Saint/Sinner

Chapter 13

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

She smiled to herself. That was something people usually say in the movies, just before something bad — and really loud — happened. Like a guy in a mask, holding a knife, jumping out from behind a tree. There were plenty of trees and a whole lot of shadows for something dramatic like that.

Except nothing happened as she peered out at the front yard of Walter’s house.

It looked the same as when she had last seen it — but now instead of just Walter’s car, there were two SUVs sitting under the bright lights. Whoever had arrived in the new vehicles was either already inside the house or they were doing a very good job of hiding among the dark woods. She had been very careful on approach, using Apollo’s keen senses as a guide, and was fully prepared to retreat back to Lucy at the first sign of trouble. Fortunately (unfortunately?) there was no one between the two-story house and Walter’s.

This is such a bad, bad idea.

Good idea or not, she couldn’t just abandon Walter. Five months of dating might not have caused her to fall madly in love with the man, but she couldn’t deny that she liked him, enough that she couldn’t just turn and walk away when she knew he was in trouble.

You better be worth all this, Walter.

The shooting had stopped a while ago, and now there was just her own breathing and the sound of animals around her. Apollo’s eyes darted left and right whenever a squirrel (or something equally furry) came too close to them, but the dog seemed to understand that stealth was important and never made more than a curious noise when something caught his attention.

“You belong out here, boy,” she whispered to him. “You know that, don’t you?”

He looked over with his big brown eyes and stuck out his tongue to lick his nose.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

She ran her free hand down his head to his withers, then spent a few seconds scratching his back. Apollo leaned against her leg to show his approval when he suddenly lifted his head and snapped a look toward the house.

A man in a black suit had emerged from the other side of Walter’s house and jogged over to one of the SUVs, where he leaned against it. He turned to face one of the guest bedroom windows. It wasn’t the one she, Lucy, and Walter had been kept in earlier, but the one next to it, with the main bedroom further to the right. It was the same one they had taken Walter to, and probably where he was right now.

If Walter was still alive.

The man in the suit was holding some kind of weapon (probably a submachine gun), though it was too dark for her to get a good look at it. What she wouldn’t give for something stronger than a handgun.

She waited silently next to Apollo, but nothing seemed to be happening either inside or outside the house. The man in the suit was watching the guest bedroom window like a hawk, though he hadn’t made any attempts to approach it. The window was framed by lights but the curtains were drawn in, blocking what was happening (if anything) on the other side.

Walter had to be inside that room. She was sure of it now.

A part of her wanted to think she could wait this out, that maybe everything would resolve itself in a few minutes, or a few hours. The problem with that was she couldn’t accept on faith that Walter would be alive when morning finally came. How long would it take Jack to force Walter to do what they needed?

Then there were these new players. Their motives were even murkier than Jack’s. The fact that she had heard shooting earlier convinced her they weren’t supposed to be here, that they had clashed with Jack. If they were Jack’s backup, there wouldn’t have been shooting.

So what the hell was going on in the house right now?

To get the answer, she needed to get closer.

No, that wasn’t completely true. She needed to get inside.

Allie looked over at Apollo. “So how did you get into the house earlier, boy? Can you show me?”

Apollo fixed her with large brown eyes and didn’t move.

“We need to get inside the house,” she said, and pointed at the building. He followed her finger, but then returned his gaze to her. “Understand?”

Did he even understand? It had been two years since Beckard and the cabin, but sometimes she wondered if Apollo wouldn’t be happier with someone else, someone who actually knew how to raise a hunting dog—

He stood up suddenly and began walking off.

She looked after him for a moment, but didn’t follow.

Apollo, realizing she hadn’t moved, stopped and glanced back at her.

“What?” she said.

He turned back around and began walking again.

“Okay, but you better not be leading me to some buried bone somewhere, Apollo,” she said, and followed him.

Apollo led her through the woods, and at first she thought he was taking her back to Lucy, but then he made a turn, then another one. It didn’t take long to see that he was leading her around the clearing, going from the side where they had been earlier and all the way around to the back of the house.

She clutched the Sig Sauer in one hand, the other pushing branches out of her path, always mindful of every footstep and looking for twigs on the ground, anything that would make too much noise. Apollo didn’t seem to have that problem. The dog just knew where to go even though she couldn’t tell if he was even looking down.

They were almost at the back when she put a hand on Apollo’s head to stop him. The dog wagged his tail impatiently as she listened and looked for signs of someone guarding this side of the residence. If they had one watching the front, why wouldn’t they have another one out back, too?

It was hard to miss the destroyed back door, splintered fragments hanging from the four frames. She had little difficulty making out the blood splashed across the deck, along with shards of glass. A thick swath of light flooded out of the house but was contained almost completely around the patio, far from her position.

Someone, apparently, had busted their way into the house. Allie thought that was ironic. She and Lucy had to fight their way out, while someone had done the exact opposite and left a hell of a mess behind, too.

Only when she was absolutely sure there was no one hiding in the area did she take her hand off Apollo. The dog, finally released, trotted forward again. She hurried after him, sticking to the shadows. She worried about being spotted at first, but there was plenty of darkness to keep her hidden as long as she stayed away from the pool of lights gathered around the back patio. Ironically, it was Apollo’s coat of white fur that would give them away if someone were to sneak a peek out one of the back windows.

Apollo led her across the house to the other side before angling back toward a pair of bushes that were hidden from view. She crouched next to the dog, her fingers tightening reflexively around the gun in her hand.

“Now what?” she asked him.

Apollo stuck his head into one of the bushes. She moved closer, then pushed aside the foliage to reveal a small open window barely a foot high and two feet long. She peered in at what looked like a darkened basement on the other side. The bushes made for an effective and natural camouflage even in the daylight, never mind at night.

“So this is how you got in, huh? You sneaky dog.”

Apollo didn’t hesitate; he slipped into the opening and she heard a slight thump! as he landed below on the other side.

She sighed after him. “Looks easy enough…”

It was big enough for a dog, but would she fit? Probably. She didn’t have to worry about shards of glass sticking her as she crawled through, because someone had draped a thick and well-used (and dirty) duvet over the bottom portion.

You have squatters, Walter.

She wondered what Walter would say when he found out strangers had been using his house — or, at least, the basement — while he was in the city. Then again, considering how little he came out here, maybe it wasn’t so bad someone found a use for this place in the meantime. What Walter didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, after all.

That last thought made her smile wryly to herself. What Walter didn’t know might not hurt him, but what he did know, apparently, could. The men with guns waiting out here for them were proof of that.

She took a deep breath and eased herself headfirst into the window, doing her best to stay away from the sides and top even though whoever had been using this opening before her had done a tremendous job of clearing the frame of any leftover dangers. She felt like a worm sliding on her belly as she squirmed left and right, but always pushing forward.

The underground room was just as dark inside as it had looked from the outside, but once she allowed her eyes to adjust, she began making out covered objects along the walls, including a long something (Furniture?) directly below her. She would have been more afraid of falling and breaking her neck against the concrete floor if someone else — maybe even a lot of someones — hadn’t been entering Walter’s basement exactly this same way for God knew how long now. And if some squatter could survive this entry…

She took another deep breath and let herself drop, praying she wasn’t falling straight down into a sharp machine of some kind. Relief flooded her as she bounced off the soft cushion of a sofa, the fabric covering it crumpling (too loudly) against her body.

Apollo was waiting for her in the blackness, his eyes focused on the basement door at the top of some stairs on the other side of the room.

“See anything, boy?”

He glanced back at her for a moment, then looked forward again.

“Guess not.”

She took a step forward, crunching broken glass on the floor in the process. She looked around the basement, seeing more now that her eyes had begun adjusting to her environment. It helped that she had been moving through darkened woods for the last couple of hours.

There was an old faded blanket in a corner that she could smell even from across the room, and she had to step around an unlabeled can that was fresh enough that still-wet something was leaking out of it.

You’ve definitely got squatters, Walter.

“What now?” she asked Apollo when she was standing next to him.

The dog moved silently to the stairs and then went up.

“Wait,” she hissed, but of course he didn’t listen.

She sighed and followed him, thankful the steps were concrete so she didn’t have to worry about creaking staircases. The door at the top was closed, which she hadn’t noticed from below because of the lack of light. Fortunately the steps were gray, which made them easy to spot as she navigated up.

At the top landing, Apollo sniffed the air before letting out a small whine.

“What?” she whispered.

He licked his nose and pawed at the door.

“Was it open before, the first time you came through here?”

He walked around in a circle for a few seconds before sitting on his haunches and waited silently.

“I take it you didn’t close the door after you let yourself in the last time?”

Apollo lowered his head and licked at fresh dirt on his front paw.

“Why do I keep expecting you to answer?”

Allie pressed her ear against the door. It was cold to the touch, and though she was very still and quiet, even slowing down her heartbeat, she couldn’t make out anything that sounded like voices — or human activity — on the other side.

She put her hand on the silver doorknob before glancing over at Apollo. He stared patiently back at her.

“Stay down here, understand? I don’t know how many people are out there, and I can’t be looking after you, too.”

Apollo lay down on the smooth concrete landing, brown eyes watching her back.

She faced the door again, then finally gave the knob a slight twist — it moved without resistance. Unlocked.

I should have stayed with Lucy, she thought, just before she finished turning the doorknob (Quietly!), then pushed the door open, sticking her gun hand out first.

A half-second later she had slipped outside before she could change her mind. She left the door partially ajar behind her; if she needed to retreat in a hurry, the second it would take to twist open the doorknob might very well be the deciding factor between living and getting a bullet in the back.

The things I do for you, Walter, she thought as she went still and tried to place her location in the house.

She was in the back of a long hallway that was partially lit by a single lightbulb in the middle. She was standing in the shadowy area in the back, the realization making her breathe slightly easier. And she knew where she was, too: she had seen the hallway when she first entered the house, chasing after Walter and Lucy. She had glimpsed two back hallways at that time — one led to the bedrooms, and the other, she now discovered, to the basement.

She was flexing her fingers against the Sig Sauer when a figured appeared in front of her. He was all the way on the other side of the corridor — twenty feet, at least, maybe more? — but at that split-second he might as well be right in front of her.

Allie flattened her back against the closest wall and took aim at the man as he walked from left to right before disappearing off to the other side of the hallway opening.

Her heartbeat had picked up noticeably as she slowly lowered her gun hand. At the same time, she began picking up voices coming from the living room.

No, not voices. A voice. Singular. The man was talking to someone, but whoever that “someone” was, they weren’t answering him.

Allie moved up the hallway, measuring every step, and finally stopped at the edge of the halo of light from the single lightbulb. She was close enough to the opening now, while still staying hidden in the dark patches in the back, to glimpse a man in a suit sitting on a stool next to the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen. He was facing the hallway to her left, the one with the bedrooms, and had a phone pressed against his ear.

“Good men are hard to find,” the man was saying. “I don’t know what happened to the one in the other room, but you’re obviously the last man standing. That counts for something in my book.”

She already knew the tall man wasn’t alone, because she had seen at least one more walking past her less than ten seconds ago. That same man reappeared now, this time in the kitchen behind the one on the phone. Now that she wasn’t in fear of being discovered, she took a second to identify the Uzi, complete with a suppressor, hanging from a sling under the suited man’s right arm.

“So are we doing this, Jack?” the one on the phone said. “We simpatico?”

So there were at least two in the living room, and counting the sentry outside, that was three she could be absolutely certain of. There were probably more, especially since they had brought two SUVs with them. Why bring two big vehicles when there were just three people? That didn’t make any—

A click! in front of her, startling her.

Allie stared, caught between racing back to the basement and holding her ground, and failed to come to a decision when a large figure stepped out of a room further up the hallway. He was a big man, wearing a suit like the other three, with a gun holster along his hip and another suppressed Uzi dangling lazily from a strap over his right shoulder. His head was slightly bent forward, eyes focused on his crotch as he zipped himself up, but it didn’t take very long for him to sense her standing in the shadows behind him.

He looked up, then over, and said, “Hey—”

She shot him twice in the chest before he could finish the sentence. He stumbled back and through the door, one hand trying to grab onto the doorknob to stop his backward fall. She shot him a third time, and he let go of the door and disappeared into the bathroom.

The tall man at the kitchen bolted to his feet and whirled in her direction, the hand not holding the phone already reaching for his sidearm. She took aim at him when the man she had seen walk by earlier rematerialized in front of her like a ghost, the Uzi in his hands swinging up to fire.

Allie mouthed a curse and dropped to the floor just as the man squeezed the trigger on his submachine gun, and for the second time that night, bullets shredded the walls around her at dizzying speeds.

Her face was pressed into the floor when there was a sudden gust of cold air as something (Apollo!) rocketed over and past her head. The dog unleashed a loud, thunderous bark as he rushed headlong into the torrent of gunfire, and all Allie could think was, God, I love this dog.