One of the quirks of modern home-security systems was that many didn’t consider the garage part of the house. It meant that the countdown to enter the disarm code didn’t begin until the door from the garage into the house opened. That would be fine except that the signals from most commercial garage door openers weren’t encrypted and were remarkably simple to spoof with the right equipment. Unfortunately for Damon Ogden, both his garage door and his alarm system fell into those categories.
A week earlier, Gibson had come out with a simple device he’d cobbled together from a child’s electronic toy. It cycled garage-door codes and found Ogden’s in less than two minutes. Gibson had then programmed that code into the generic, replacement garage-door opener in the pocket of his running jacket. With the push of a button, he triggered Ogden’s garage door now, strolled casually up to the house, and ducked inside.
Gibson shut the garage door and looked around. Despite the single-car garage being packed to the rafters, it didn’t offer many places to hide. Gibson added “neat freak” to Ogden’s list of crimes against humanity. The boxes, meticulously labeled and stacked along one wall, offered no cover. His best bet was the small blind in the corner created by a kayak and two bicycles hanging vertically from a rack.
Gibson squatted on an overturned metal bucket to wait. When the motion-activated light clicked off, he was ready with a flashlight but let out a small involuntary cry anyway. To pass the time, he rummaged through his backpack, flashlight between his teeth, and rearranged his gear. He pulled on a pair of double-layer latex gloves and a surgical hairnet.
That took all of three minutes.
Then he sat in the dark of the garage and waited. With all his experience, he would have thought that he’d be an old hand at loneliness. But he hadn’t had a real conversation since the farm, and the lack of human interaction ate at him. Objectively, he knew it was good that Bear and Duke didn’t come around as often. It meant he was improving. But they’d been his only companionship for eighteen soul-crushing months. Even if they were only figments of his psychosis, they were his friends. And he missed them.
Gibson flicked off the flashlight and counted slowly to ten. When he turned it back on, he could feel himself shaking. He let a few minutes pass and tried again, this time to eleven. When his heart stopped pounding, he told himself, he would go to twelve.
The motor for the garage door cranked to life. The sudden noise startled Gibson, who dropped his flashlight. It rolled toward the middle of the garage, beam playing crazily over the walls. Gibson watched all his planning come unraveled with a strange, detached fascination. Then miraculously, the flashlight made a U-turn of its own accord and rolled back to Gibson. He scooped it up gratefully and pressed back against the wall as headlights spilled across the garage. The car eased into its spot, and the engine cut off.
Gibson held his breath.
The driver’s side door opened, but Ogden took a moment to balance his briefcase, coffee cup, phone, and keys. Gibson studied him in the dome light. He’d expected a rush of emotion when he saw Damon Ogden again, but in truth he felt only confusion. The man in the car didn’t look anything like the man he remembered. Obviously they’d met under less than ideal circumstances—Ogden had been on the wrong end of a beating that night, and the Wolstenholme Hotel had been a war zone. But even so, Gibson would have sworn that he’d know Ogden anywhere. How couldn’t he? It was the last human face he had seen for eighteen months. The last voice he’d thought he would ever hear. Their lives were bound together inexorably because of that night in West Virginia. So how could Gibson not know him? How could this man be a stranger to him?
Gibson realized that he had a more pressing concern—his hiding place blocked Ogden’s view from the car, but there would be a brief window, between the car and the house door, when he would be in Ogden’s field of vision. If Ogden looked this way, he’d have no chance of subduing him quietly, if at all. It would be an all-out brawl, and not one Gibson could be sure of winning, even if he’d been anywhere close to fighting shape. Anyway, that wasn’t the plan.
He drew his gun and thumbed the safety off.
The plan hinged on Ogden not knowing the identity of his abductor. It also required that Ogden go into the house and disable the alarm. Gibson needed access to the house, and the security company’s log had to show Ogden arriving home as usual. Because when investigators looked at the record of Ogden’s cell phone, it would show the phone connecting to a tower in his neighborhood. If Ogden never made it inside the house, then investigators would pinpoint exactly when and where Ogden had disappeared. That would hand them the crime scene, which would shift the odds against Gibson considerably.
Ogden pushed the car door closed with his hip. Gibson crouched lower, his pulse like a freight train in his ears. One step. Then another. Gibson held his breath—one more step and they’d be staring soulfully into each other’s eyes. Gibson pressed the button on his garage remote. The garage door began to close, seemingly on its own. Ogden froze, looking around for an explanation—the button by the door into the house, the car itself, then accusingly up at the garage door motor on the ceiling. Gibson used the distraction to break cover, the rumble of the garage door covering any noise he made. He dropped prone alongside the car as the garage door shuddered to a close. In the silence that followed, he watched Ogden’s feet under the car turn in a slow, confused circle. Gibson willed him away.
Go on. Go on. You know how glitchy those motors can be.
Ogden and his feet finally took the hint. Gibson breathed a sigh of relief as Ogden opened the house door. The shrill, staccato bleat of the alarm cried out until Ogden punched in the code to deactivate it. Gibson rose to a crouch, counted to thirty, and slipped into the house after him.
Although he’d never been inside Ogden’s home, Gibson knew that the garage connected to a combination laundry room and pantry. He knew because all the houses in Ogden’s development were based on a few standard models. Two like Ogden’s were currently on the market, and the floor plans were posted helpfully on the real estate agent’s website for prospective buyers to admire. Or prospective home invaders to memorize.