“Yes,” Nicola says.
“Yep,” Paige agrees. “So where is your sketch, then?” she asks, and Nicola goes to the piece of printer paper on the small table. They all sit down, and Nicola shows Paige the rough drawing she’s made that shows the layout of the house.
“So remember, I have a camera on the front of the house,” Cora says before they dive in. Paige furrows her brow and looks to Cora in confusion.
“You what?”
“What?” Cora asks.
“Nothing,” Paige says.
“Yeah, so when I drove in a few hours ago, the front curtains were open. Let’s see,” Cora says, opening an app on her tablet and propping it against a glass on the table so everyone can see. It’s a live-stream video of the front of Lucas’s house.
“It’s after ten, so if that’s when he usually goes to bed, hopefully we get lucky and they stay open so we can at least get eyes on you when you’re on the main floor.”
“Look at you, MacGyver,” Paige says, laughing.
“Who?” Nicola asks.
“She’s young,” Paige says to Cora, trying to share a conspiratorial look, but Cora is too focused and on edge.
“But if his wife is missing, he’s not gonna just keep a regular schedule, is he? What if he’s up all night working on finding her?” Cora asks.
“I doubt it,” Nicola says. “He doesn’t actually care like a normal person in that situation. He’s pissed, not distraught. If he thinks the police are on it, I think he’ll get his beauty sleep.” Cora puts her hand on Nicola’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze, a quiet apology for all she’s been through.
“Anyway, we’ll be on FaceTime. We have a plan. You can see behind me, I can tuck my phone around corners. I’ll have earbuds in so you can talk to me. It’ll be a piece of cake,” Paige says, then turns her attention to the sketch.
“So the alarm pad is next to the door to the left?” she confirms.
“Yeah,” Nicola says, pointing at the paper and tracing the path Paige should take with her finger. “Once you open the door you have thirty seconds to put in the code. Which is?”
“Eight-nine-eight-three-two-five,” Paige says.
“Eight-nine-eight-five-two-three,” Nicola corrects.
“Oh, my God. We’re screwed before we even get inside!” Cora says, getting obviously more anxious the closer they get to doing this. She grabs a pen and then grabs Paige’s hand. “Say it again, please?”
“Eight-nine-eight-five-two-three,” Nicola repeats, and Cora writes it across Paige’s palm. Paige lets her because she has a point.
“So,” Nicola continues, “if the bag is anywhere but his office, it will be right there on the table by the front door. Otherwise, there are two staircases. Maybe go up the front so we can see you on the camera.”
“Yes,” Cora adds.
“And then, take a right at the top of the stairs. His office is the second door on the left. It’s usually on the floor next to his desk or hanging on the doorknob,” she says.
“Okay,” Paige says.
“Are you sure you wanna do this?” Nicola asks, pain in her voice. “I’m so sorry. I just—I can’t believe you guys are helping me like this.”
“I’m sure,” Paige says. For the next hour and a half, they sit quietly together. Avery has been sleeping since eight, Finn is watching a game in the media-room inside, and Mia is doing homework. They’ve kept the lights off since dusk so no attention is drawn to them, and all they can do is wait, alone together, in the tense, airless room they’ve created with their collective anxiety.
Just before midnight, they swing into action. Cora’s camera caught Lucas walking up the stairs at 10:14, and he hasn’t come back down, so he likely went to bed. They’ve given it a lot of cushion time before making their move. Paige has her phone in one hand and her ski mask tucked into the waist of her pants just in case she’s spotted before she makes it across the street. She won’t put it on yet.
Cora tries to hug Paige at the door as she exits, but Paige brushes her off and tells her not to jinx it, and then she’s off. Nicola and Cora sit looking at the camera feed on her tablet and are also connected to Paige via FaceTime. Paige unzips her hoodie a bit to prop her phone inside her sports bra, so the camera can stay on and show Cora and Nicola her path as she walks through the house. She’s more anxious than she thought she’d be when she arrives at Lucas’s front door. Yes, she’s done things like this, but to folks like Steve Wilkers with the spare tire around his middle who couldn’t be bothered to get off the couch if the house were on fire, not to a known psychopath who just might kill her for sport. It’s all hitting her as she uses Nicola’s key and, as quietly and slowly as she can, turns the lock and opens the door.
“Eight-nine-eight-five-two-three, eight-nine-eight-five-two-three, eight-nine-eight-five-two-three,” she repeats, mouthing the numbers silently as she punches them into the keypad. Then she ducks. As she crouches down on the floor in front of the closed front door, she pulls on her black ski mask she found in the tub of winter clothes when she was looking for Grant’s Isotoners. Her mind drifts to Grant for a brief moment, in the kitchen in that ugly brown hat she pulled out. Then she quickly dismisses the memory that has no business showing up right now and refocuses.
She couldn’t risk putting the mask on outside in case anyone happened to glance out their window, and she knows from Nicola that the porch camera only faces in to keep tabs on her, not the neighbors, so now, ducked down inside this house, pulling on a ski mask of all things suddenly strikes Paige as being deranged. But she’s in now. No time for doubts.
