The bedrooms were on opposite sides of the hall, each taking up one side of the rear portion of the house.
Faith let Collier take the room on the right. Again she stood at an angle, covering him and the other closed door so his back would be protected when he breached the room. With an almost painful slowness, he reached down and turned the knob. The door opened. He slammed it back in case anyone was standing behind it. Pink curtains on a bay window to the backyard. A blow-up mattress on the floor. An open curtain where the closet door should’ve been.
Clear.
In the hall, Collier took position opposite the left bedroom and gave her the nod.
Faith kicked open the door so hard that the knob stuck into the drywall. More windows. More pink curtains. Another mattress on the floor, this one with a boxspring, dirty sheets. Cardboard box for a bedside table. Dangling cords. A lamp. The closet had a door and the door had a keyed deadbolt.
Faith made herself breathe, because she had been holding her breath so long that she was going to pass out. Her lungs would only half fill. Her heart was a stopwatch. Sweat dripped from her hands as she forced her grip on the Glock to loosen so the recoil wouldn’t break her wrist if she had to shoot.
Collier stood with his back to the wall, covering the closet. She made herself move forward, blocking out the movie that kept replaying in her head: the closet door opens, a shotgun comes out, her chest is shredded to pieces.
With extreme deliberateness, Faith peeled her left hand away from her Glock. The bones inside her fingers felt like they were rattling together. Her shoulder pinched as she lowered her arm. She reached toward the egg-shaped doorknob. Her skin registered the cold metal. The joints in her wrist started the slow grind of rotating her hand.
Locked.
Faith opened her mouth. She inhaled.
Spacious walk-in master closet!
The hinges were on the outside. The door couldn’t be kicked in.
She glanced back at Collier. He was still tensed, but he was facing away from her, toward the hallway. His chest heaved with each shallow breath. His Glock was pointed up at the ceiling.
The attic.
Optional storage for your precious keepsakes!
In the hall, a string dangled down from a set of folding attic stairs.
Faith started shaking her head. There was no way she was going up into that attic with just one person covering her.
A noise.
The scraping sound, this time heavier, like someone was inching across the attic.
Collier entered the hallway, knees still bent in a low crouch. Faith did the same, stopping in the doorway. He looked at her. She nodded, though every inch of her body was telling her that this was going to end badly. Collier reached up. He grabbed the string hanging from the stairs. The springs squealed so loudly that Faith’s heart nearly detonated. Collier unfolded the steps with one hand, his Glock still pointing up with the other.
Both of them stood completely still, waiting for the other to move.
This wasn’t about being scared. They were both terrified in equal measure. This was about trusting someone to have your back while you prairie-dogged your head into an open firing range.
Faith muttered a silent curse and took out her phone. Better to have her hand shot off than her face. She swiped through to the video camera and turned on the flash so that forensics would have a clear recording that explained the two dead cops in the hallway.
She forced her brain to unfreeze the muscles in her leg so that she could climb the stairs. Her foot was an inch off the ground when Collier snatched the phone out of her hand. He shot her a look like she was the crazy one. He planted his black sneaker on the first rung of the stairs. The springs groaned under his weight. He stepped up to the second rung.
Faith saw the movie in her head again, this time with Collier: a shotgun comes out, his chest is shredded to pieces.
Collier stopped on the second rung. Both of his hands were at chest level, one with his Glock, the other with her phone. He was listening for the sound, trying to gauge which direction it had come from, because he would only have one chance shining the phone’s light into the dark attic space. Faith couldn’t help him locate the direction. All she heard was blood rushing through her ears. She opened her mouth for more air. Her tongue felt like cotton. She could taste her own fear, sour, like rotted meat and sweat and acid.
Collier looked back for her go-ahead. She nodded. They both stared into the black expanse of the attic. His shoulders slumped. His head turtled down his neck. He raised his hand, using the phone as a digital periscope. They both looked at the screen. An image flashed up.
Faith felt her stomach punch into her chest.
Collier sighed out a low ‘Fu-u-uck.’
A rat the size of a house cat stared back from the phone, its beady eyes glowing red in the light. It was sitting on its haunches. Its jaw was working as it chewed. Something was in its hands, which was even more horrific, because Faith didn’t want to think about a rat having hands that could grab something.
Collier turned the phone in a three-sixty around the attic before holstering his Glock. He used his free hand to zoom in on the rat, then past it. There were two file boxes up against the shared wall of the duplex. They were resting precariously on separate joists because the attic floor didn’t extend that far. An opened package of rotting ground beef was closer to the stairs. White maggots moved across the surface like waves breaking in the ocean. Flies buzzed. While they were watching, the rat’s hands reached out and pulled the tray a few inches away from the stairs. The sliding sound felt like it was happening inside of Faith’s skull.
The rat eyed them carefully as it pried away a chunk of meat with its thin, angular fingers. It drew the rotted meat back to its chest, took a couple of hops away, then bent down its head and stared at them as it chewed.
‘Okay.’ Collier stepped back down the stairs. He handed Faith the phone. ‘I’m going to go throw up now.’
She thought he was kidding, because he seemed fine, but then two seconds later he was in the bathroom horking out the lining of his stomach.
Faith called out, ‘Be sure to cancel backup.’
Collier retched in the affirmative.
She ran her hand along the dusty top of the closet door jamb. No key. She took a pen out of a pocket in her cargo pants and poked around the box Harding had used as a bedside table. She checked above the windowsills and the hall door. No key.
Collier sounded like he was finished in the bathroom, but then he gagged so loudly that her ears ached. Faith shivered, not because of the sound but because the attic stairs were still open. She could picture the rat lumbering its way down, tiny thumbless hands holding on to the thin handrail. She put her back to the wall as she slid past the open stairs. She waited until she was safely in the living room to play back the video on her phone.
The rat was a grayish blue with round ears and a thick, dirty white tail the color of the string on a tampon. The creature stared at her through the screen, mouth working. There was no sound, but she swore she heard lips smacking. A streak of blood trailed behind the tray where the rat had been pulling the meat away from the stairs and toward something. Probably a giant nest.
Her whole body shuddered at the thought.
Faith hit ‘play’ again. She remembered a pop-up book someone had given her daughter at Christmas. Emma was clearly terrified of the zillion-eyed housefly that popped out of the centerfold, but she couldn’t stop herself from opening the book and screaming. Faith felt the same way when she watched the video again. She was disgusted, but she couldn’t look away.
The toilet flushed. Collier wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he joined her in the living room. ‘So,’ he said, brushing a smattering of vomit off his shirt. ‘Rat burglar alarm?’