Runner (Sam Dryden Novel) (21 page)

“Treasure Island,”
Dryden said.

He stared at the distance for another moment, then looked at the houses on the screen again. Rachel wouldn’t need to be in the one right next to Holly’s to get in her head. She could do it from two or even three houses away. Maybe even from across the street.

“Interesting,” he said.

Rachel managed a smile.

Dryden opened a real estate site, entered Amarillo, selected the rental tab, and pulled up a map. Within thirty seconds he was staring at Holly’s house.

There were three apartments available within the necessary range. The best was a second-floor walk-up, two doors down. That would put Holly’s entire residence in a zone between thirty and sixty feet from Rachel.

“When can we be there?” Rachel asked.

Dryden looked at the clock in the corner of the screen. He did the math. “Midnight local time, give or take.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

He kept to five above the limit the whole way. They stopped twice for gas, and once at a hardware store to buy a metal file. Dryden burned another ten minutes using the tool on one of the house keys that hung from Dena Sobel’s key ring.

They pulled off I-40 into Amarillo at 12:35 Central Time. Dryden found a quiet parking lot a block and a half from Holly’s home. The night was cool and full of the smells of restaurant food and vehicle exhaust.

*   *   *

“Don’t look around for anyone watching,” Dryden said. “We’re two people walking home with groceries. Nothing more than that.”

They were on Holly’s street now, a hundred yards from the place they wanted. Dryden had the shopping bags Dena had bought in Modesto. The sidewalk was deserted and mostly dark. No sound in the night except the background hum of the city. The diesel groan of a bus trundling by, a few blocks over.

The building’s entry was locked, as expected. Dryden already had the modified key in his hand. A bump key, to use the common term. He had notched its blade into five equal-sized teeth, like little shark fins. With skill, a person could use one of these to bypass most of the standard door locks in the world. Dryden had used them in a dozen or more countries, at times when quiet entry into a structure was critical. In the years since his service, he’d never used anything less than a disc-tumbler lock for his own door. Those were immune to bump keys. They were also rare as hell.

The house two doors down from Holly’s had a standard lock. Dryden got through it about as quickly as he would’ve with the correct key. The apartment door, on the second-floor landing, was no more difficult.

The unit was bare of furniture. They left the lights off and locked the door behind them. The interior was like most empty apartments Dryden had seen: new paint on the walls, the air scented by carpet shampoo.

The moment they were inside with the door shut, Rachel went to the east wall—the closest she could get to Holly’s home—and shut her eyes. She stood there, leaning with her fingers splayed on the plaster, and said nothing for over a minute.

Dryden’s vision began adjusting to the gloom. The only light came from the glow of streetlamps against the closed window blinds and the blue LED display of the stove.

“You must be hearing fifty people from here,” Dryden said.

Rachel nodded. “It’s like trying to find one voice in a crowd.”

“It’s late. Maybe she’s sleeping.”

“I don’t think so. I can read people even when they’re asleep. Right now I’m getting a bunch of people in the building right beside us, and a few that are a lot farther away, in that direction. But in between, there’s a big space where there’s nobody. I think that’s Holly’s house. I think it’s empty.”

Rachel continued listening, waiting.

“Doctors keep strange hours,” Dryden said. “Don’t worry too much just yet.”

Rachel nodded again.

“You hearing anyone else?” Dryden asked. “Anyone Gaul might have sent?”

For a long time Rachel didn’t reply. Dryden saw her face tighten in concentration.

“Not that I can tell,” she said. “Even bad people’s thoughts are pretty normal, most of the time.”

She gave it another minute, then opened her eyes and turned from the wall.

Dryden went to the living room window; it faced out over the street in front of the building. He left the blinds closed but put his eye to the crack at their edge. From just the right angle he could see Holly’s front porch. A single newspaper lay atop the steps, in a plastic sleeve.

Dryden returned to the door, where he’d set down the groceries. He opened the bag with the gauze pads and disinfectant.

“Let’s have a look at your arm,” he said.

*   *   *

It was a quarter past two in the morning. Rachel had been asleep for an hour, curled on the floor near the wall. She’d made no sounds or sudden moves; that effect of the drug, at least, was long gone.

Dryden thought he could tell when she was dreaming, though: At times the chill at his temples seemed to intensify, doubling or tripling in strength. He’d gotten used to the steady background feel of it—it was there even when Rachel was asleep—but these swells and ebbs were something new. Some artifact of dream sleep, he guessed—uncontrolled activity, like rapid eye movement or night tremors.

He watched the blinds for the glow of headlights and listened for vehicles stopping or footsteps ticking on the sidewalk. Every time it happened he checked the window. So far, no arrivals at Holly Ferrel’s house. The paper lay right where it had been.

He’d familiarized himself with the apartment; it hadn’t taken long. There were five rooms: the kitchen, the living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. The second bedroom had a sliding door to a small balcony off the building’s rear. In the murky light outside, Dryden saw a narrow alley running east to west, paralleling the street in front. On the far side of the alley were a few more town houses, but mostly there were nondescript little buildings that could’ve been anything. Real estate offices. Travel agencies. Coffee shops. There were broad alleys between them, leading out to the next street over.

He was sitting now, his back to the wall beside the living room window. From this position he could check Holly’s porch just by turning his head.

He rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t slept in well over forty-eight hours. He dropped his hands to his sides and opened his eyes. If he kept them closed for any length of time he’d only get more tired.

