Stealth Moves

by Sanna Hines

  It took no time to set up the ladder, but forever to let it down. Liv was nervous and angry with the delay when she set her phone into her armband, and then climbed out to take the first step.

  Easy. Nothing to it.

  The ladder began to sway. She had to stop between each slat. The plunger worked fine when she crossed the terrifying space of her grandmother’s window, and again, when she maneuvered past the dining room glass. At last—at last!—she was on the terrace, facing the garden wall—all twelve feet of it. She gave Cam a whispered update.

  “Instead of tackling the wall straight on, try angling off Holly’s room. Have you done that before?”

  “No.” Liv visualized the moves: a diagonal run at Holly’s room, landing one foot and then swiveling to leap against the brick wall, aiming higher with the other foot. During the second jump, she had to stretch toward the top of the wall, catch the edge with her hands and then haul herself onto the ledge.

  “Picture yourself going up,” Cam said, “like a rocket. Believe you’re taking off, and you’ll make it.”

  Her first try failed. Foot too low, she blocked a face-plant with her hands. The leather gloves saved her palms from scrapes. Liv silently thanked Jessica for making her “a working superhero” costume instead of a glitzy fake.

  She took a deep breath and ran toward the ideal spot, touching left, then right, reaching up and holding. Her arms shook as she struggled with the pull up, but she willed her muscles to obey, and at last, her hips were poised against the edge. Leaning forward, she swung her legs over. She’d beaten the wall!

  No time to rest. Anyone looking out a window could see her. Liv surveyed neighboring backyards, each walled like hers. On Monday, an intruder reached her terrace from the street in front of those houses. How did he get through?

  It wasn’t hard to figure out. Liv walked on wall tops, crossed a rock garden and then stepped onto the roof of a low garage. The garage took her out to the next street, where she dropped down to ground level. “So far, so good,” she told Cam.

  “Look, Liv, listening to you grunt and pant isn’t working for me. I’m driving down there. I’ll be off the phone for five minutes or so. Have to find my keys, and Holly’s POS car is a bitch to start. I’ll call you when I’m on Route 95 heading south.”

  “No! Don’t go!”

  “You’re okay. Five minutes,” Cam promised before he clicked off.

  Liv was alone in the dark.

  She’d never been out on the Boston streets by herself at night. Back in L.A., sure. Liv went out lots of times when she was bored or hungry, and if her mother saw the candy wrappers the next day, she didn’t say anything. But here, it was different. Grandmother worried, had to know where she was all the time, insisted she be home before the sun went down. Lately, with Holly shadowing her, Liv ignored things like the middle-aged man coming toward her now.

  The man walked closer. He seemed ordinary, but crazy people didn’t always look crazy. Liv felt her chest tighten.

  With a disapproving frown, the man passed by. Liv let out her breath and increased her pace toward Beacon. She didn’t like being scared, needed something to chase away that feeling.

  A weapon would help. Keys were weapons, Holly said. Liv’s keys were in her purse at home. Standing at the same corner where she’d talked with Holly about self-defense, Liv realized she had something better than keys: lights. Liv Smallwood, high school sophomore, was a vulnerable kid. Beacon, superhero, wasn’t. Liv turned on all her lights.

  The first people she met on Beacon Street reacted just as she hoped. One-half of a gay couple slipped his hand from his partner’s to salute her, saying, “You go, girl!” Liv smiled at him and moved on. A woman walking her dog stopped and stared. Liv gave her a smile, too. After that, Liv’s lights carved a path for her to Chase’s corner, where she turned right, heading toward the street behind the Tinsley house. Lights would betray her there. With a sigh, she began switching off her display.

  Her phone buzzed. “I’m on 95. Where are you?” Cam asked.

  “Nearly there.” She felt calm and ready. Climbing the house would be hard, but she’d be careful and do it right.

  Liv saw the house’s number above a door through the back wall. The garage had ominous-looking security lights. She stopped two houses away to tell Cam, “I’m going in over the neighbor’s wall. No lights, and it’s only seven or eight feet high—piece a cake.”

