They landed in a significantly less pristine straggle of brush and weeds at about the same time—Jules maybe a half a heartbeat ahead—and quickly surveilled this new yard. Another full fence—not quite as high. A tree with a worn spot and a heavy chain, but no snarling watch dog, thank you, smiling Buddha, for small favors.
“Gate on the left, just beyond the garage,” Jules told Sam unnecessarily, because they were both already running toward it.
But—“Wait!”—Sam ordered before Jules could throw the gate open to allow them to exit. He crouched down, finding a crack in the wood to look through. “Fuck!”
“Black SUV?” Jules asked even though he knew that was exactly what Sam was looking at, out there on the street. The SUV’s driver had anticipated their escape route—no doubt hoping to intercept them before fleeing the scene. “Lemme see.” He commandeered the crack in the wood and peeked out and... Ford Expedition. Black. Tinted windows. Coincidence? Maybe. And yet...
Jules had his phone out again now because...
“Now is not the time to call your mother, Squidward,” Sam said, pulling Jules with him back around this decidedly ramshackle mirror version of Emily Johnson’s house, heading to the far side of the tiny backyard, away from the gate.
“I’m texting Robin the lockdown code!” Jules hit send to his 9-1-1 message and jammed his phone back in his pocket.
“Good idea,” Sam grunted as he again manhandled Jules easily up to the fence top with one hand under his arm, the other beneath his butt. “He still home?”
“Studio!” Robin was working again today, and he was safe as long as he stayed in the TV production lot, thank God for small favors.
This fence was older and, “Splinters!” Jules sang out but Sam ignored them just as he’d done with the thorns, and they both landed in yet another neighbor’s yard.
Where a woman—white, fifties, sunglasses, big hat, earpods—was sitting by her pool in the sun. She sat up, eyes wide, alarmed.
“Don’t scream, please don’t scream,” Jules said.
She screamed.
“Go inside and lock your door!” Jules shouted at her as he and Sam raced across her yard, once again doing their fence-climbing circus act. They landed, hard, in the next neighbor’s yard. It was also fully fenced, which was apparently just the way this entire SoCal neighborhood rolled.
“Dogs!” Jules warned, but thankfully they were little ones. They ran yapping happily at their feet as this time Sam pulled him toward the back fence-line—which was exactly what Jules had been thinking, too.
Time to head back toward Columbus Avenue, where their car was parked across the street and a few houses down from Emily Johnson’s, because while getting all these extra stepsin today was certainly healthy, a set of wheels right about now would be nice.
Alley-oop!
Sam again threw Jules at this fence which was stone and even higher than the others. High enough so that Jules had to flail and scramble a bit to get up there. He used his legs to latch on and anchor himself at the top so he could reach down to intercept Sam’s leap and help pull the bigger man up.
“Watch your landing,” Sam ordered as yeah, the drop to the ground was even farther than the others had been. The dead last thing they needed right now was a twisted ankle. But they both would’ve gotten a ten from the judges for their injury-free dismounts (okay, an eight-point-five from the Russian) and Jules quickly followed Sam to this house’s driveway gate.
Where through another less-comfortably placed crack in the wood, Jules could see that his car—the new rental they’d been using to make today’s various and supposed-to-be humdrum, bullet-free Emily-Johnson visits—was right there, across the street, at the curb.
It was likely that someone had been left behind by the door-kickers to watch the house, and had seen them park before going inside.
If so, were they now still watching Jules’s car, waiting for them to emerge? Or had they bolted assuming the racket of all those shots fired had made somebody in the neighborhood call 9-1-1?
Screaming white lady, perhaps?
No, not perhaps. Definitely.
But so far, there were no sirens announcing police vehicles approaching, not even in the distance.
Sam was obviously thinking the same thing. He looked up at the side of the stucco wall of the house they were nowcrouched beside, leaning back a bit to see it better. Jules followed his gaze and realized the former SEAL was identifying and mentally marking hand and footholds so he could...
“Sneak and peek,” Sam confirmed quietly as he handed Jules his sidearm. “B-R-B.”
In a flash, he damn near walked up the side of the house and onto the shingles—making it look easy. Up there, he stayed low, careful to keep to the backyard side of the roof’s ridge, so as not to be seen from the street.
As he waited, Jules made sure that Sam’s handgun was secure, safety on, before he quickly checked his phone. Robin had tapped back both a thumbs up and alarmed exclamation points to Jules’s 9-1-1 message, and Jules relaxed a tiny bit. Even though there were a multitude of black SUVs in the greater Los Angeles area, he didn’t fool around when it came to his husband’s safety.
Although the fact that today’s fuckery-delivery-device was a black Ford Expedition with heavily tinted windows—exactly the same make and model of vehicle Jules had seen yesterday—was one hell of a coincidence.
