by Sharp, Tracy
“Jack! No!” My whisper sounded like a scream in my ears.
Already straddling the top of the fence, he turned toward me looking irritated and impatient. “What?”
“What are you doing? The dogs. Hello?”
Jack held up the plastic bag. “I’m going to give them their dinner.”
“Ah, dude,” Will began. “They see you, they’ll eat you first and then have the meat later.”
“Just toss the meat over the fence. Don’t go in there.” I pleaded with him.
Jack jumped to the ground on the other side of the fence and started toward the house.
Cal shook his head and heaved a heavy sigh. “Your friend is just as nutty as you are.”
I shrugged. “Birds of a feather.”
I watched Jack with my heart in my throat as he strode across the backyard as if he belonged there. Of course, Jack always walked like that. He always seemed to own the space he occupied.
He stopped in the middle of the yard and began dumping the meat on the ground. I held my breath.
It didn’t take long before the dogs came around the corner, ears up and heads tilted slightly. The second they saw Jack they started after him. Jack dropped the bag and started running. In seconds, they were almost on top of him.
“Oh, fuck,” I said. “Hurry up!”
Luckily, he cleared the fence with one leg of his jeans torn to shreds just before the dogs could make a meal out of him.
“Wow.” Will’s voice was shaky. “That was pretty good.”
“I’ve done it before.” Jack looked at me and winked. “That’s why I wore my old jeans. After a while it just becomes old hat.”
Will nodded his head. “Uh. Right.”
We all watched the dogs as they barked and growled at us. Soon they lost interest in us in favor of the meat Jack left them. They sniffed it first, cautious.
“Ah, man. They’re not gonna go for it,” Will said.
Jack nodded once. “They’ll go for it. Some people train their dogs not to eat anything from strangers. This guy Woodard isn’t one of them. He wants nothing to do with these dogs. He just wants them to guard his drug stash and whatever else he’s got going on.”
It only took a few seconds for the dogs to gulp down the meat. They licked their chops and sniffed around on the ground to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. Once they realized there was nothing left, they came back to the fence and began their steady tirade of dog obscenities at us.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Will said to them. “Feels like I’m back with my ex-wife.”
This struck me as funny because Will didn’t quite seem like the marrying kind.
He looked at Jack. “How long is this gonna take?”
“About ten minutes.”
“I don’t know if they’re barking because we’re here or because Jack didn’t leave more for them.” Cal was standing back as if he thought the dogs might come right through the fence.
I moved closer to the fence and watched them for signs of sleepiness. With how pissed they were, it didn’t look like it would happen anytime soon. I doubted Jack’s fifteen-minute prediction. “I’d love to leave Woodard for them.”
“It can be arranged.” Even though it was dark, I could see the gleam in Jack’s eye. He wasn’t kidding.
“Food for thought,” I replied. “No pun intended, of course.”
No one said anything for a few moments. Will started fidgeting. Come on poochies. Go to sleep. You’re getting veeeeery sleeeeeeeepy.” He was wiggling his fingers at them as if they held some magical powers.
I pressed my forehead against the fence and counted to ten to keep myself from clocking him. Thankfully, the dogs began weaving and staggering and soon they were lying on the ground, their eyes still half-open.
“They’re still awake. Shit,” Cal said.
“Barely,” Jack said. “Don’t worry about it.” He looked at me. “You ready?”
“Let’s go.”
We decided that Cal and Will would stay outside as lookouts. Before I turned toward the fence, I felt Cal’s hand on my arm.
His eyes were serious under the light of the moon. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go in there with you?”
“Yeah. It’ll be okay, trust me.”
“Please be careful, Leah.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“I will. Don’t worry.”
Jack and I climbed the fence easily. It’d been a while since I’d done it but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was just as limber as I’d been as a teenager. We cleared the fence and walked past the dogs that managed a faint, low growl and nothing more.
We walked quickly to the cellar door. It was open. I guess with two pit bulls in the yard, there wasn’t much of a need for a lock. Jack opened the door and we went down the old, sagging stairs into the dank, sour cellar. Jack held his magnum in one hand and a penlight in the other. He played the light over the entire cellar and I breathed a sigh of relief that none of the women were kept down there.
We quietly made our way up the stairs and I turned the doorknob but the door wouldn’t open. It was locked from the other side. “Shit,” I said under my breath. I pushed from the bottom and then all the way up the door. It had a little give until I reached closer to the top of it. “It’s one of those hook locks at the top of the door. It’s too tight for me to open it enough that I could shove something through a crack and lift it out of the hook.”
“There’s enough give for me to break it open pretty easily,” Jack said.
I sighed, weighing he pros and cons. There could be someone in the house watching the women. In all likelihood there was. “Just be ready. And move fast.”
“I’m always ready.” He slammed his huge bulk against the door and broke it open on the first try without even damaging the door or frame. “These little hook locks are a joke,” he whispered as he moved quickly through the door and into a dark kitchen. “Why the hell do people even bother with them?”
