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Shev listened as Dr. Parks went down the hall, past the basement door, and entered her study.
After several seconds, when all was quiet, Shev slipped from behind the door and entered the kitchen.
Bandit lay on his doggy bed, whimpering and licking his wounded leg. He looked up and started barking, so Shev grabbed a few pretzels from inside his pocket and tossed them on the floor before heading out through the mudroom.
But they were wrong about the dog. Bandit made no move toward the snacks. He was smarter than they thought, and had had enough to eat. Plus, the bite on his leg cut deep, and he was in pain.
In her study closet, Dr. Parks knelt in front of a black steel safe. She turned the dial lock once around right, then right again, and landed on number thirty-one.
“Come on, come on…”
The safe could be finicky. It was at least a hundred years old and held their old jewelry, the deed to the house, stock certificates, and copies of their wills and trusts. Hack-proof, this old mule, she thought. No one could ever access it. The thing was fire and ballistic proof, and weighed almost a thousand pounds. It was deep and secure in safes like these that doctors used to hide their files.
“All the way left and around to twelve. Stop. And back again… to almost, almost… twenty-nine.”
Tires spun on the gravel outside. The police car’s headlights shone through the shutters, but then went dark. The engine stopped, and there was silence.
Maybe they were talking for a minute, she thought. The police? Inside the car? Getting ready? But for what? She heard car doors open and shut, and the safe finally popped open.
Just in time.
She reached in and grabbed her ex-husband’s gun. The Beretta M9 he bought for the house to keep them safe. This was before she had rescued Bandit, and she’d been wildly, totally against it.
But now, it was coming in handy.
She grabbed the envelope underneath, now yellowed, with registration, permit, certificates: all she needed to prove her lie. She’d show them the gun and tell them she was the one who used it. The only one home. There was no one else there. She was the one who shot the coyote.
The doorbell rang.
CHAPTER 21
IN THE BASEMENT, Sophie stacked two cardboard boxes and crouched behind them in a corner. Nikolai tucked himself safely in a crawl space behind a giant freezer. Masha tugged on the string to the light bulb and found her way through the darkened room to the washing machine and sat on the floor behind it.
They heard Bandit bark a few times, then stop. They heard the front doorbell.
Out back, in the bushes, Boris waited.
This had turned into a circus, he thought. A comic but tragic Chekhov play. Doors opening, doors closing. In and out. Then Shev burst from the mudroom into the side yard, looking as scared as a jackrabbit. Headlights were shining bright from the drive.
“Shev!” Boris called. Shev turned and followed his boss’s voice toward the brush. Boris rose from between bushes, turned on his heel, and calmly said, “Let’s call it.” They hiked back up and into the woods. “What happened?”
“The neighbor called the police. The fucking police came.”
“Shit. What’d you get?”
“Just the alarms. You?”
“Nothing. Fucking coyotes. The dog went nuts.”
From inside her study, Dr. Parks heard the doorbell ring a second time. Her heart froze. She’d never had contact with the police. And here they were in her home again? Twice? In one day?
But now she was actually breaking the law. She was harboring Russians in her basement; hiding this threesome she hardly knew. Why? Maybe a year saving lives made it a habit? So many months high on adrenaline and fight-or-flight instinct in New York City.
She left the study, went down the hall, unlocked the door, and opened it wide. She decided to play the harried hostess. A lady scared of the wild coyotes. Alone. Innocent. Grateful.
“Thank you for coming,” she said to the officers, feigning relief.
“Good evening,” said McKay as he stepped inside, and they all shook hands and traded names. The front gate buzzed again from the kitchen.
