First Family

CHAPTER 27

WILLA PUT DOWN Sense and Sensibility. Not long after being brought here she'd tapped on each of the walls and detected something solid behind them. She had listened for footsteps and calculated by checking her watch that someone patrolled by every other hour. She made her own meals consisting of canned stews, eaten cold, or packaged MREs that she knew had to do with the military. They were not what she was used to but her stomach didn't care. She drank the bottled water, munched on crackers, tried to keep warm, and used the battery-powered lantern sparingly, turning it off while she rested and trying her best not to think of things coming for her in the dark.

She would listen for the man, the tall older man. She had learned to recognize his walk. She liked him better than the others who would come by with water, cans of food and clean clothes, and new batteries for her lantern. They never spoke, never made eye contact, and yet she was afraid of them. Afraid their silence would be replaced with sudden anger.

She had tried to speak to them at first, but now she didn't. Instead, she tried to become invisible when they arrived. And she would let out a relieved breath when they locked the door behind them.

She looked at her watch. The footsteps had just come by. She had time now. Two hours free. She gripped the lantern and walked over to the door. She tapped on it lightly. Waited. Tapped. Waited.

"Hello?" she said. "Um, I think there's like a really big fire in here."

No answer.

She set the lantern down and from her pocket pulled out the pen that Quarry had given her. Or rather she pulled out the pen's clasp. It had the required ninety-degree-angled hook on the end. Next she took out a long piece of metal with a triangular-shaped bump on the end. She'd fashioned it from one of the canned stew tops she'd opened. She'd taken the circle of metal and painstakingly cut it in half using the heavy lantern to hold it against the table while employing the sharp edge of another can top to cut away at the metal. Then, like a rug, she'd rolled the remains of the top into a long cylinder and then hammered the end of it into the required shape.

She studied the lock, trying to mentally coax back her lock-picking skills. Two years ago they had visited the First Family at a hundred-year-old coastal home in South Carolina that wealthy friends of the president had lent them for a two-week summer holiday. Colleen Dutton, who was then only five, had locked herself in the bathroom. The terrified girl had screamed and pounded on the old door and pulled on its antiquated lock, but to no avail. Then a Secret Service agent had come to the rescue, using a paper clip to pick the lock and setting Colleen free in under ten seconds.

Willa had held her inconsolable sister for hours after the episode. Later, she'd been worried that Colleen would accidentally lock herself in the bathroom when they got back home, so she'd asked the agent to teach her how to pick a lock. He had and had also shown her the difference between an ordinary lock and a dead bolt. Dead bolts were harder, requiring greater skill and two different tools, and that's what she was faced with here.

Hanging the lantern handle over the doorknob so her work area would be lit, Willa inserted the pen clasp, which served as her tension tool, into the bottom of the lock's opening. She turned it as if she were manipulating a key in a lock, applying enough pressure to keep the interior lock pins from falling back into place. She slid the pick tool into the upper part of the lock using her other hand. She was applying so much force that a bead of sweat appeared on her forehead despite the chill of the room. She pushed up with the pick, trying to rake the pins into their sheer alignment. Once her hand slipped and the tension tool came loose.

She reinserted it and tried again. She had practiced this many times at home, but found that she could never tell how long it would take her. She wasn't an expert and lacked the feel of the pins' touch against the pick. It could be minutes or hours. She prayed it was the former.

Willa froze as she heard footsteps coming toward her. She angled her wrist up and checked her watch. Only twenty minutes had passed. Was the man coming to see her? The old man who talked softly and yet she could sense the danger, the anger he possessed. No, it wasn't his tread. It was one of the other men. She pulled the pick and tension tool out and was starting to flee back to her cot when the footsteps receded. She waited a bit more, just to be sure.

The tools went back in and her concentration redoubled. Now she could feel the pins glancing off the pick. One by one she lifted them to the sheer line, all the while holding the tension tool so rigidly that her forearm and wrist started to ache.

The last pin fell into place and she pulled the pick out and turned the tension tool like a key. The dead bolt vanished into the door. She drew a deep breath and mouthed a prayer. Turning the lantern down to its lowest level, she listened intently and then swung the door open.

Willa waited a few moments and then slowly moved out into the darkness.