I shrugged, following him with my gun raised and ready. It wouldn’t be my choice of lock if I were a drug lord who ran a porno ring. I smiled. This was a routine Jack and I’d begun long ago. Whenever we were in a dangerous situation, we tended to try to make light of it, if even just a little bit. It kept our nerves from getting the better of us. If you let fear dictate your moves, chances are that you’ll end up in a pretty bad scenario. Anything that works to keep your mind clear is a good thing. Some people like to sing. Some whistle. Jack and I kid around. And I’m well known for giggling at inappropriate moments.
The kitchen was clear. We moved silently through to the living room, staying low, guns ready, but not held too far out so they’d be easily knocked from our hands.
I signaled to Jack that I was going to check the bathroom down the hall. He nodded once and continued through the living room, checking behind furniture, anything a person could be hiding behind, but moving fast so that he wouldn’t be an easy target if someone did have a weapon trained on him.
It had occurred to me, back behind the bushes when the dogs were barking at us, that if there were guards in the house, the barking would’ve alerted them long ago. I held on to the hope that the dogs barked a lot, at just about everything, so the guards would be immune to the sound. I’d grown up close to a railroad track. We had trains go by at all hours, not a hundred yards away from our house. The house shook each time a train went down those tracks. After a while, we never noticed. We stopped hearing the trains in the middle of the night.
I crept up to the darkened bathroom, stopping outside the doorway and listening. I can usually tell if there’s someone around. The air changes in the space you’re in. It’s like two people in a pool. The air shifts the same as water will. Air pushes your heat around. Your breath and your fear. It’s not hard to tell if you pay attention to the space you’re in at all times. It becomes automatic after awhile.
I was pretty sure there was nobody in there but I flicked the light on and went in just the s
ame. It was a filthy bathroom. The tub probably hadn’t been washed in years. Same for the sink, the toilet and the floor. I instantly became itchy and got the hell out of there.
I continued down the hall to the bottom of the stairway where Jack was listening hard and waiting for me. When I looked at him with a question in my eyes, do you hear anything? He shook his head at me. I frowned. It didn’t feel right. Even if the women were tied up and gagged, you’d hear something. You’d hear labored, panicked breathing. You’d feel the vibrations of their horror and dread in the air.
I felt it, too. There was nothing. I was getting a bad feeling about it.
Still, we stepped softly up the stairs and made our way down the hall. There were three doors up there. All closed. When we got to the first, we listened hard. Again, Jack shook his head. There was nothing. I dreaded opening any of the doors. I didn’t want to see what was behind them. I took a shuddering breath and placed a shaking hand on the doorknob. I turned it slowly. It opened easily when I pushed on it.
It was pitch black. So black I couldn’t tell if there was a window in the room. It smelled bad, like rotten vegetables. I held my breath as Jack reached in to feel for a light switch. In a split second, the room was flooded with light. It was empty. Something dark and reddish-brown stained the unfinished hardwood floor. There was a closet on the right side of the room.
I went over to it, my mind screaming at me to stop, and slowly turned the knob. I tried to avoid making any noise but the door was sticking. I had to yank it open. It too was empty. No clothes. Just a few empty wire hangers. One had been straightened and leaned against one corner of the closet. I turned away, not wanting to look at it. Not wanting to see if there was anything on it.
Jack stood in the hall, looking at me but keeping a watch on the hallway and stairs. I shook my head at him: Nothing. He tilted his head in the direction of the other two doors.
Same routine for the second door. We listened. I opened the door. Jack found the light switch. Nobody in there. No closets. There was a double bed in the middle of the room. The faded blue sheets were stained different shades. I didn’t look that closely. I tilted my face at the bed, looking toward the bottom of it.
Jack nodded. I’ll go.
I stayed watch while he moved the sheets from the floor with his penlight, gun trained under the bed. He got up off the floor and came back to me, shaking his head. Nothing.
We moved to the last door. Although there’d been nobody in the last two rooms, my adrenaline was pumping overtime and I could feel the pulse in my temples. I tried to slow my breathing but I just had a bad sense about the last room. I could see it in Jack, too. That stony expression on his face. Like he was preparing himself for something really nasty.
We held our guns and our breath. He turned the doorknob and opened the door. He felt for a light switch but couldn’t find one on either side of the door. He played his penlight across the ceiling and found a lightbulb with a string hanging from it.
By then I was having trouble breathing. I kept swallowing and my mind was whirling.
Because … the penlight threw just enough light for me to see the shape of the body slumped in the corner of the room.
“Jesus,” Jack breathed.
The girl was young. Maybe only sixteen or seventeen. Asian. She was dressed in a black mini-skirt, a silvery, transparent tank top with a black bra beneath and a pair of black, high heels. She wore no pantyhose. Her chin rested on her chest, long black hair hung around her face. A needle protruded from her arm.
I shook my head. “No. Uh uh. No way.”
Jack stepped into the room. “I don’t think so either.”
I kept shaking my head. “She didn’t do this herself. She either got fed up with being a piece of meat, stopped playing nice and Woodard killed her, or he just wants to give us a message. Didn’t feel like using my answering machine this time.” I was trembling, grinding my teeth, swallowing back my nausea and rage. It was a white-hot rage. And I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wanted to scream until my throat was raw. I just kept swallowing it down.
