Page 46
It only mattered if you got it wrong.
I lifted my weapon. “Let’s move.”
One street back from the main road, less than a block from where we’d encountered the men, a white weatherboard house sat behind a brick fence in the older part of town.
A pile of mulch had been dumped on a tarp beside the driveway, a shovel lying on the ground beside it. The grass was only just at the point of being overgrown, and abandoned toys were scattered around the front yard. Plastic trucks, a faded football. One of those miniature slides made for toddlers.
The white Mazda under the carport appeared to be in driveable condition as far as I could tell.
Ava stared at the toys, her breath catching before she took an involuntary step backward. “No. Not this place.”
Kirby rested her elbow on the metal letterbox. “We don’t know—”
“Exactly,” Ava said. “We don’t know. I can’t even think about doing that.”
The memory of the teen girl with braces flashed through my mind, and I turned my back on the house. “We’ll keep looking. It’s not the only car in town.”
Before we’d taken a single step, a mechanical whir came from the other side of the street.
Several doors down, a roller door opened, and an SUV drove out nose first. The rear seat had been packed tight with bags and boxes, and more belongings were strapped to the roof racks.
Two women sat in the front, a small dog perched on the passenger’s knee.
As soon as the dog caught sight of us, it yapped excitedly, pawing at the window.
“That’s… promising,” Ava said. “They’re not just heading out to the shops.”
Neither woman looked our way, even though they had to know we were here. The driver pulled out onto the street and took off in the other direction, the roller door lowering behind them.
Kirby closed her eyes and let out a rush of air. “That’s our house for the night—one that doesn’t smell like death.”
My heart thudded faster, limbs tensing with the urge to run. If we were lucky, there’d be a second car in the garage. I couldn’t tell from this angle. “Better wait in case they forgot something.”
We walked a few steps down the street, pretending to tie laces, check weapons—anything that didn’t make it obvious we were about to break into a house.
“I think we’re good,” Ava said a few minutes later.
Kirby didn’t need further encouragement. She led the charge across the road, making a beeline for the red-brick house.
“I keep waiting for the car to show up again.” Ava stared down the road as we approached the driveway. “It can’t be this easy.”
“You said we couldn’t catch a break. This is it—this is our break.” My fingers itched to touch her, just a split second of human contact. We were all on edge and desperate for some downtime.
Kirby tried the door and shook her head, hopping down from the step and rejoining us.
The owners had kept the lawn neatly mowed and the garden beds weed-free. Pots lined the concrete path leading between the house and the detached garage, filled with the pansies my mum used to grow.
“This is pretty,” Ava whispered. “If I didn’t have somewhere else to be, I’d think about sticking around.”
She pushed open the side gate and went through to the backyard, where small pockets of water sat on top of the in-ground pool cover. Leaves gathered along one edge, and the smell of chlorine hovered in the air. The path led to a raised deck, where the first step creaked under our feet. A pergola cast shadows across a built-in barbecue, and someone had stacked the outdoor chairs in one corner, a cover pulled over them for winter.
The small dog kennel near the back door was so pristine that the little guy had probably never spent a minute inside it.
Ava checked the handle, then lifted a potted shrub beside the entrance and peered underneath. “Maybe there’s a spare key hidden somewhere. None of us can get through that dog door.”
I scanned the ground beside the deck for a fake rock, but nothing jumped out at me.
While I was searching for something to muffle the sound of breaking glass, footsteps came from the path we’d just walked down.
