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At least Evan had the cameras, the element of surprise.
Norris’s glowing hand pulsed around his phone, and the surveillance feeds on Evan’s RoamZone went dark.
37
Butcher’s Thigh
Evan peered through the row of tiny square windows inset at the top of the front door.
No one on the lawn.
It was as if Evan had dreamed it.
He moved silently through the kitchen to check the side yard, keeping clear of the bow window. The empty strip of lawn stared back, glistening with dew. The clouds blinked open, straw-colored moonlight falling on the mound of puzzle pieces on the table, the knife block on the counter, the obsidian pane of the mounted television.
Looping through the ground floor, he checked the other windows.
A crunching of rocks announced itself somewhere in the darkness outside, but it was hard to source.
He ducked low. Scooted into a powder room with a view of the east-facing yard. A disused shed sat unevenly on a bank of river stones.
The rasp of wood scraping in a frame, more a vibration than a sound.
Deborah’s smoking window?
The house was pitch dark. Evan had lost surveillance visibility but still had the upper hand. Norris believed he was coming to kill a nineteen-year-old girl and two parents.
Flipping off his boots, Evan eased from the powder room, setting down toes first, then the ball of each foot, then the heel. Silent exploratory steps, lifting the feet straight up, sliding the toes down as if digging them beneath a rug—the rare ninjutsu technique he was capable of employing. Long steady breaths through his nostrils, knees slightly bent, hips level.
The rooms of the ground floor formed a loop around the core of the stairs. Moving silently back toward the kitchen with his ARES at the ready, Evan discerned the faintest scuff of tread from one of the adjacent rooms.
Norris likely wasn’t aware he was being stalked.
Moving through the room where he’d first sat with Deborah and Mason, Evan cut toward the back of the house, staying attuned to the sound of Norris’s shoes quietly touching the floor. They were circling each other in the ring of rooms around the stairs. It seemed Norris was safing the first floor before moving up.
The closed floor plan rendered the house almost pitch black at night, the profusion of walls blocking ambient light. In keeping with the Third Commandment, Evan had mastered the layout.
Avoiding the Chinese porcelain vase with its tentacles of pussy-willow branches, he reached the mudroom by the rear door. Its sash pane was lifted two feet in the frame, the gap just enough for a slender man to slip into.
Speeding his steps, Evan moved through the formal dining room and sliced the pie into the kitchen.
It looked to be empty, but he couldn’t see behind the counter or the table beyond. Scanning the room over the sights of his 1911, he pressed forward.
Inch by inch, shifting his weight, ears straining.
Norris’s footfall had gone silent.
Evan’s concern redlined. Norris wasn’t just some thug. He was a United States Marine with extensive operational experience.
Leading with his pistol, Evan leaned around the counter—no one there.
Crouched to check beneath the kitchen table.
He rose silently, willing his right knee not to crack as it was wont to do.
As his head drew level with the counter, he saw the missing slot in the knife block.
The boning knife.