“This guy’s going down, Leah.” Jack was staring at the girl, his face blank. “Him and his cop friend.”
“They knew what they were doing. They’ll say she was some squatter with a habit and that the house had been empty for a long time.”
“They’re going down,” he said again, nodding slowly. He turned to me. “And I don’t mean prison. It’s way too late for that.”
I agreed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After Will placed an anonymous call to the police from a phone booth, we decided to leave it for the night. Jack and I were heartsick over the horrible death of the woman in the house. Cal and Will were angry but glad they hadn’t seen her.
Will was also visibly shaken. He didn’t say much, except that he was going to see a girl. Cal and I went back with Jack to his house to pick up the Rubicon and to check on Amanda. When we got there, Patrick shook his head and lifted his hands, palms up.
“She left,” he said.
“What? What do you mean ‘she left’?” Jack said.
“I mean, she was up there for about an hour and then she took off. She said to thank everyone for helping her. She didn’t say where she was going.”
“Aw, fuck!” Jack bellowed.
“Hey, man. She’s a grown woman. What would you expect me to do? Tie her up?”
“No, I just know where she’s headed.” Jack let out a deep breath and shook his head.
“Exactly.” I nodded. “Right back to Finn.”
“She’s scared he’s going to hurt her family. I can understand why she went back. I don’t like it, but I understand it,” Cal said.
I shook my head. I was so tired, I could barely string two thoughts together. I was exhausted. Emotionally drained. I just didn’t want to think anymore. I turned to Cal. “I need to get home. I need to see Jesse.”
“He left about two hours ago,” Patrick said. “With that girl that’s been coming to see him.”
The hair on the back of my neck bristled. “You let him go?”
Patrick rolled his eyes. “Well, yeah.”
“Where’s Sean? You guys are supposed to be watching him.”
“Sean had a date after work. What am I? A friggin’ babysitter? Anyway, Leah, Jesse’s twenty-one. If he wants to go for coffee with a girl, I’m not gonna stand in his way.”
They were right, but I couldn’t stand not knowing where Jesse was when Woodard and Finn were out there just waiting for a moment to get back at me. Hurting Jesse would be the perfect way to do that.
Jack rubbed a hand over his face and took a deep breath. He stared off into space for a moment, eyes squinted. “I think he’ll be okay.”
“Did he say where they were going?” I tried to keep the blame out of my voice. I scratched my arm. It suddenly felt like there were tiny worms wiggling beneath my skin.
He shook his head. “No. He just said they were going for coffee.”
“Leah,” Cal began. “You don’t want to go looking for him when he’s with this girl. You’ll embarrass the hell out of him.”
I looked at him, trying to keep from glaring. “What if Woodard or some of his friends are following him?”
“Woodard is busy with Finn. I doubt he’s thinking about following anyone tonight,” Cal said.
Jack nodded. “Yeah. He’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it. He’s a smart kid. He can take care of himself.” The worry touching his eyes told me that Jack was much more concerned about Jesse than he was letting on.
There just wasn’t much we could do about it at the moment except to scour the city like frantic relatives searching for a lost child.
Without another word, I turned and headed out to the driveway. I felt sick. When I got to the Jeep, I had to rest my hands on the hood of it to steady myself. I took deep breaths, willing the dizziness and nausea away.
“Hey.” Cal placed a hand on my back. “Are you okay?�
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I shrugged his hand off me. “Don’t touch me.” I was gasping. I felt like I was suffocating.
He backed up a step and said nothing … but kept watching me. I could feel his indecision. He was wondering if he should run in and get Jack or just leave me alone for a few minutes. I didn’t want him going in to get Jack. I didn’t want this to be a big deal.
“I’ll be okay in a minute.” I steadied my voice and stared at the hood of the Jeep, concentrating on the color of the paint under the moonlight. I looked up at the clear, star-speckled sky and felt myself calm down. That sky was so enormous and I was insignificant under it. I couldn’t control the universe. It was much bigger than me. I could only do what I could do.
I started giggling. I looked at Cal who was watching me, alarm growing on his face.
“It’s okay,” I said between a string of giggles. “Really. I’m feeling better.” The truth was that I felt a little hysterical. It was all right. I’d rather feel crazy than panicked.
“Um, okay.” Clearly, he wasn’t buying it but it was easier to humor the insane than to risk arguing with them.
“No, really.” I took a moment to catch my breath. “I’m just on a roller coaster ride, you know? That’s all. I’m coming down now.”
He nodded slowly. “Good.”
“Get in.” I walked to the driver’s side of the Jeep. “I’ll take you home.”
He hesitated.
“Oh come on. Don’t you trust my driving?” I couldn’t blame him.
A big smile broke out on his face and he laughed, shaking his head. “Leah. You’re killing me.”
I shook my head as I opened the door. “Nah. Not tonight.”
“Oh, that’s a comforting thought.” He climbed into the Jeep and fastened his seat belt. “I must be an adrenaline freak, just like you are.”
“Nah. An adrenaline freak wanna-be.”