I started shivering.
He beeped off his phone and ordered, “Keep down, baby, and follow me.”
He walked in a crouch to a dormer window.
When he stopped, he offered me what was around his neck.
I passed off the magazine and took the…whatever they were.
“Night vision,” he explained.“Strap them on, get low, on your belly.Stay low, angled away from the window, but get in a position you can see out,” he said.
I nodded, fumbling with the night vision goggles.
I mean…
Night vision goggles!
“Get a look outside,” he instructed as I kept fumbling.“Lock on one of them.When you do, tell me.Aim the laser pointer at him but don’t turn it on.Only do that when I say go.With me?”
I nodded.
“Words,” he grunted.
“Lock on.Aim pointer.Tell you.Turn on at go.With you.”
He took the goggles from me (I was hopeless), put them on me and said, “It’s gonna be weird.You’ll get used to it.”
Then he clicked them on.
He was right.
It was weird.
But I was too freaked to give a shit at that juncture.
“Belly.Position,” he whispered.
I got down to my belly on the dusty attic floor (Hutch had so little stuff, he didn’t have even that first box up here), angled to the side so I could see out.
Oh God.
Shit.
Shit.
There were five men creeping up to the house, and they were close.
They also had guns.I couldn’t tell if they were rifles or shotguns.
But they were guns.
Big ones.
“Hutch—” his name was shaky.
I looked to him, and he was like me, on his belly angled away from the window on the north side of the house (whereas mine was on the east).
But he had the butt of his rifle to his shoulder aimed out, and his eye was squinted to the sight.
