On the Run

by Charlotte Greene

  “Really?” Annie asked. “What if they didn’t come outside?”

  Tex shook his head. “No. I would have heard them or seen a light on, something. No one is in that house, I promise. I even rang the bell this morning, but no joy. There ain’t nowhere to hide up there. You’ll see if you go there yourself—it’s the only house on that stretch, and you can see inside with all them windows. I had to park behind some bushes on the other side of the road to stay hidden.”

  Annie seemed disappointed, but Gwen wasn’t surprised. “What did I tell you?”

  Annie lifted a shoulder. “I guess you were right. Bill must have been in El Paso. That proves it all, I guess. I was kind of hoping I was wrong.”

  “You weren’t. They betrayed you.”

  Tex looked confused, and Gwen waved a hand dismissively. He didn’t need to know the details. “Anyway, Tex, I don’t know how to thank you. Can I pay you anything?”

  He sneered. “Who do you think I am? I don’t charge my friends.”

  “But you went through an awful lot of bother for us,” Annie said. “Sitting there, watching that house, bored out of your mind.”

  Tex grinned and squeezed her hand. “It weren’t too bad—I had a good book. And I’d do it again, just for you. You’re as sweet as pie.”

  Gwen sighed and rolled her eyes. “At least let us pay for lunch.”

  “And take away my privilege as a gentleman? Not on your life.”

  Annie leaned across the table and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re amazing. Thank you so much for helping us.”

  “Are you heading over there now?” he asked. “If you want, I can take the two of you, show you my spot.”

  Gwen and Annie shared a quick glance. “No, Tex. That won’t be necessary.”

  He seemed a little hurt but nodded. “Okay. I get it. I guess this has something to do with what I read about you two in the newspaper.”

  “We were in the paper? The local paper?”

  “It was a small spot in the national news, but I’d seen it on the TV before that.” He frowned. “They were saying all sorts of stuff about the two of you, and I don’t know what, if anything, is true.”

  Gwen squeezed the top of his hand. “And you don’t need to, Tex. In fact, the less you know, the better.”

  He stared at her evenly before nodding. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  “You don’t want to get mixed up in this,” Annie added.

  He reached across the table and took her hand in both of his. “Having met you, Annie, I don’t believe a word of it. And even if some of it is true, I imagine you had good reason to do what you did.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes and she nodded. “I did.”

  He patted her hand again before letting go. “Anyway, you both seem eager to get going.” He paused. “I wish you both luck. You stay in touch with me, ladies. I’m willing to help more if you need it.”

  The three got up to say good-bye, and Gwen’s eyes prickled with tears as she, and then Annie, embraced him. He hadn’t needed to do a thing for them, but he’d gone out of his way to help. Maybe he was a close friend, after all. She felt momentarily guilty, like she’d let him down, somehow. Maybe all this running around over the last twelve years wasn’t the best way to live. She’d kept people at a distance, people like Tex, who might have meant more to her if she’d bothered to try. Staying in one place might mean she could try, if she could keep Annie in her life.

  She and Annie walked back to the car in relative silence. The heat had a lot to do with this—it was hard to think when it was this hot—but Gwen suspected Annie was pondering some of the same things she was, and had been since they left Denver. What, if anything, were they hoping to get out of this? At best, they’d have the money, but then what? Annie’s fantasy, where she rescued her sister, was a little far-fetched, but maybe it was possible with that kind of cash. But would Annie want her to come, too?

  The car, when they reached it, was like an oven. Gwen had stolen a new one in Denver, from a downtown, long-term lot she’d hit once before. Most of the littler lots didn’t bother with cameras and didn’t staff at night, so it was only a matter of getting an older car she could open and jump. This car was solid black, inside and out, quite possibly the worst to have in weather like this.

