he could tell my coworkers. He could tell my partners in the Pig. He could go to the media.
He could tell Amanda. Far too easily. All he had to do was drive over, knock on the door, and tell her. He could be sitting in front of our house right now, waiting to tell her.
But it was more than just Blake now. For whatever reason, he’d said in those letters to this woman something that incriminated me. And those words put everything in my life in jeopardy.
And the risk to everything I held dear made me willing to do something as crazy as going into a stranger’s home and removing something—stealing it, for all intents and purposes—just to preserve my family, my freedom, and my reputation. I’d spent the six years since college, every single day since the night of the accident, trying to leave it behind and create a life I could be proud of.
One Amanda and Henry could also be proud of.
I couldn’t risk any of that. And the option of going into a stranger’s house for a few minutes when she wasn’t home and grabbing a stack of letters that included the most incriminating one sounded pretty easy.
I checked the clock on my phone. Two minutes before ten. If I was going to do this thing, it was time.
I’d formulated a plan for how to pull the job off. I parked a block and a half away, at the end of a street so I wasn’t directly in front of anyone’s house. When I’d dressed at home, right after peeking in on a sleeping Henry and wishing I could trade places with him in blissful slumber, I’d selected a dark shirt and shorts, the better to blend into the night. I’d even pulled a baseball hat down low on my forehead, the band exerting a squeezing pressure against my scalp.
I checked myself in the rearview before I climbed out of the car.
The person I saw staring back at me looked exactly like someone going to break into a house, like a guy who didn’t want to be recognized. So I pushed the hat back a little on my forehead, hoping it made me look more casual and less like a creeping cat burglar.
I’d simply have to walk like a normal guy strolling through the neighborhood without a care in the world.
I turned the car off and got out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The night was strangely quiet. The moon overhead slipped in and out of clouds like a moving spotlight. I instinctively reached for my phone, itching to capture and share the image, but I pushed the urge away. Instead, I simply stopped and made sure my phone was set to silent.
I tried to walk softly, but even with my sneakers, my footfalls sounded like gunshots in the quiet night. A few early-spring bugs chirped in the grass, and a car drove by a couple of blocks away, its engine emitting a low hum in the darkness, but otherwise there was almost no sound. No voices, no music. Nothing.
The silence unnerved me. The spring night seemed sinister, a cauldron of lurking dangers.
I turned onto a street that ran north and south, one that connected at the next intersection with the street where this woman Jen lived. On that street I’d turn right and go down a few houses before reaching the correct address. I looked at the houses as I passed, envious of the quiet lives going on behind their closed doors and drawn curtains. I felt like an interloper on their average lives, dragged there as the result of a horrible mistake I’d made six years earlier.
And one Blake had made in the past few months.
A man came around the corner of a house on my left. I saw him first, then heard something like keys jangling. His small fluffy dog bounded ahead of him, straining against the leash, and when the dog saw me, he strained even harder, pulling against the man until he stumbled slightly forward.
I looked to my right and briefly considered cutting sharply across the street to the sidewalk opposite me. But there wasn’t time to do that, and if I had, wouldn’t I have created suspicion?
So I walked on, head down slightly, and as the man came abreast of me, the fluffy dog’s tail going like a metronome, I tried not to make eye contact.
But the man said hello to me, a friendly greeting, and without thinking too much about it, I said hello back to him.
Then my eyes trailed up, ever so quickly, and our gazes locked for a split second. The man smiled at me as we passed and looked like he wanted to say something, but I turned my head away and looked down at my shoes.
When I was well by him and almost to the next street, the one I needed to turn right on in order to complete my mission, I wondered if the man knew me from somewhere. Had I seen recognition in his eyes, however fleeting? Or had I just allowed my paranoia to get the best of me?
He might have seen me on one of the many social media spots we’d done for the Pig. Or he might have met me at a chamber of commerce meeting. I told myself to keep walking past the woman’s street and then to loop around and return to my car. To abort the mission, as they would have said in a spy movie when the spy’s cover was blown.
But when I reached the corner, I told myself to calm down, that a momentary glance in the dark with my hat and basketball clothes likely wouldn’t stick in an older man’s mind. Even if he had seen me somewhere before, I was now appearing before him completely out of context.
So I kept going and made the right turn.
I quickly came in sight of the house, which sat at the top of a front yard that sloped up slightly. The houses on either side of it were mostly dark as well, and on the drive over, I’d decided not to hesitate or slow down at all. I’d walk up the driveway as though I belonged there. I got to the back of the house and turned around the corner and into the backyard, where I saw the small patio and French doors.
The house directly behind me was screened from view by a privacy fence, so I breathed a little easier. But I still felt exposed, like an athlete on a field with everyone in the stands watching to see what he would do. At that point, I felt more eager to get inside the house and out of sight of any potential witnesses.
Blake had told me that the woman frequently lost her keys, so she’d installed keypads on all the exterior doors. Since he’d spent so much time coming and going—at odd hours of the day and night—he knew the code, which I’d memorized so I wouldn’t have to fumble with paper while standing outside the house. Four digits. Easy enough.
But then I noticed something Blake hadn’t told me about.
A pretty big detail.
Not only did the door use a keypad, but a sticker on the door indicated the keypad was connected to an alarm system. I’d heard of those setups before, and it meant that if someone tried to enter an alarm code that didn’t work or if they messed up several times in a row, the alarm automatically sent an alert. The warning might go to the alarm company, who might then call the police. Or it might go to the homeowner, buzzing them on their phone.
Either way, it reduced my margin for error to almost nothing.
