by Dan Padavona
“I feel as though you don’t have a good grasp on how our legal system operates. You can’t just crawl into a stranger’s car because the door is unlocked, and you sure as hell can’t live in other people’s houses.”
The latter point jarred her. For the first time, her confidence faltered.
“Look,” I said. “I only want to know why you were inside my car.”
“You went through a lot of trouble to catch me. How long were you waiting out here?”
“I don’t know. An hour. Maybe a little more. Just don’t kill me, okay?”
“Anybody see you come back here?”
“No, nobody. Look, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s not my house. What do I care? I wouldn’t tell anybody.”
With a snap, the blade disappeared into its casing. She crawled off me and sat back in the grass, studying me with caution and mounting curiosity.
“Fine,” she said, looking warily across the yard. “So you found me. What do you want to know?”
Sighing, I rubbed the memory of the switchblade off my chin and sat back in the grass. She drew her knees into her chest.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“All this effort and you don’t have a single question for me? I’ll be leaving now.”
“Wait. Ever since you jumped out of my car and ran into the woods, I’ve been trying to figure out who you are. I thought you were dead.”
She grinned.
“Obviously not. I didn’t mean to scare you. If you’re worried I wanted to steal your car, I didn’t. I only hid inside because someone was following me. I wanted to rest for a bit until I was sure I was safe. I guess I fell asleep.”
Up close, I noted holes in the knees of her jeans and fraying along the cuffs. Her jean jacket lacked a few buttons.
“It was a mistake, and I promise I won’t step foot in your car again unless you personally give me permission. Deal?”
“Yeah, well, that won’t be a problem. The car finally broke down on me. But if you steal my bike, I’ll kick your ass.”
Her eyes leaped up to mine, then her lips curled into a smile.
“I’d like to see you try.”
A wet leaf stuck in her bangs. I wanted to pluck it out if only to touch the silk of her hair. A dog barked a few yards away.
“I can’t believe you break into people’s houses. Why?”
“Because it’s better than living on the street. Whoever said being homeless meant you couldn’t sleep with a roof over your head?”
Homeless.
My stomach lurched. I hadn’t considered the possibility. She smelled clean, fresh, hardly like someone who lived on the streets. I supposed she owned only a few changes of clothing and did her best to keep them washed. Had she used the Chinese family’s washer?
Aside from the beaten clothing, she was well-groomed, beautiful, able to blend into a crowd without anyone wondering about her. But something about her looked ill and tired. Upon closer inspection, her eyes held the fatigue of someone who’d run for too long. I wondered what she was running from.
She looked off to where the driveway meandered back to the sidewalk. Park Place was lined with the homes of happy, wealthy families, and somehow she’d managed to live among the rich without anyone noticing.
“You’ll get caught. It’s inevitable.”
Shrugging her shoulders, she glared at me.
“There are scarier things out there than police sirens.”
I thought about the junkie and knew she was right.
She pushed herself up and strode to the back door, leaving me alone in the dewy grass. Her lifestyle frightened the hell out of me. And yet it fascinated.
Though it seemed our conversation had ended, more questions perched on the tip of my tongue. I figured it was time I left. I doubted she wanted me around, bothering her with more questions.
As I brushed dirt off my pants and started for the driveway, she said, “Aren’t you gonna come inside?”
My skin felt too tight. A happy warmth spread down my body.
“You sure?”
“You forgave me for killing your car, so I kinda have to trust you.”
“You’re asking me to break the law.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything. What you do next is up to you. Come inside, or don’t. Your call.”
She dug into her pocket. In the faint light, I watched her remove a lock pick. She jimmied with the lock for several seconds, and the locking mechanism clicked open.
Then she disappeared into the home, and I was alone in the darkness with the cold wind.
To hell with it. You only live once.
I took a deep breath and followed her inside.
CHAPTER THREE
Night in the Basement
Electricity tingled along my spine. Being inside a stranger’s house, exploring the rooms, sifting through belongings, was no longer just an idea. I was doing it.
“You didn’t even ask me my name,” the stowaway said, flicking on her flashlight and aiming the beam at the floor so nobody passing by could notice.
“There are probably a million things I’d like to ask you. Since you mentioned it, I’ll settle for a name.”
“Becca.”
“That’s a pretty name. I’m Steve.”
“Steve’s a pretty name, too.”
She smiled over her shoulder.
“Very funny.”
Becca kicked off her sneakers and left them neatly by the door, so I did the same. She padded silently across the kitchen in a pair of white socks turned threadbare by repeated washings. I wondered if some of the stains were from the wetlands she’d disappeared into.
A wooden island stood in the kitchen’s center, a block of expensive knives on one end. A green glow from the microwave LED reflected off a spotless floor. Whoever these people were, they had money. The stainless steel refrigerator was bigger than my apartment closet.
A troubling thought crawled inside my head.
“Are you sure the house isn’t protected by an alarm system?”
“Not this house. No sign out front, and I checked it out thoroughly. Which included picking the lock and waiting in the bushes for fifteen minutes before I entered.”
“Fifteen minutes?”
“Yeah. If the police don’t show up by then, they aren’t coming.”
As we wound through the kitchen and dining room, my only view was of the linoleum and hardwood reflected inside her flashlight beam. She turned up a plush carpeted staircase and flicked off the light. The house went dark for a moment, then my eyes adjusted to the ambient light flowing through the ceiling-to-floor windows at the top of the landing.
“Where are we going?”
“Shh.”
Becca turned down a hallway and opened the second door on the left. A bathroom.
“You brought me up here so you could use the bathroom?”
“No. I came upstairs to use the bathroom, and you followed me. Remember, I never told you to do anything. You make your own decisions.”
Large white tiles glowed along the bathroom floor. A clear glass door led into a stand-up shower.
“Whatever. Just make it quick, okay? I’m not interested in going to jail.”
She grinned at me and shut the door in my face. I waited to hear the lock turn, but I guess she trusted me. Though I tried not to listen to her peeing, it sounded ridiculously loud in the silent upstairs. After a while, I heard the toilet flush, then running water. The door opened.
“Feel better now?”
“Very.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
“You can go anytime you like. This is home, and I’m staying the night.”
She slipped past me and started down the stairs. I slapped myself out of my stupor and followed her.
“Staying the night? What if the owner comes home?”
“He won’t.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
At the bottom of the stairs Becca cut
left, and I followed her down the main floor’s central hallway. The living room was off to the right, where I glimpsed a huge LCD television on the wall. She stopped short and opened an inconspicuous door.
“Believe me. I’m sure.”
We descended another carpeted staircase into a deeper darkness. The air tasted stale on my tongue. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face until she turned on the flashlight. We were inside a finished basement. A long couch lay across the front of the room with another HD television on the wall. A computer hummed in the far corner.
“You didn’t kill the family, did you?”
“Do I look like a murderer?”
She didn’t, but what did I really know about her?
“Then how do you know they aren’t coming home?”
She turned on the overhead lights.
“That doesn’t seem like a good idea. Everyone in the neighborhood will know we are in the basement.”
“Relax,” Becca said, pointing at the windows. The basement only had two small windows, and she’d stuffed blankets in front of the glass. “The basement is the safest place to be, provided you block light from reaching the windows. Plus, it’s underground. I can watch television or listen to music as long as I don’t blast the sound.”
Pulling the cushions off the couch, she reached inside and dragged out a pullout bed with a white sheet affixed. From the corner closet, she removed two pillows and a comforter.
Was she inviting me to sleep with her?
As she made up the bed I stood watching, frozen to the floor. I kept waiting to hear the owner return, throwing keys down on the table, stomping across our ceiling before he ventured down to the basement and caught us.
I looked around. No escape.
The basement windows were small casement types. You couldn’t have squeezed a toddler through. The only option was to hide inside the closet and pray nobody checked.
After she made the bed, she fished another pillow and an old blanket from the closet.
“Here,” she said, handing them to me.
“What do you want me to do with these?”
“If you want to stay the night, you might as well get comfortable. The carpet is nice and soft.”
That answered my question about sleeping arrangements.
I couldn’t contain the tremors rippling down my spine as I looked around the basement. Trespassing was bad enough. Sleeping in another family’s house was insane.
Out of a worn backpack, she removed a small bath towel which had seen better days.
“What’s the towel for?”
“I’m gonna take a warm shower, dummy.” I looked incredulously at her. “Why are you looking at me like that? It wouldn’t be cool if I used the owners’ towels. I keep to a strict set of principles.”
I was too stunned to talk as she strode past without a worry or care. I don’t think I moved a muscle until I heard the water gurgling through the pipes and the hollow thud of the shower door closing.
Then a moment of clarity, as though ice water splashed my face.
I had to get out of there. I’d done some pretty stupid and careless things in my life, but nothing approached this. This was utter lunacy.
I spun around, searching for any incriminating evidence to tie me to the scene.
My fingerprints were probably everywhere.
I heard a motor approaching. Probably just a neighbor passing by.
The motor stopped, and a car door banged shut right outside.
“Becca.”
I called up the staircase, not wanting to yell too loudly. Water cascaded into the tub upstairs.
“Becca, someone is outside.”
Hell.
Another car door slammed. I heard a man and a woman laughing.
“Becca!”
The shower kept running. Her humming reverberated emptily through the corridors. She’d never hear me while the water poured over her ears.
I rushed up one flight of stairs and stood in the dark hallway between the living room and kitchen. I knew where the back door to the house was. The front entry door had to be somewhere left of the living room. Whichever door the Chinese family opened, I’d race for the opposite door.
Leaving Becca to be captured, naked and humiliated, made me feel like a worm. I couldn’t abandon her.