  Using the map they’d picked up, Annie directed her out of the older part of town and back to the interstate. A couple of miles down, they took an exit and started heading up into the mountains and single-lane highway that climbed and wound steeply upward. Bill and Susan had some kind of house up here, and, surprisingly, it had been listed under their names in the phonebook. Tex hadn’t even had to track it down.

  Five minutes later, they hadn’t passed a single car on this road, and the tension gradually ratcheted up as they drove. If, by chance, Bill or Susan or both had come back this way since Tex checked this morning, they wouldn’t know ahead of time. Tex had suggested they wouldn’t find an easy place to hide, and now that she was on this road, she could understand why. On the left-hand side, the mountain rose up and up, with an occasional driveway that disappeared before she could even see the house it led to. On the right was nothing but a long drop-off into the valley below, often with no guardrail.

  “Jesus,” Annie said, staring out her side window. “That’s a long way down.”

  “I think we’re almost there. I saw some numbers on that last mailbox.”

  “So what’s the plan? Are we gonna drive right up to the house?”

  Gwen glanced at her and shrugged. “What do you think? Should we risk it?”

  Annie shook her head. “No way. Let’s watch, if we can, at least for a little while, just to be safe.”

  After the next hairpin curve, Gwen spotted a clump of bushes on the right, directly across the road from a mailbox. She slowed and drove behind them, guessing that Tex had hidden his car here over the weekend. She could see recent tire tracks on the dry, dusty ground, the mountain just wide enough here for some trees and bushes before it dropped off again about twenty feet away. They wouldn’t be entirely hidden—the foliage was thin—but casual drivers on the road wouldn’t likely see them unless they were looking their way. They rolled down their windows, letting in the dusty daytime air and the smell of sagebrush and pine.

  Some branches were in her way, but Gwen could see the entire front of the house easily from this position, in part because it was up the hill on the other side of the road, about a hundred yards away. That’s why Tex had been so certain no one was around. The front was almost entirely glass, with floor-to-ceiling windows on both stories. It was shaped a little like a point at the peak, resembling a large yacht or ship. The view up there obviously gave a complete panorama of the valley and the city below.

  Gwen whistled. “Damn. That’s a hell of a house.”

  Annie nodded. “I knew it must be big. I’ve seen their other place in Dallas.”

  “What do they do?”

  Annie shook her head. “Nothing. It’s family money—hers—as far as I know.”

  Gwen raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment, and they turned to watch the house. No cars passed, and the only sound came from an occasional bird or a gust of hot wind. Nothing moved except the branches and bushes. They might have been the last people on earth.

  Gwen let half an hour pass before turning to Annie. “What do you say? I think Tex was right—no one’s home. Should we go check it out?”

  Annie frowned slightly. “I don’t know. It seems really risky. I’m sure they have a security system. We might be spotted on cameras or something.”

  Gwen nodded. “Yeah, we might, but as long as we don’t trigger the alarm, we should be okay for a while. They might know we were here, but not right away. And who knows how often they check the tape?”

  “I guess.”

  Gwen decided to force the issue. She reached into the backseat, grabbed her tool bag, and got out the car. They hadn’t come all this way only to leave, but driving up to the house seemed
more than foolhardy. If anyone showed up, they might have a chance to sneak out on foot before they were spotted. A car would be too obvious.

  Annie was slow to follow, sitting in the car long after Gwen had gotten out. Finally, she opened her door and looked at Gwen over the car roof.

  “Are we going to leave the windows open?”

  Gwen gestured around them. “I don’t think anyone will steal it. And it sure as shit isn’t going to rain.”

  Annie slammed her door and came around the front. “What about animals?”

  “Don’t worry about them.” She held out her hand. “You ready?”

  Annie hesitated before taking it, finally smiling a little. “Yeah. I guess.”

  Gwen squeezed her fingers. “If it’s too risky, we’ll leave. If not, this might be a really good opportunity to get some information. That’s what we’re here for, right?”

  “Right.”

