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God, he wanted to kiss her so desperately it hurt, but she’d run the minute he tried. She was just starting to trust him, and he didn’t dare do anything that might shatter that trust. Especially when her living or dying might well depend on his ability to keep close.
He stepped back. Sirens were wailing in the distance. They might not be headed here, but with the noise the zombie had made, they couldn’t risk staying any longer. Not with Rachel Grant lying dead downstairs. “We’d better get going.”
She nodded. “With all the noise I made getting in the door, the neighbors are probably awake and standing out front, wondering what’s going on.”
“Then we’ll go out the way I came in. Through the window.”
She raised an eyebrow. “The windows are boarded up.”
“Only the ones on the ground floor.” He caught her hand, entwining his fingers in hers. “Let’s go.”
He stopped in the hall long enough to put on his shoes and pick up his coat, then continued on into the other room. Pain twinged down his side at every movement, but it wasn’t the sharp, excruciating pain of broken ribs. He was lucky, that was for sure.
A quick peek out the window showed lots of lights but no cops, as yet. And while there were no neighbors standing on the sidewalk, either, that didn’t mean they weren’t around. It was going to be a little tricky getting out, but he’d certainly been caught in worse situations during his time as a thief.
He raised the window. “Keep close to the wall,” he said. “And squat down, so you present less of a silhouette.”
She studied him. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
She was either very intuitive or she was reading his mind as easily as he was hers. “Done what? Been rescued by a pretty young woman from the hands of a zombie?” He gave her an easy grin. “It doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, I’m afraid.”
A smile touched her lips, but annoyance flickered in her eyes. “You really won’t give me a straight answer about yourself, will you?”
He hesitated. If he were ever going to be honest about himself, then it would be with her, for all sorts of reasons—not the least being the attraction he felt. But right now, they simply didn’t have the time.
“Force of habit, I’m afraid.” He motioned toward the window. “Go, before the cops get here.”
She eyed him a second longer, then climbed out the window and hunched down in the shadows. He followed her out onto the balcony, then carefully closed the window and nudged the latch closed again.
“Thief,” she murmured. “You had to have been. You’re too damn good at that.”
He slipped the pick back into his pocket. “I could have been a cop, you know. Cops learn all sorts of things.”
She gave him a knowing look. “Yeah, right.”
He grinned and slipped past her, moving to the end of the balcony. The shared wall between the two terraces jutted out several feet and would make climbing onto the next balcony awkward. At least all the windows in the neighboring house were still wrapped in darkness.
He glanced at her. “We’ll have to climb around the wall to the next balcony. You ready?”
She glanced down at the ground, then back at him. Fear flickered in her eyes. Afraid of heights, he realized. “I won’t let you fall,” he added.
He held out his hand. She hesitated, then took it and climbed up onto the wrought iron. It wobbled under her weight, and she made a small sound of fear, grabbing for his shoulders.
He reached for her waist with his free hand, steadying her. “Look at me, not the ground,” he said. Her gaze darted to his, wide and uncertain. “I won’t let you fall. Believe that, if nothing else. Now, reach around the wall and pull yourself across to the next balcony.”
Though she was shaking, she did as he asked, and was quickly on the other side. He followed and pushed her into the shadows as headlights speared the darkness.
“Crawl toward the next house in the row,” he murmured, as the blue and red lights of the police car washed through the shadows.
“We can’t climb across the balcony,” she protested. “They’ll see us.”
“Maybe. Just go.”
She did. He followed her, somehow managing to keep his gaze on the police car more than the rather fetching sight of her jeans-clad rear. The cops climbed out of the car, putting on their hats as they walked across the road and disappeared under the balcony. Doyle moved past Kirby and checked the next house. Lights were on, but he couldn’t see anyone in the windows, and no one was moving around—not upstairs, anyway.
“Go,” he said, catching her hand again. “Duck down under the windows when you get there.”
Her expression was doubtful, but she climbed onto the railing and edged across. He followed her and pushed her forward again. They repeated the process until they reached the final house in the row.
