Although they could have picked up on the police presence without actually recognizing Mendoza.And I didn’t have to have seen them for them to have seen me.There’d been so many people there that someone I knew could have passed within a few feet of me and I might not have noticed.
“We should go take a look,” Rachel said, with a glance at the house in the rearview mirror.
I didn’t really want to take a look, but she was right: we probably should.They might have Steven tied to a chair in the basement, and if they did, we owed it to him to find him as soon as possible.
“Fine.But I’m leaving Edwina in the car.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that we bring her,” Rachel said and opened her door.“Come on.”
I put Edwina back in the passenger seat and told her to be a good girl.“I’ll be right back.Ten minutes, tops.Much better than last time.”
She sighed, but made a circle on the seat and settled into a curve with her nose on her back legs.I closed the door softly and followed Rachel down the driveway and across the street.
We approached the split level through the yard next door.Less chance we’d be seen that way, if we skulked along the shrubbery.There was the risk that the neighbors might notice us, or that they had an alarm system with flood lights that would come on if someone tried to sneak across their property.Hillwood, where I’d lived with David, was full of such things.
Not here.This was more of a working class neighborhood.The houses were closer together and people weren’t worried about intruders.We made it across the neighboring property without attracting the attention of people or guard dogs, and without setting off alarms or flashing lights.
The split level was dark and silent.We approached from the side opposite the garage, so the first thing we got to was the double-wide, half-height window on the lower level, just above the ground.
I signaled Rachel to stop while I squatted for a closer look.
There was nothing to see.The window was covered by blinds, shut in such a way that it was impossible to see between the slats, and there might even have been curtains or something else on the inside of the window, since not even a sliver of light peeked through.
Then again, at past two in the morning, there were probably no lights on, so maybe it wasn’t so surprising.
We moved on, around the back of the house.
There was less to see there.No windows on the lower level, which was built into the bank in the rear.The ground sloped up, so once we reached the back of the house, we were standing just below the top level windows.
They were dark, too.Again, not surprising, since it was the middle of the night.
I saw a crack in the curtains, and went up on tippy-toes to press my nose to the glass.A forest of dark shapes met me.It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust enough that I could make out a dining room table and chairs, with a living room beyond.And a kitchen off to the left.I could see the glow of the digital clock on either the stove or microwave.Or perhaps it was the ice dispenser on the fridge.We humans have a lot of small lights in the kitchen.
There was a tall window, likely a bathroom, beyond the kitchen, too high up the wall for me to see through.
“You can stand on my shoulders,” Rachel offered, her voice soft.
It was tempting, but— “I don’t really think there’s going to be anything interesting in the bathroom.Do you?If they have Steven at all, they wouldn’t lock him in there.They’d have to move him every time someone needed to use the bathroom.”
“Unless there are two,” Rachel said.
I supposed there could be two.A lot of these older homes—and this one was from the early nineteen-sixties—only have one bathroom to share.But there might be a second bath downstairs.Or maybe one of the bedrooms was a master, with an attached bath of its own.
I was still contemplating the bathroom situation when hell broke lose.Two dark shapes hurtled toward us, one from each end of the house.I had enough time to squeal, but not enough to run, before they were on us.A fist connected with the side of my head, and that was all she wrote.
I wasn’t knocked out.I was pretty woozy for the next few minutes, though.Woozy enough that there was nothing I could do to avoid what happened.
The shorter Russian—the one who had sat inside the car earlier today—hauled me up over his shoulder.It was uncomfortable to hang like that, with my head and arms dangling and his hand in the vicinity of my butt, keeping me in place, but it wasn’t as uncomfortable as the pain radiating from my head.
Behind us, the second guy, the one who’d been driving the car, the one I’d been talking to, grabbed Rachel under the arms and began dragging her around the house.
They took us up to the top floor and into the living room, where they pretty much dropped us onto the sofa.And sat there, with guns in their laps, while they waited for us to wake up.
Or I should say that they waited for Rachel to wake up.The second guy must have hit her harder than the first guy had hit me.I was conscious, and pretty much alert.Rachel was out cold.
“That wasn’t necessary,” I told them, as I looked around surreptitiously.
The living room was furnished in late twentieth century castoff: a fairly ugly sofa they might have picked up second hand at a thrift store, with two mismatched chairs opposite and a chipped coffee table in the middle.No pictures on the wall, or other decorations to speak of.A big screen TV opposite the sofa.An ash tray on the table, filled to overflowing with ashes and cigarette butts.An open pack of Marlboro’s and a lighter next to it.