  She obviously wasn’t thrilled, and Gwen had to remind herself that Annie wasn’t used to this kind of thing. Even her crime—bank fraud—had been a kind of reserved, almost behind-the-scenes affair. Gwen wasn’t a master criminal, by any means, but she had been in circumstances almost exactly like this before. Breaking and entering, like borrowing cars, was a pretty normal Monday for her.

  The driveway was tremendously steep and, to Gwen, the riskiest part of the whole plan, as they were completely exposed the entire length of it. Had someone driven up, they would have been spotted at once. She was relieved when they reached the top, both of them winded by the climb and altitude. She led Annie behind a tree to rest and leaned against it, eyes closed, breathing deeply.

  As Annie caught her breath, Gwen peeked around the tree, spotting three cameras immediately. One was pointed directly at the driveway, the other at the front door, and the other on the garage. There were likely more that she couldn’t see from here. These people might have twenty-four-hour observation security on the house, and guards or police might already be headed their way, but Gwen doubted it. More likely, the cameras fed into a taping system that overwrote itself every few days. The house, however, would definitely be wired into some kind of alarm system, which meant that if they did set it off, the police would come, and they’d be seen on the tapes, if not caught outright. Still, it was unusual to wire every single window on a house, especially on the second floor. Gwen was pretty sure that if they could get in up there, they’d be okay. The trick would be figuring out how to do that.

  “I should have brought a ladder,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing—thinking out loud.”

  “Maybe there’s a tool shed,” Annie suggested. “I mean, if you think a ladder would actually help.”

  Gwen laughed. “You’re a genius.”

  The two of them walked around the side of the house to the gated backyard. Not knowing if the fence was wired, they had to climb over it, but they did it easily by helping each other. The yard was oversized, like the house, with brown, dried grass and a few pine trees and cottonwoods. A pool dominated the center of the yard, strangely uncovered, and Gwen spotted a large utility shed in the corner, in addition to several more cameras pointed at various doors and windows. The shed’s lock was a simple hinged one, which Gwen opened easily with one of her tools. The shed held various lawn-maintenance equipment and pool chemicals, and, hanging length-wise along one wall, a tall, expandable ladder.

  “Bingo,” Gwen said, and Annie helped her pull it down. It took both of them to carry the long, heavy thing comfortably.

  “Which window should we go in?” Annie asked as they approached the house.

  Gwen pointed at one on the second floor. A little balcony with a door was there, and a camera pointed directly down on it from an adjacent upper cornice.

  Annie looked surprised. “Really? Isn’t that one a little obvious? It’s sure to be rigged to the alarm.”

  Gwen shook her head. “No—I don’t think so. Not with that camera there. All these doors down here, for sure, but not that one. It’s too obvious, if you know what I mean.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “We should know pretty soon, one way or the other.”

  “You mean, like an alarm will go off?”

  “Probably not—they’re not usually so obvious. Most of them are silent, now. They don’t want to scare away a burglar, after all. They want to catch him.”

  “So how will we know if we trigger the alarm?”

  “The police will show up.”

  Annie’s eyebrows shot up, and Gwen laughed, motioning for them to set down the heavy ladder. “Annie, we can’t know either way. The days of visible alarm wires and blaring sirens are mostly over. We either luck out, or we don’t—that’s basically the gist. If we can find the alarm keypad fast enough, we might be able to tell that way, too, since it’ll probably start flashing or something if it’s alerted the police.”

  Annie stared up at the balcony for a while and finally nodded. “Okay, Gwen. I’ll do whatever you think’s right. You’re the expert.”

  It took them a moment to figure out how to extend and lock the ladder, and even then, it barely reached the balcony upstairs. Gwen pushed on the ladder a few times to test the give, and it seemed solid enough. Still, she wasn’t thrilled to climb all the way up there like this, but Annie looked scared, so she needed to bluff.

  “Safe as houses. You want me to go first?”

