He handed Spector back her optics.
She glanced expectantly at Buckley and was confused by the look in his eye. Where she thought she would see frustration and even desperation, she saw something else entirely.
She fingered her pistol and asked, “So do we go after Cain, retreat from her, or wait for her to try to find us here?”
“None of the above. I have a far better idea.”
CHAPTER
55
MERCY SAT ON HER HAUNCHES and studied the rear of the house through the binoculars. The place was almost entirely built of stone with a few odd timbers and other materials thrown in for interesting architectural measure. It was private and well shrouded from the street with no close neighbors. A good pick if you were doing something bad, she thought. The Escalade was parked in front of the three-car garage. She could see the driver still inside scrolling down his phone. What she couldn’t see, through the tinted side windows, was whether Marbury was still in the SUV or not. She doubted it. Why come here just to sit on his butt in the driveway?
She had sounded more confident with Blum than she felt right now. While it was true she could go toe-to-toe physically with just about anybody, she really didn’t know what she was doing here. And it wasn’t like her brief stint as a cheap security guard had prepared her to become a crackerjack sleuth. She did have some experience with breaking and entering, though. And if it had been dark she would have been more comfortable trying to get inside the place through a door or window. Plus a home like this had to have a first-class security system, though it might be turned off now since it was daytime and people were inside.
Mercy decided that she was doing no good just squatting here like a lump, so she moved forward, keeping low and trying to stay out of the sight line of the row of windows on this side of the house. She passed by a pool that had its winter cover on. She stopped behind a clump of bushes and waited to see if anyone had seen her and was about to sound the alarm. That didn’t happen, so she relaxed and looked around, trying to use her common sense and natural observation skills, which she had cultivated over the years. In the places she had lived, correctly gauging the mood of a room and the violent predilections of various people had saved her on more occasions than she cared to remember.
She wondered if this place had been recently rented for the short-term, because the pool chairs, chaises, and tables around it were covered and stacked up. The place had the feel of having been shut down for the season. The Escalade had not pulled into one of the garage bays, meaning it probably didn’t belong to the place, she reasoned.
She poked her head over the top of the bush and scanned the house using her optics. She couldn’t see anyone through the windows. But then she ducked down as Marbury came into view. Mercy slowly lifted her head up once more. He was talking to someone, and in the next moment Mercy saw clearly who that was. She had never seen him before, but he seemed like someone of importance.
He was in his forties, tall and lean and very well dressed, right down to the pocket kerchief. Mercy could make all this out because the lights were on in the room and the man came to stand by the window to look out for a minute or so. The way he was talking and gesturing with Marbury made Mercy conclude that he was the boss and the lawyer the underling. She supposed lawyers always made good underlings. Mercy had had several run-ins with lawyers, and none of those occasions had turned out well for her.
But there was something familiar about the boss man, in the jaw and eyes, yet Mercy couldn’t place him. She dropped her head once more, then decided to get down on her belly and stare up from under the bush.
The man was talking while continuing to gaze out the window. Mercy didn’t like that look. It was too observant, she decided. This was a man with something on his mind. And she knew what that was: Lee Pine. He had her somewhere, maybe here; she could just feel it. They were in cahoots with Desiree somehow.
When the man moved away from the window, Mercy left her hiding place and sprinted toward the house. She planted herself against the stone wall and waited for a few moments. She had spotted a rear door that was hidden enough from view to hold possibilities.
Keeping flat against the side of the house, she reached the door. It was locked, which was not surprising. She looked toward the part of the house where the two people were and gauged it to be far enough away for her to safely attempt what she was about to.
She put one foot on the doorknob, stepped up, and grabbed hold of the home’s fa?ade, where there was enough irregularity in the stonework to provide a space for her strong fingers to grip. She did a pull-up and then brought her weight down fully on the doorknob. She felt it bend but not break. She did this same maneuver twice more, and the knob sheared off.
She dropped to the ground and looked at her handiwork. With the knob gone the inner workings of the lock were revealed. She stuck her finger in the hole and, using considerable strength, managed to move back the mechanism controlling the lock.
She gave a push and the door swung open.
The next moment she was inside and her gun was out. She surveyed the area.
Her speculation that the place had been closed down seemed to be verified by the stuffy air and the dust covers over the furniture. She quickly and quietly searched the rooms on this level. When she was done Cain listened for a few moments until she heard the footsteps overhead together with muted voices. She found the stairs and took each riser with care.
She heard more footsteps and more muted voices. She froze and waited for a bit. Mercy suddenly realized that she had no idea what her sister sounded like. She quietly slipped back down the stairs and waited at the bottom in case whoever was up there decided to leave this way.
Five minutes later and growing impatient, she made her way up and reached the door at the top of the stairs.
Mercy inched it open and peered through the crack. What she saw was an expansive space, lavishly decorated, but again with the furniture covered. She opened the door enough to squeeze through and bent low, surveying the field in front and behind her.
She started to take a step forward but then stopped. She hadn’t heard any more footsteps or voices in quite a while. She straightened and started to race forward when she heard the vehicle start up.
She made it to the window in time to see an SUV roar out from somewhere and disappear between the hedges that lined the driveway. A moment later the Escalade followed suit.
“Damn,” exclaimed Mercy. She was torn between searching the rest of the house and rejoining Blum. Finally deciding that if her sister was here, they wouldn’t leave her behind, she left the way she had come. She ran flat-out to where she had left Blum in the Porsche in the church parking lot.
Only neither the SUV nor Carol Blum were there any longer.
CHAPTER