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I couldn’t make out the paths he was talking about. After a few years of wandering around in the woods, I had a strangely acute sense of direction. I checked with my instincts and pointed with my hand. “That’s south.”
“How do you know? It’s dark.”
“I just ... I know.” I said. And I did. I had a crazy knack of always being able to feel directions. Right now, part of it was the moon, but the moon shifts slightly depending on the season, so using it like using the sun to determine direction wasn’t going to work. Still, I was pretty sure where south was. “That’s east. If the house we were at was west, it’s back that way.”
His hands tightened at my thighs. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I pointed again. “So that’s south.”
Luke turned left and right again, unsure. He leaned south and started ambling down the path I couldn’t see.
A few minutes later, the path opened up and we were at the base of a large oak tree, while in front of us was the rear of a large house, not quite as big as Victor’s, but to me, it was huge. The lights were off, except for one on the second floor to the left. The backyard had a low stone wall that went up to Luke’s thighs. He stopped short of the wall.
“From this point on, we both have to be quiet,” he said. He let go of my legs so I could slide down him onto the grass. He turned around. “If you need to say something, sign it to me.” He reached into his front pocket and held out a black object. “Take this.”
I felt in his hand and found a flip cell phone. “I thought we weren’t allowed?”
“It isn’t on and I’ve never used it. It’s for emergencies only. If something happens to me, I want you to run for the woods and call Mr. Blackbourne. His is the only number in there and it’s his emergency line. Try to make it back to the house if you can.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“Sang.” His palms found my cheeks again and he drew close enough that his breath fell on my face. “We’ll be fine. This is just an extra precaution. I need you here with me. Can you do this?”
I wasn’t sure, but if I started asking too many questions now, I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. Analyzing, for me, led to second-guessing. I was better just diving in headfirst. Worry about it later. I nodded. “I can go.”
His lips turned up. He slid his fingers over until he covered my mouth and kissed the back of his fingers like he was kissing me. He let go of my cheek, drew my hand up and kissed the palm. “I want you to stay behind me, okay? Be my little shadow.”
“Okay,” I whispered. I tucked the phone into the cup of my cami top.
Luke hovered a finger over his lips once, reminding me to be quiet. He crept down against the low garden wall and started skulking toward the house. I sucked in some courage and followed.
The yard was big, but mostly empty. There was a pool, but Luke made a wide space around it and instead focused on a low section of the house that I guessed to be the garage. It didn’t have any windows, and the roof was closer to the ground.
Luke made it to the side of the garage and tucked behind the wall. When I crouched next to him, he indicated he wanted to boost me up. He lowered himself, interlaced his hands together. I slipped my foot into his palms and he lifted me until I could grab the edge of the wall. I pulled myself up onto the low roof.
Before I managed to roll myself up and over completely, Luke backed away from the wall. I stopped to watch. He dashed forward at speed, jumped until his foot met the wall, and used the momentum to launch himself and catch the edge of the garage roof. He pressed his feet to the wall to kick himself up until he was kneeling on the roof.
I panted as I climbed up to my knees. I needed to remind him later to teach me that trick.
He caught my hand and helped me until I was standing and guided me over the roof. The gnarly bits of roofing tile scratched against my feet. I couldn’t believe I was doing this barefoot, but maybe it was better. In bare feet, I was much quieter. I had a better grip with my feet against the roof that I would if I had been wearing shoes.
He went slow this time, edging his foot out to take a step, displacing his weight carefully before settling. At first I wondered why, but I followed his rhythm. I had to assume he didn’t want to risk anyone hearing us, even if we were over the garage.
Ahead of us was the second floor wall, and the roof above our heads. He again indicated to me that he was going to boost me up. Like before, he made sure I was up before he climbed. This time instead of taking a running jump, he caught the low edge of the roof on the corner and hauled himself up.
When we got to the second floor, my knees wanted to tremble. I wasn’t used to being so high up. I wasn’t afraid of heights; it was just so dark that I wasn’t positive of my footing, and that made me nervous.
He headed toward the front of the house. The front yard had a thin concrete path, with little garden lights down it, illuminating in a low light. The front porch light wasn’t on, but the moonlight was bright enough that I could see some sort of fountain in the middle of the yard. There were three cars in the drive in front of the garage. Someone was most certainly home. I stiffened at this. Half of me had assumed no one was home and we were just being careful about things. He was going to risk entering a house with people inside?