  Annie shook her head. “No way. I will go first, or I’ll chicken out. That way, you can catch me if I fall.”

  Gwen pulled her into an embrace and kissed her deeply. She drew back, still holding her, and met her eyes. “You’ll be fine. And I will catch you if you fall. I promise.”

  They heard the gate opening at the same time. Both let go of each other at once, whirling in that direction. Gwen instinctively dropped down, reaching wildly for her gun. But she wasn’t wearing it—she’d left it in the car. Annie froze in place as a girl walked around the side of the house and stopped when she spotted them.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The girl was perhaps nine or ten years old, with long, curly red hair loosely gathered into two side ponytails, and a splash of dark freckles on her fair skin. She was wearing flip-flops and shorts over a swimsuit, carrying a plastic grocery sack that revealed the corner of a towel.

  Gwen stood up from her crouch and threw Annie a quick warning glance. “Well, hello, there.”

  The girl frowned. “What’s the ladder for?”

  “That’s a funny story,” Gwen said, trying to look friendly. “We forgot our key.”

  The girl’s face creased in a deep frown. “You don’t live here.”

  “Neither do you.”

  The girl rolled her eyes. “No kidding. But I have permission to be here.”

  “So do we!” Gwen said.

  The girl frowned again, eyebrows furled. “Yeah? Who says?”

  “Bill and Susan. They asked us to come over while they were out. We had a key, but we forgot to bring it.”

  The girl stared at them for a long time. “Why should I believe you?”

  Gwen and Annie shared another glance, and Gwen put her hands up. “I don’t know. But we could call them—they’d tell you.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Annie tense, but she didn’t react, still smiling slightly at the girl, doing her best to appear non-threatening. The girl’s eyes went back and forth between the two of them.

  Finally, she shrugged. “Okay. If you call, and they say it’s okay, I’ll believe you.”

  “Can you get inside?” Gwen asked.

  The girl nodded, setting down her plastic bag. She dug around inside and came out with a key. Regarding them warily, she walked to the back door before unlocking it. Annie and Gwen followed her in and watched as she typed in the code to disable the alarm. The girl pointed at the phone.

  “There it is.”

  Annie went toward it, but the girl held up her hand.
“Wait. Tell me what the number is.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me the number so I know you’re calling the right one.”

  Annie thought for a few seconds before responding. “214-555-6586.”

  Some of the girl’s tension seemed to ease, and she nodded. “That’s right. Susan made me memorize it in case something happened.”

  “Are you watching the house?” Gwen asked, surprised.

  The girl lifted a shoulder. “Sort of. They let me use the pool if I water the plants inside. They have a guy that does the outside stuff, but I guess they didn’t want him poking around in here. I’m also supposed to call if I see a broken window or something.”

  “Seems like a pretty good deal,” Gwen said, glancing at Annie. She was delaying the phone call as much as she could, but Annie was clearly nervous.

  The girl smiled for the first time. “It is. I love their pool. Normally they’d have it covered while they were gone, but I did such a good job with the plants last time, they said I could use it. I’m a good swimmer, so they don’t have to worry about me drowning or anything. I get to use the pool, and I get five dollars a week for taking care of the plants.”

  “Wow,” Gwen said, sounding impressed. “That’s a lot of moola.”

  The girl giggled at the word, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “So my name is Gwen, and this is Annie. What’s your name?”

  “Jennifer. But I like Jen better.”

  “Okay, Jen. Nice to meet you. I think maybe you can help us.”

  “Oh? How?”

  Gwen waited for a second, wondering if she was pushing this too far. This was a smart little girl, and she seemed to have a pretty good bullshit meter. Despite the relative trust they’d developed, Jen was still standing as far away as possible. Gwen knew she had to get the girl to forget, momentarily at least, about the phone call. She decided to risk it.

  “The thing is, Susan asked us to come over here and get something for her. It’s super important, or we wouldn’t have tried to get in on our own without a key.”