So I swallow whatever I’m feeling and start helping him look.
The table’s still set up in the dining room: a few chips scattered around, empty beers, but nothing else. From the kitchen, I hear Pan banging around: opening the fridge, it sounds like.
“The hell are you doing?” I yell.
“Getting something to drink,” he calls back. “Damn. Nothing.”
Christ, I think, as I hear the fridge slam. Okay, focus. Jacket. Find it. Nothing in here that I can tell. Floor’s pretty bare, nothing hung over the backs of the chairs. I stride back out to the living room, rub my forehead.
“You’re sure they kept it here?” I say, and as soon as I do, I regret it. I don’t want to make this any more complicated than it needs to be. It’s gotta be here. It will be here. We’ll find it, and then we’ll go.
“Yeah.” Pan strides back out of the kitchen. “Like, 90 percent. Where else would it go?”
Then he disappears down the hallway to his left.
“Dude.” I jog after him, skidding as the carpet balls up under my boots. “You can’t just walk through someone’s house.”
“Why?” Pan flicks me a grin as I catch up. “Nobody’s home.”
We don’t know that, I think.
Outwardly, I just grunt.
“It’ll be like we were never even here,” Pan says, trying the first door he comes to. Locked. He shrugs and moves on to the next one, which pushes right open—just a bathroom. Blue tile. Blue walls. Ratty shower curtain bunched in the corner. Nada.
He tries the next one: linen closet, barely any linens. Two guys living alone with no towels—that checks out.
At the end of the hall is a window, small, facing the other side of the street, the corner. And as Pan tries the next door, the third one, I see something flicker through the closed blinds.
My imagination? Or was it?—
“Holy shit.”
Pan’s voice cuts through my thoughts.
Instinct. I run to his side. To where he’s staring into the small, dark room.
To two people, two bodies slumped on chairs, bound in place with duct tape.
And half their heads gone.
My stomach heaves. Bloody, crusted, congealed—the sight is horrible, thesmellis horrible, rust and raw meat. It’s them, Mike, JD, the guys who own this place, ran the game, guys we barely know, but guys who were obviously in some kind of trouble.
Shot. Dead. Execution-style.
“Fucking hell.” Pan’s eyes are wide, his skin white as a sheet of paper. I am frozen, and thenno, I am not. I force a spark of movement through my muscles, yank on his arm.
“We gotta get out of here.” I almost forget to lower my voice. Pull him back into the hallway with all I’ve got. Panic pumping me to action.
“Holy shit,” Pan says again. I look left and right, double triple checking we’re alone, and then I see it again, through the slats of the blinds: another flash,red blue red blue.
Oh fuck, I think.Oh fuck. They must have seen us, whoever it was across the street, and called the police. For what theythoughtwas just a B&E.
And was, until about sixty seconds ago.
“Dude.” I nod at the door. “Cops. Go. You can’t be fucking?—”
Pan’s just frozen. Like I was.
