Among the Hidden

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Luke watched the Sports Family house constantly after that. Before, he had just looked out the back vents in the early morning and late afternoon, when he knew people were about. But he'd seen the face at two o'clock. Maybe the other kid knew the rhythms of the neighborhood, too, and let his guard down only during times he considered safe.

For three long days, Luke saw nothing.

Then on the fourth day, he was rewarded: One panel of one of the blinds on an upstairs window flipped quickly up and down at eleven o'clock.

The seventh day the blinds in a downstairs window were left up in the morning. Luke saw a light go on and off at 9:07, two full hours after the last of the Sports Family had left. A half hour later, the Sports Family mother drove in in her red car and stomped into the house. Two minutes later, the blind in the downstairs window went down. The mother left immediately.

The thirteenth day was unseasonably warm, and Luke sweated in his attic. Some of the Sports Family's windows were left open, though still covered by the blinds. The wind blew the blinds back a couple times. Luke saw lights on in some of the rooms some of the time, in other rooms as the day wore on. Once he even thought he saw a glow of a TV screen.

He had no doubts anymore. Someone was hiding in the Sports Family house.

The question was, what could he do about it?