Luke pointed to the front of the house and then pointed down. I didn’t understand what he was doing. He pushed his hand into mine and started signing.
“Will hold your legs. Open the window.”
My heart now roared to life in my ears. What did he mean exactly by holding my legs? How did he know if the window was unlocked? Why was I doing this?
I caught myself before I started whispering questions. I didn’t want to sign them all. I had a feeling it wouldn’t have mattered. We’d gotten this far and there was something inside we were fetching. Asking how and why wasn’t going to work. I had to trust him for now.
Was this what the masked man had meant when he said they wanted to use someone like me?
Luke motioned for me to get onto my stomach on the edge of the roof. This was disorienting in the darkness. I felt like I was going to slide forward. Luke got down with me. He started nudging me toward the edge.
It took a lot of swallowing back my heart, sucking in some faux courage and three countdowns of “three-two-one-go” for me to find the ability to start crawling forward. Luke held on to my waist and when I was halfway dangling over the edge, he locked his arms onto my calves. He nudged and I dangled over upside down.
I caught the edge of the phone as it slipped out of my top. My breasts were about to spill out, too. I stuck the phone between my teeth and focused on the window.
It was dark inside, but I could make out something like a window seat just inside. Upside down, the blood was filling my head quickly. I pressed my fingers against the wood of the window frame and started pushing up at the edges.
The window eased up quietly. I managed to get the window up but once I did, I was suddenly very nervous. How was I going to get in? Luke needed to let go of me if I was going to get in there. I really didn’t want him to let go.
Luke seemed to have thought of this. He pushed himself forward, and unhooked my calves. This gave me enough room for me to swing forward and grip the windowsill. As I’d thought, there was a window seat. I twisted, swung and gripped at the edge, hanging on until I could drag myself in far enough that I was stable. I wasn’t sure how he’d know when to let go, so I lightly kicked at him.
He placed three fingers at my calf, dropped two against it, dropped one, a count down. At zero he let go, and I swung myself into the room.
I overestimated and started to teeter off the window seat, but caught myself before I touched the floor. I got up and fixed my top, tucking the phone back into place. I knee-walked out of the way of the window, and stilled, afraid to go any further without Luke.
Luke appeared a moment later. I didn’t see how he managed to get in, but was glad he was there. His hand found mine and h
e squeezed it, silently re-promising everything was going to be okay.
He sat on the bench, and started unlacing his shoes. He set them aside on the window seat and stepped away toward the door. I followed, placing my feet where he did, readjusting my weight slowly each turn to keep the creaking to a minimum.
Even with my heart pounding away, my senses fine-tuned to my surroundings. I was hearing every little thing. I listened for movement, for sounds of the house. Was that a whisper? A creak?
The room we were was a bedroom, but no one was asleep in the bed. The air was stale, and I assumed it was a guest bedroom. Luke padded his way over to the door. He held the handle twisted again and stepped aside, ushering me through.
I eased my way out into the hallway, again listening for any noise. We were on the furthest edge of an upstairs hallway. There was a barrier against the ledge overlooking the stairs that lead into the main part of the house. The light I’d seen earlier from outside filtered into the hallway from a bathroom. There were two more rooms on the left and another one at the furthest end of the hall before the stairs.
Luke left the door open a crack behind us. He found my hand and signed. “Go downstairs.”
Well, if we were going down stairs, why did we climb all the way up here? I swallowed back a moan.
Luke led the way, creeping along the floor. We were at the top of the stairs and Luke was taking a step down when I heard the first creak.
I froze. Luke paused, stiffened and signed into my hand. “What?”
I held my breath and listened: another creak and I was sure. “Footsteps,” I signed back. The movement was behind one of the other closed doors. Soft, slow.
Luke circled an arm around my waist, and for a moment I was hovering in the air as he picked me up. My legs caught around his body, and I clung to him like a monkey to a stick. He planted me against the wall and out of sight of the upstairs hallway. He pressed against me, as if trying to shield me from anyone who might walk down the stairs.
The air pressure changed, and I was sure a door opened somewhere upstairs. I held my breath to listen closely. More footsteps, another shutting and the light that had once illuminated the space diminished. The bathroom door had closed.