If I rushed and messed up the code . . .
Or if the code had been changed, and Blake didn’t know. After all, wouldn’t it make sense for a woman to change her keypad code after a breakup?
“Damn it, Blake,” I said, muttering in the dark.
It was the kind of detail he would have overlooked. Or failed to mention.
I could have left.
No one held a gun to my head. No one was forcing me to do anything.
But I already had the code memorized.
And the longer I stood outside, the greater the chance a neighbor would glance out the window and see me.
1-7-9-2.
1792. I knew from growing up that was the year Kentucky had been admitted to the union. Maybe this woman Blake was involved with was a history buff.
I typed it in one number at a time and went for the handle, hoping nothing went wrong.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The door refused to open.
I turned the handle once, twice, and then a third time, pushing against the door at the same time, but it didn’t budge.
“Shit.”
My hands started to shake ever so slightly. It felt as though someone had turned up the temperature of the night by ten degrees, even though it was actually cool and pleasant. Almost growing chilly.
I entered the code again and turned the handle.
Still nothing.
A dog started barking a couple of houses away, sharp, insistent yelps that pierced the night. Could it have seen or heard me?
Then a voice cut through the darkness. “Knock it off, Sparkle!”
For some reason, I wondered why anyone would name their dog Sparkle.
But I shook that thought from my head and refocused. I knew I’d already tried twice, and my margin for error might be gone.
I guessed three made for a good magic number. Three failed attempts might trigger a response from the system. So I had to make the next one count.
Had I been wrong about the code? Was I missing something?
I reached into my pocket and brought out the paper. It was creased and limp, and my sweaty hands made it stick to my fingers and difficult to open. I unfolded it quickly, using the ambient light from the stars and the reappearing moon and the houses nearby to read Blake’s note.
1-7-9-2.
Hadn’t I entered that?
Had the code changed, and Blake didn’t know?
I decided to try one more time. And if it didn’t work, I’d get the hell out of there before the police were summoned.
Or before Sparkle came over and bit my leg off.
I took a deep breath, wiped my sweaty hands on my shorts, and carefully entered the code.
When I tried to turn the handle again, it stuck, refusing to open. And my mind raced, imagining at that very moment an alarm ringing like a fire bell in the police station just two miles away.
I tried one more time and felt the handle give a little. I pushed against the door, leaning my shoulder into it, and it gave more.
With a little more pressure, the door opened, and I almost fell across the threshold and stumbled inside the house. But I stayed on my feet, took one quick look back to make sure nobody saw me, and then I slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Everything was dark.
Since I’d spent so much time walking through the night, my eyes had mostly adjusted, so I could pretty quickly see where I was.
I stood in a family room. I saw the dark outlines of sleek modern furniture—a couch, two recliners, and a large TV. Everything looked neat and orderly, everything in its place. A shelf full of highbrow fiction and nonfiction books I claimed I wanted to read but never did. A framed diploma from the University of Louisville. News and decorating magazines fanned out on the coffee table.
I listened. In the kitchen off the family room, a ceiling fan whirred, the pull chain rhythmically clacking with each revolution, which seemed somewhat odd for an empty house. But Amanda and I frequently left home with fans going, and otherwise, I heard nothing. I wanted to move fast, and get out. I doubted my slow work and multiple tries on the back door had alerted anyone, but in case they had, I needed to move quickly.
And something else could go wrong. What if the woman who lived here decided to leave yoga early? She might decide not to go at all. She might say, The hell with being healthy and flexible. I want to go home and watch TV and drink a glass of wine.
I knew the bedroom sat at the front of the house, the windows facing the street, so I headed that way. I still walked quietly and sleekly, even though I felt pretty certain no one was inside the house.
Why risk it?
It felt bizarre to be in a stranger’s home. Like the gravest violation of someone’s privacy. And I again cursed Blake for forcing me to do it, for putting me in the position of being an intruder.
Remember, he didn’t hold a gun to your head. . . .
You made this mess by driving that car that night. . . .
You ma
de the mess by never coming clean about the accident. . . .
This night . . . and Dawn Steiner . . . all because of you . . .
The voice in my mind was right. Again.
If I felt like an intruder, a violator of a stranger’s privacy, it was my own doing. My own choosing.
I moved toward the front of the house, through the family room and past the kitchen, the floor gently creaking beneath my feet, and before I turned left down the hallway that led to the bedrooms, I saw something on the floor that made me stop.
At first I thought it was an animal. A large mouse or even a small rabbit.
Then I saw it was cloth. I bent down. A sock? A bandanna? Something that might have fallen out of a gym bag as the woman rushed to get to yoga?
No. It was a glove. A black glove.
I picked it up and examined it in the light that spilled through the small window at the top of the front door. Who would have a winter glove out at the beginning of April? Spring hadn’t fully erupted, but there was no need to wear gloves.
I decided to put it back down and leave it where it lay. If the woman who lived here had dropped it for some reason, then she would want it again.
But it was strange the way an innocuous accessory unnerved me. Something seemed off about the glove being out in the middle of the foyer in the empty and quiet house.
I needed to get out.
I went down the short hallway to the master bedroom. When I got there, the door was closed. It seemed strange to me that someone would leave their bedroom door closed when they weren’t home.
Maybe everyone did it. Maybe I’d be the only one to find it odd. But it unnerved me just as the random dropped glove had.
Then I wondered if there’d be an unexpected problem. Would the bedroom door be locked somehow? Something Blake hadn’t thought of and didn’t have an answer to?
I swallowed hard and reached for the knob. It turned freely, and the door swung open.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN