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Dianne eased down into the space next to Mark and put her arm around him. He leaned into her and she could feel his chest heaving as he tried to hold back his tears. “I’m not sure, kiddo.” Dianne whispered to him, putting her head on his and holding him tightly. “I wish I knew.”
“Do you think he’s… gone?”
Dianne shook her head and sighed deeply. “No.”
“How do you know?” Mark sat up and quickly wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
Dianne smiled, letting the tear fall freely from her eye and cut a line down her cheek. “Faith, kiddo. Faith.”
***
Hours later, after Mark, Jacob and Josie were in their beds, Dianne sat on the stairs with the tablet by her side. The house was quiet aside from the creaks and groans from the appliances that were quietly sipping power from the backup batteries and the drips of water from the snow slowly melting on the eaves. Dianne had spent just over three hours watching the cameras on the tablet before setting it down to take a short break. With her head leaning against the rails of the stairs, Dianne didn’t even realize that she was drifting off to sleep until a strange noise roused her from her slumber.
“What the hell?” Dianne mumbled to herself as she sat up straight on the stair. Pain shot through her rear end and she shifted on the uncomfortable wood plank to try and find a more comfortable position. She wasn’t sure what the noise was that had awoken her but as each of her senses adjusted to her awakened state she felt the hairs on the back of her neck start to rise.
Something wasn’t right in her house.
Dianne looked down at the tablet and tapped the button to go back to the multi-camera view. On the screen, all of the cameras outside the house looked normal. She studied each image intently, listening to the sounds of the house as she tried to figure out what had woken her. The sharp clink of broken glass came a few seconds later and Dianne stood up, her eyes wide as she waited for any further sounds.
When none immediately came Dianne picked up the tablet and backed up the stairs until she was at the top, then swiftly entered the room where Mark was sleeping. A few taps on his chest was all it took to rouse him and when he saw the rifle in her hands and the look in her eyes he was out of bed and on his feet in an instant.
“Mom? What is it?”
“Somebody’s in the house. Stay here, at the top of the stairs. I’m going down to check it out. Don’t come down unless you hear me telling you to do so. Keep an eye on the outside cameras and through the windows, too.”
Dianne tossed the tablet onto Mark’s bed before moving back out into the hall. She moved down the stairs quickly, taking each step with the practiced ease of someone who knew exactly where every squeak was. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she stopped and listened. While she expected to hear the sound of more glass breaking or the grunts and shuffling of someone rummaging through drawers in the house, she heard nothing except the soft hum of the refrigerator.
After drawing her pistol, Dianne placed her rifle on a high shelf near the bottom of the stairs. While the rifle was good at a distance, the long barrel would be cumbersome while clearing the rooms as she had learned after her last experience of checking the house. With the very clear presence of someone in or around their dwelling the last thing she wanted to worry about was getting the rifle caught on a doorframe or having someone grab it before she could fire.
Keeping the pistol close to her chest, Dianne padded through the main floor of the house, going from room to room as quickly as she dared. Each empty corner she checked was a welcome sight and in less than two minutes she confirmed that the main floor and basement were clear of intruders.
“What on earth?” Dianne shook her head as she went into the dining room and saw bits of broken glass lying on the floor next to the window looking out the front of the house. She pulled back the curtains to reveal a small hole knocked into the window and a piece of firewood lying on the floor that had been tossed through the glass.
“Dammit!” Dianne cursed herself for, in all of her preparation, forgetting one of the most obvious points of entry into the house. With nothing protecting the windows from the outside world anyone could easily gain entry into the house in spite of the locked doors.
After moving back to the entryway, Dianne grabbed her rifle and started to head outside when she heard Mark trying to get her attention. “Pst! Mom!” Mark whispered down to her from the top of the stairs.
“What is it?”
“There’s a guy on the cameras running down the driveway.”
“Towards the house or away?”
“Away.”
“Stay here and open a window upstairs. Holler down if anything changes.”
Dianne moved out onto the front porch and crouched next to one of the pillars, squinting as she tried to see the figure running down the drive. While the cameras had the benefit of infrared spotlights and detectors her eyes did not and all she could see were shadows from the moon and clouds as they passed by overhead.
After waiting outside the front door for several more minutes Dianne crept down the length of the porch until she was s
tanding in front of the broken window. Snow and ice were scattered across the porch along with large drops of dark red blood. Dianne resisted the temptation to examine the scene more carefully with her light as she didn’t want to fully reveal her position in case the perpetrator was still out in the woods watching her beyond the sight of the cameras.
Dianne headed back inside the house and upstairs to where Mark was sitting in the hallway watching the tablet. Dianne kneeled down next to him and looked at the screen. “He went up the driveway, eh?”
“Yeah. He was walking funny, too. Like that guy from earlier.”
Dianne clenched her jaw, resisted the urge to curse in front of her son. “All right. It doesn’t look like he got in the house. There’s a piece of firewood on the floor inside and some blood on the porch. He probably cut himself and got scared and ran off.”
