The Switch

46

He waited and listened.

The buzz of the high-voltage room. The whoosh of a car passing by. He listened for footsteps, running.

But he heard nothing else.

Then a distant voice, a shout coming from far off.

The driver and the backup?

He stood still, controlled his breathing, kept it as quiet as possible. And listened.

After two or three minutes, he heard rapid footsteps: someone running nearby. Whether passing by or approaching, he couldn’t tell. He could smell freshly cut lumber from the plywood.

The sound of footsteps ceased. He breathed in and out slowly, steadily, quietly. Still no more footsteps. He knew that if someone thought to check underneath the steps where he was, he would hear them enter, hear the crunch of gravel.

What he would do then, though — he had no idea. Probably surrender. Or maybe try to run. He didn’t know, actually, what he’d do. He’d decide if and when it came to that.

For now he just listened.

A minute went by without the sound of footsteps. He heard that distant shout again.

The snarl of the high-voltage room. That was all.

Somehow he managed to stand there for close to an hour. He thought. He kept his guard up. He didn’t cough. His thoughts raced, about Tanner Roast and all that was going on with that, and about the damned laptop and how it had turned his life into some sort of hell.

Finally, he picked up the gym bag. He peered around the plywood panel and saw no shapes, no shadows moving. He sidled out from behind it, walked slowly across the gravel, trying to keep the crunch underfoot to a minimum.

And still he heard no footsteps.

He walked up the gravel slope, returning to the pavement of the public area of the stadium. When he reached the high-voltage room, he stood still, the buzzing loud in his ears. He realized that the sound, this close, made it impossible to hear most other sounds. So he was at a disadvantage.

He peered around the high-voltage room and saw nobody. Slowly, quietly, he walked through the shadows of the stadium, parallel to the street. When he came to the next arched gateway, he was able to see out to the street. The Suburban was gone.

What did that mean?

Would it be waiting for him at the next street exit out of the athletic complex?

Or was it gone — and the driver had given up?

Tanner was hyperaware of how visible he now was, walking past the stadium, past the parking lot turnstile. He passed a couple of empty side lots.

No Suburban passing by.

He kept walking. A car shooshed by and kept going.

He came to a low chain-link fence, maybe three or four feet high, protecting a running track that surrounded a soccer field. Try to vault it? He scrambled over the fence, lifted himself, swung his feet. Crossed the track and field. Scrambled over the next fence, and walked, didn’t run, to the outside fence, also chain-link, around the whole complex. On the other side was Western Avenue, a few cars passing by in either direction.

Slinging the gym bag over his shoulder onto his back, he climbed the chain-link fence, maybe seven feet high here, went up and over, and landed softly on the sidewalk.

After walking for about twenty minutes, Tanner was able to hail a cab, which took him the rest of the way there. Pale sunlight glimmered on the horizon by the time he reached Brimmer Street in Chestnut Hill and the Georgian mansion where he was going to sleep for a night or two. He began to follow the same procedure as before, punching in the code to release the padlock on the front door, when he realized that the padlock was already unlocked, its hasp open.

Strange, he thought. Maybe a real estate agent forgot to lock it.

Was that possible?

Possible.

The other possibility was that someone was inside, waiting for him.

But he was overreacting, he told himself, letting the fear sink its hooks into him. He slowly opened the door, the foyer pitch-dark.

It smelled different here. He couldn’t explain it to himself, couldn’t say for sure what was different, but it was. Something besides the fresh paint and the apple cider.

He wondered if that meant that someone was inside the house. Or that someone had been in the house since he’d last been here. But it was too early for a showing, right? Or whether he was just picking up on a scent he hadn’t noticed earlier. Because he felt the prickle of fear, of paranoia, and maybe that was distorting his perception.

He stood still a moment and listened, and he heard nothing.

Leaving the lights off, he climbed the staircase. The master bedroom was at the end of the dark hall, after a series of smaller rooms and a bathroom. He knew this from his prior exploration.

As he rounded a turn, he saw light spilling out of the master bedroom, its door open. He approached slowly, quietly, his tread silent on the wall-to-wall carpeting. All he could hear was his heart pounding. He could smell that familiar note more strongly here.

He entered the bedroom.

And at the same moment he remembered what that smell was, he saw a pair of familiar jeans-clad legs and stockinged feet sticking out of the side of an overstuffed chair.

She turned, and now Tanner could see she’d been reading a book — Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow.

“What happened to your face?” Sarah said.