  It wasn’t quite so simple; her shoulders and arms balked at the pull up, and yet she made it. Stepping onto the Tinsley garage roof, she suddenly felt strange, like people were watching her. Liv scurried over the garage and the covered walkway leading to the house. Sinking into a corner between neighboring wall and house, she felt safe enough to consult Cam.

  “Can’t get anywhere from here. I’m by a tower that goes up…” Liv threw back her head to check. “Um, two more floors, I think, but there’s nothing to climb, just flat brick and windows.”

  “Go down,” Cam advised. “Find another way, and—damn!”

  “What?”

  “Car passed and cut in too close. Stupid asshole,” Cam growled.

  “Be careful,” Liv said.

  “You, too.”

  Liv found a copper downspout to take her back to ground level. Again, she mentally praised Jessica for her gear. The gloves and shoes gave her such good traction, all she had to do was hang onto the pipe and walk herself down the wall.

  This next part is going to be tricky. A metal-framed greenhouse stuck out from the first floor. Above the glass room was a deck, and another at a right angle one floor up. The second deck roofed the tower. She had to scale the garden room to reach the decks. Would the glass hold her weight?

  This was Boston. If the glass was tough enough for Boston winters, it could hold Liv Smallwood.

  But there was another problem: Climbing the garden room, she’d be visible to anyone on the first floor. Where were the people inside?

  The entire first and second floors were dark. A dim glow in the middle of the third floor might be hall lights. A fourth-floor window was lit, and the whole fifth floor looked bright, but the house was so tall no one up there could see the base of the wall without hanging out a window. Liv had to tuck in close and hurry, follow a path away from lit windows until she reached the roof. She’d find Ari, and they’d get away together, moving from rooftop to rooftop until they reached Chase’s house.

  She whispered her plan to Cam, who pleaded, “Please, Liv, give it up. Wait till I get there, or wait for the police.”

  “Do you know what kidnappers do to captives after they get ransom?”

  “Yeah,” Cam said grimly, “except maybe this guy wants the reward money and keeps them alive.”

  Liv hadn’t thought of that. “Can’t risk it,” she said after a pause. “I won’t talk for a while, but stay with me.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Metal struts framed panes of glass on the greenhouse room. If only the support bars were thicker! She had to balance on the edges of her shoes and use fingertips to climb. Nearly at the top, she grasped the first deck’s railing and made the two-foot vault to that level. She felt breathless but proud to get this far as she dashed to hide against the wall and decide what to do next.

  The deck had planters, three of them. Two flanked a big window to her left; one stood between narrower windows on the facing tower. The planter boxes held metal arches supporting leafless vines. Liv grinned. The arches were as good as ladders. She went for the one against the tower, and climbed to the third floor.

  On the higher deck, concrete benches stood on each side of French doors. The doors had a big, half-moon window over them, and there were smaller windows the same shape in the brick above each bench.

  Liv looked up: two more floors to go before the roof. Only there wasn’t any way to get there—no decks, ledges, downspouts. The next floor’s windows were out of reach.

  Dead end. She was stuck on the third floor with nowhere to go. Liv
slumped onto a bench and told Cam the bad news.

  “Go down and find another way.”

  “I would, but…” She let out a long breath, devastated to admit, “I’m running out of steam. You were right. I’m not strong enough. My shoulders and arms ache.”

  “Get out of there. Wait for me on the street behind the house. I’ll make Boston in forty minutes.”

  Liv leaned back, laying her head against brick, rolling her eyes as she judged herself. I am so weak and flabby and…

  The window above her head was open. It tilted out, so she hadn’t noticed the slight gap at the bottom until she was under it.

  Liv stood on the bench, wondering if she could sneak into the house through the window. Too crazy, like strolling into a bear’s den. If the window led to a hall or room, she’d have no cover. But maybe the little window let light into a back staircase like servants used in the old days, a staircase nobody needed now when there were elevators. A house this tall had to have an elevator.

  Standing on tiptoe, she could see through the gap, but it was too dark to make out any details until she slipped her arm inside and used the light from her phone. Eyes, dozens of them, stared from motionless heads—heads no larger than an infant’s.

  Liv jerked away, stepping so far back on the bench she lost her balance. Toppling to the deck floor, she came down hard on her right ankle, felt a jolt of pain and gasped.

  Deck lights snapped on, startling her. The French doors opened, and a policeman strode out. Gun pointed at Liv, he barked, “Don’t move. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Easy to say but hard to do while she was wobbling on her left leg, rubbing her sore right ankle with her fingers. “Don’t shoot!” she said. She winced when she set down her right foot, hopping a little after she put her weight on it.

  “Are you injured?” the officer asked, aiming his flashlight at her face. “Olivia Smallwood?”

  “Officer Vogel! How did you find me?”

  The policeman holstered his weapon. “The homeowner’s been watching you on her monitor for the last fifteen minutes. She enjoyed your efforts until you started to break into her home.”

  “I did not break in,” Liv said indignantly. “I…well, I just peeked in one window.” Horror washed over her. “There are things in there—gruesome, dead heads. Babies…” She shuddered, jabbing her finger toward the half-moon window.

  “Sure there are,” Vogel said in a bored, snarky way. “That’s a doll room. Lots of heads and bodies, all toys. You have quite an imagination.” He gripped a door handle, saying, “Step inside. Mrs. Tinsley wants to talk with you.”

  “Wait! I came here to rescue my friends—the kidnapped ones. They’re in this house.” Fear and shame evaporated as she remembered her purpose. “Go check the top floor, and you’ll find them. Then you can arrest me.”

  Officer Vogel lifted an eyebrow. “Inside,” he said, waving her through the doors.

  Liv hobbled into a hallway that smelled funny, like medicine and sweaty gym. Trying to breathe through her mouth, she passed an elevator, and heard voices. “There! Can you hear them? Someone’s talking, and I think it’s coming from…” Liv turned her head to locate the sounds. “Upstairs. I told you they’re here.”

  “I don’t hear voices,” Officer Vogel said. “Ever. Keep walking.”

  He ushered her into a bedroom with pink everywhere—pink fabric walls, pink drapes, pink swags and pleats behind a hospital bed. The bed held the fattest person Liv had ever seen. A brown-haired woman lay half-propped up, studying a computer screen on an overbed table. Her shoulders and arms were bare. The rest of her was covered by a pink satin sheet, her bulk filling the bed from side to side. The features of her face sank into folds of skin. Liv struggled not to let her jaw drop as she watched Mrs. Tinsley push the table away and eye her from head to toe.

  “So young,” the woman said sadly, “to be a thief.”

  “I’m not a thief.” Liv stood tall. “I’m on a mission, a rescue mission. Do you know you have kidnap victims in your house?”

  The woman pressed a remote and the top of the bed rose higher. Beneath the sheet, her body sloshed like water in a tipping bowl. It was eerie. Liv had to force her eyes away from the body to the face when the woman said, “Absurd. There’s no one here but me and my sons.”

  Sons? Were there two of them? No. At school, Miss Tinsley talked about a brother who died. “Didn’t one of your sons, um…didn’t he have an accident?”

  Mrs. Tinsley nodded. “An accident…yes. A long time ago, there was an accident, but he’s better now. My Brandon’s spirit is strong as ever, though he has to share a body with his brother. It’s a very convenient arrangement, really. Quite neat.”

  Liv’s jaw dropped.

  “Strange clothing…delusions. Is the girl—” The woman drew a circle in the air near her temple. “All there?”

  Officer Vogel shrugged. “I don’t know, ma’am. That’s for the professionals to decide, but with your permission, we’ll tour the upper floors of your home.” He looked at Liv. “To settle her mind before we go to the station.”

  “Good idea,” Mrs. Tinsley agreed. “And Dan, don’t be so formal. We’re almost family. It’s time you called me ‘Mother’.”

  “Mother?” Liv echoed.

  The huge woman beamed. “He’s marrying my daughter. Won’t be long now.”

  Liv turned to the cop. “You and Miss Tinsley?”

  Officer Vogel smiled.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Day 14—Friday night

  Holly felt scratchy wool against her cheek. The smell of dust filled her nose. She opened her eyes to Oriental rug, dark paneling and a metal scissor gate a few feet from her face.

  The impulse to sit up landed her back on her side. Her wrists were tied behind her, and her ankles were bound together. She struggled against the restraints.

  “Easy,” Mike’s voice whispered.

  Holly rose on an elbow, spotting his bent knees and then the rest of him propped up in the opposite corner. Mike’s torso and ankles was mummy-wrapped in flesh-colored tape. Holly pulled her legs forward to see tape wound around her own ankles. She bent her knees and rolled onto her shins, asking, “What’s going on? Where are we?”

  “Tinsley elevator. High up in the house, I think, because it’s stuffy. The gate locks between floors. We’re trapped.”

  “But why—” And then Holly remembered. “I saw the boy. I saw Kyle Blake!”

  “So did I. Stupid bastard wandered into the hall from the kitchen, eating ice cream out of a carton.” Mike made a face. “Piggish thing to do.”

  “Mike…” Holly warned, to keep him on track.

  “Yeah, well, I was handing the boxes to Brent when I saw Kyle Blake. Shock must have shown on my face. Brent hauled me inside by my broken arm and shoved me into the dining room. I swung at him, but he shot some weird weapon at me. I felt—”

  “Breathless, scared, stupid?” Holly interrupted. “Then you blacked out.”

  “Yes!” Mike looked astonished.

  “Same here. The garage was awful,” Holly told him, “but I found the bike.”

  “That’s something, at least.”

  “Before I could get out, Kyle opened the door. He wouldn’t set foot in the garage. Told me there was a sound generator—an inferred… infrared…?”

  Mike frowned. “Infrared is light. Was it infrasound?”

  “Yeah, could be.”

  “Ultra-low-pitched sound. Below human hearing. Whales use it to communicate and to attack prey.”

  “Great,” Holly said, not interested in a science lesson at the moment. “I’m going to slip my legs through the ring of my arms and get my hands in front of me. I’ll gnaw at the tape and pull it off. Good thing they didn’t gag us.”

  “No need. We could scream our heads off and only one bedridden woman would hear.”

  “There’s Kyle. He’s not tied up. Maybe he’ll help us.”

  Mike gaped at her. “Bo
y’s here by choice. When he saw me, he looked scared—of me, not Brent.”

  “Oh!” Holly huffed. “Rotten kid. We were all so worried about him. Dan suspected Kyle was a runaway—Dan! I called him. He’ll figure out where we are.”

  “Don’t hold your breath. Keep working yourself free,” Mike urged.

  Holly rocked side to side, moving her hands under her butt up to the back of her knees. There, she was stuck. She couldn’t bend far enough to pull both feet through her arms with her ankles bound together. “I have such damned long legs,” she moaned.

  “I noticed,” Mike said. “Portsmouth. Sunday morning. You, in your underwear.”

  Holly tried to muster a comeback until she remembered she’d checked him out, too. “Okay, so, uh, so…” she rambled, “how about you push against my feet with yours? Maybe we can force my legs through my arms if we work together.”

  Mike nodded and shifted position. Holly braced her back on the wall.

  Something bit her in the ass.

  She yelped and jerked forward to her knees, turning so Mike could see what it was, bound hands flailing to bat the thing away. “Get it off me! Get it off!”

  “Stop!” Mike spoke too loudly. He lowered his voice. “It’s not a bug; it’s a piece of glass. Used to be a mirror in here. You sat on an edge piece. Don’t knock it out. Hold still.”

  “But it hurts,” Holly wailed, instantly sorry to sound like a wimp.

  “I can use the glass to cut your hands free.”

  Still facing the wall, Holly pictured Mike in his Invisible Man wrappings. “How?”

  “With my teeth. This surgical tape isn’t too thick. Just don’t laugh, don’t talk, and for God’s sake, don’t jiggle.” Holly looked over her shoulder. “Hey, I’m human,” Mike admitted. “So just, uh, lean against the paneling and think of England.”

  Holly frowned. “Why England?”

  “That’s what they told Victorian brides on their wedding nights.”

  “Wonder what they told the grooms.”

  “Keep your pecker up,” Mike said.

  “Pretty crude.”

  “Pecker means chin in England.”