Figuring I was sealing my fate, I rushed up the second flight of stairs. I passed the ceiling-to-floor windows, seeing only pinpricks of light from neighboring houses amid the black of night. Running water filled the hallway with clamor.
I reached for the doorknob and thought about her naked inside and how I’d frighten the hell out of her by bursting in.
Better that than going to jail.
“We gotta go,” I said, throwing open the door.
Steam rolled out to meet me. I couldn’t see through the fog.
The faucet turned off. For a few awful seconds, all I heard was the drip…drip…drip of water in the tub. It made me wonder if Becca was behind that roiling mist, or if someone else was back there, waiting for me.
I was torn between screaming at Becca and leaving her there to be captured when she finally said, “Calm down. You’re making yourself crazy.”
“I heard someone outside. The owners are home.”
Drip…drip…drip.
“Becca?”
“Nobody’s home, Steve. Just you and me.”
“But I heard—”
“You heard a car door. The neighborhood is full of them. Get used to it.”
“I can’t get used to this.”
“When your nerves are wound tight, every little sound will make you think something terrible is about to happen. But it’s not.”
Easy for her to say. We were just as trapped upstairs as we’d been in the basement.
“I’ve been doing this since I was seventeen. Three years. Never been caught, never even came close.”
“You only have to get caught once, Becca.”
“Take a deep breath. When I come downstairs, I’ll prove to you nobody’s coming home tonight. In the meantime, if you don’t mind I’d like to dry off without an audience.”
Biting back a curse, I slunk back into the hallway and gently closed the bathroom door. For a long time, I leaned against the door, listening as the couple’s voices trailed away. I felt stupid. Their voices came from at least three or four houses away, not nearly as close as I’d convinced myself. Fear blooms strong in the dark.
I was sitting on a lounge chair, rolling the remote around in my hand and deciding whether or not to turn on the television, when she came downstairs. Fully clothed, towel wrapped around her head, she angled straight for the computer. When she moved the mouse the screen turned on.
“I wanna show you something,” Becca said.
She scooted to the edge of the chair and made room for me. I slid in beside her. Sitting this close, I caught the fragrance of flowery bath soap and shampoo. I tried really hard not to think about how beautiful she looked or how the faded denim of her jeans clung tight and damp like a second skin.
Our knees touched.
When I looked up, the Facebook profile of Ji Lin smiled back at me. I recognized the middle-aged Chinese man from the picture in the dining room. In his profile picture, he wore a dark blue business suit and tie, his hair slicked back. Just below was a picture of Lin sandwiched between his wife and two kids, all wearing summer clothes and shorts. The wife, a frail and pretty little thing with jet black hair, wore a lei around her neck.
“Say hello to the Lin family, Steve. The Hawaiian islands are beautiful this time of year, or so I hear.”
I scanned down the screen and noted the family picture had been uploaded two hours ago.
Before I could ask my followup question, she said, “They’ll be home in eight days, and their immediate family is divided between China and southern California. No family in Barton Falls. Staying here couldn’t be any safer.”
I shook my head. I still couldn’t fathom secretly livin
g in a stranger’s house for weeks at a time.
And yet the excitement I felt was that of uncovering a priceless diamond in the backyard. It was so simple, why hadn’t I thought of it before?
Because it’s wrong.
Isn’t it?
She tossed the towel aside and shook out her hair.
“It’s amazing what people put on the Internet,” she said. “Travel plans, where they’re staying and how long they’ll be away. I guess they do it to show off for their friends. Imagine if I were a thief. I could rob the Lin family blind for another eight days if I wanted.”
“But you wouldn’t do that, right?”
She gave me a level stare, a that-can’t-be-a-serious-question look.
“Right. And look at this.” She pointed at the biographical information under Ji Lin’s picture. “His profile is open to the public. That’s crazy. But I’ve seen plenty of people with closed profiles post status updates which are open to the public, and that’s just as bad. And don’t get me started on Twitter. People say anything and everything to complete strangers on that site. I’ve found more upscale homes to stay in on Twitter than anywhere else.”
“I’m impressed. I still don’t understand how you find these…opportunities. Seems like finding a needle in a haystack.”
“Watch and learn.”
She unzipped a small compartment on her backpack and withdrew a black and red thumb drive. After inserting the drive into a USB port on the monitor, the file manager opened. She double-clicked on a file nebulously named Scrape, and a black window opened. Random characters filled the window, and then the program closed.
“Did you just give them a virus?”
“Don’t be silly. It’s a data extraction tool. No harm was done to the computer.”
“Data extraction? You mean an application that grabs information off the Internet and writes it to a file?”
Her eyebrows raised.
“Wow. Look at the big brain on Steve. Did you study computer science in college?”
“Me?” I looked off at something in the corner of the room “No. I’m not smart enough for college.”
“If you know what data extraction is, you are smart enough for college.”
“Yeah? Maybe.”
“Definitely.”
“Where did you get a program like that?”