“There you go,” I say, shoving the pizza into Grant’s hands and the hat messily onto his head. He adjusts it and, with a final nod at me, stands to walk toward the house. Before he reaches the road, though, something possesses me to call his name. He turns around. My mouth feels dry.
“See you soon,” I say stupidly.
He gives me a tight-lipped not-quite-smile and a thumbs-up, then crosses the street.
• • •
WE AGREED ONfive minutes before I go in, and I do my best not to spend that time mentally cataloging every self-defense move I forgot to teach Grant. I’m just sitting and waiting in the bushes. Waiting and sitting. No big deal. It’s fine.
Five minutes isn’t so long. There are songs longer than fiveminutes. I’ve gotten voicemails from my mom longer than five minutes. I could probably hold my breath for five minutes. I consider trying, as a distraction, then realize I’m already not breathing and getting dizzy. I gasp for air and check my phone.
A minute and a half.That’s how much time has passed since Grant knocked on the door, and a hunched old man with a walker and an oxygen cannula answered and beckoned him inside.
I wanted to believe we were wrong about all this. Maybe he was just a harmless octogenarian, too frail to carry the pizza himself. Maybe it wasn’t a cover to lure people inside.
My gut said otherwise.
I can only take a sliver of solace in the fact that, faking the feebleness or not, the man was old and thin. Grant could take him. Of course he could. Or at least fend him off for five minutes.
Unless the man shoots him point-blank.
Or sics a ravenous python on him.
Or takes a match to his oxygen tank and blows the whole place up.
I stare at the closed door. Why did we settle on five minutes, anyway? It’s a stupid, arbitrary number. I hereby abridge it to two. I pick up my phone and watch the little red second line wind torturously around the clock icon, until a thud from across the street startles me.
My head snaps up to where the old man is now locking the door from the outside. Or should I say theformerlyold man. Though he’s got worry lines to rival Grant’s, he looks decades younger than he did moments ago. After giving himself a second to slump backward against the door, muttering and rubbing his temples, he stands straight and walks swiftly away with no oxygen in sight.
My stomach is in my throat. Is Grant hurt in that house right now, or dead? Did I vastly overestimate his ability to defend himself?
As the man approaches the street corner, it hits me that awindow of opportunity is about to slam shut. I can’t just let him get away.
I also can’t leave Grant behind. I feel like the rope in a game of tug-of-war, and wish I could split in two.
Drawing in a sharp breath, I make up my mind and wait until the man disappears around the corner, then bolt toward the house.
The front door and windows are barred, but there’s a tall gate blocking a walkway toward the back of the house. I drag a recycling bin up to it, hop up, and jump over. My heart threatens to break my ribs as I follow the path to an unkempt back garden, all dry weeds and abandoned flower beds. I pick up a forgotten stone garden gnome and heave him through the back window, climbing through so hastily that I scrape my temple on the broken glass.
It takes a second for my eyes to adjust beyond the dust motes swirling where the light breaks in. The house is fairly ordinary—run-down but tidy in a spartan sort of way. There isn’t much in the back hallway, just yellowing curtains over the windows and lidded trash cans in the corner. I peer inside one. It’s filled with dozens of discarded takeout containers—plastic tubs, Chinese food cartons, broken-down pizza boxes. I feel sick.
I wind carefully through the hall, stepping lightly, but the place seems empty.
“Grant?” I whisper, and get no reply. I have to clamp my lips between my teeth in an attempt to breathe quietly through my nose.
I pass shabby, sparse rooms and scan them for any presence—a bare-bones kitchen, a living room with a moth-eaten striped couch and a boxy little TV, a bathroom lit by a flickering bulb. And a dismal home office housing a giant computer monitor, filled with unintelligible code that throws green light around the room. A classic hacker’s den if ever I’ve seen one. I haven’t, but still.
“Damn you, Hoffman,” I say under my breath, hoping there’s still a Hoffman to damn.
There’s a carpeted staircase leading to a second floor, but that doesn’t seem right. Who hides their victims upstairs?
I double back, growing more panicked with every fruitless sweep of the space.
I almost miss it in my haste. It’s just a painting, a small framed image of flowers on the wall right beside a bookshelf crammed with business and productivity books. But it stands out amid the no-frills austerity of the rest of the house. And it’s crooked.
I nudge the frame aside, and there it is: a glowing keypad.
I search in a frenzy, skimming my fingers over the chipped paint until they finally land on a seam in the wall, running along the edges of the bookshelf. A hidden door.