He listened to the sounds of the building. The HVAC system humming. The dull bass of speakers somewhere upstairs. Laughter—drunk friends, men and women.

Life being lived.

“Do you ever think about trying again?”

He turned.

Rachel was lying with her head on her good arm, her eyes open. Regarding him.

“Having a family again, I mean,” she said.

“I don’t know. I guess I don’t. I haven’t, at least.”

He’d told her almost nothing about Trish and Erin—not by speaking, anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “There’s no way to keep from hearing it in your head, but I can shut up about it, if you want.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry.”

The song upstairs ended and another started. Dryden thought he recognized the bass rhythm—“Undercover of the Night,” by the Rolling Stones.

“You should be someone’s dad again,” Rachel said. “You’d be good at it. You are good at it.”

She got up and crossed to the window and sat down beside him. She leaned her head against his shoulder. A minute later she was asleep again.

*   *   *

It was twenty to four. The party upstairs had ended. There was no sound but Rachel’s breathing.

In Dryden’s peripheral vision, faint light rimmed the window blinds. A vehicle slowed and stopped close by.

Dryden turned and put his eye to the gap.

A dark sedan. Right in front of Holly’s house.

Two men got out fast; the driver stayed at the wheel. The two outside scanned the street up and down.

“Rachel,” Dryden said.

He nudged her gently with his elbow.

She came awake, disoriented. Looked around in the darkness. Then she understood. She cocked her head as if listening, though not with her ears.

“Two men in front of her house,” Dryden whispered. “Another inside a car. Can you read them?”

She nodded.

“Anyone else in the car?” Dryden asked.

Rachel shook her head.

Dryden was still watching them. The two men finished surveying the street. They went up the front walk, unlocked Holly’s door, and went in. Dryden could almost see Rachel’s attention swinging to follow them, her head tilting, turning by tiny degrees.

“Their thoughts are like a checklist,” she said. “Kitchen clear. Front bath clear. Hallway clear.”

“Sounds like a security sweep,” Dryden said. “Making sure the place is empty before the owner comes home.”

Holly had bodyguards working for her. Interesting.

Rachel continued listening. Dryden pictured the two men checking the place, room by room, proceeding methodically upward through its stories.

They came back out five minutes later and stood sentry on the porch. One of them picked up the paper and set it inside. The sedan pulled away, and for a long time after that nothing happened.

At 4:05 by the clock on the stove, the sedan came back. One of the men on the porch went down the walk to meet it. He opened the vehicle’s back door, and a woman emerged. Forty years old, give or take. Small frame, delicate features. Though the light wasn’t great, Dryden could see it was the woman from the hospital Web site photo.

Rachel was already locked onto her.

Dryden watched the security officer escort Holly to the front door. She went in alone, and the man took up his position again.

Dryden thought of what Rachel had said the other night: how tricky it was to get useful information from a person’s thoughts. How often were thoughts even arranged into coherent sentences? How often were they just fragments of recent conversations, random images?

For five minutes Rachel said nothing. Sometimes she closed her eyes and seemed to concentrate harder.

“She’s writing an e-mail,” Rachel said. “It’s medical stuff about someone named Laney. I don’t know what half the words mean. I think some of them are the names of drugs.”

Dryden felt the cool sensation at his temples spike again. No doubt a result of Rachel’s intense focus. He said nothing about it—hardly thought about it, even. All his attention went to wondering what the next hour might tell them.

“Sent,” Rachel said.

She was quiet for another minute. Her concentration seemed almost to put her in a trance. Her eyelids slipped halfway shut.

Then they opened wide. She startled as if someone had prodded her.

Dryden didn’t ask. He waited.

Rachel got her feet under her and stood. She went to the east wall as if pulled there by whatever she was hearing in Holly Ferrel’s head.

“What the hell?” Rachel whispered.

Dryden stood, too. He was about to step away from the wall when he heard a sound: creaking wood.

Floorboards.

Someone was outside the apartment’s door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Rachel heard it, too. Her fix on Holly’s thoughts broke. She spun fast and stared at the door, then at Dryden.

Dryden stooped and took the SIG SAUER from where he’d set it on the floor. He moved out from the wall, putting himself diagonal to the door, ten feet away. Rachel came to his side.

Dryden’s eyes went to the gap where the door met the threshold. The dim stairwell light, just visible through the crack, was interrupted in two places.

Shadows of feet. Someone standing there. Not proceeding to higher floors or descending to the exit. Just standing right there on the landing, trying to be quiet.

For less than half a second Dryden considered the possibilities. Then he pushed all the questions away. No time.

He thought,
Rachel, go to the back bedroom
.
Open the slider. I’m right behind you
.

She didn’t hesitate. She turned and vanished into the darkness of the hall. Dryden followed, walking backward, keeping his eyes and the SIG trained on the door.

He heard the slider drag open as he entered the bedroom. Behind him, Rachel’s shoes padded onto the metal surface of the balcony—it was more like a fire escape without a ladder.

Dryden reached behind himself, felt the edge of the slider’s door frame, and backed through it. Across the bedroom and down the length of the hall, he could still see the apartment’s front door. Could still see the double shadow in the gap.

The doorknob rattled. Rachel flinched at the sound.

Dryden swung his head around and took in the space behind the row of town houses, the layout he’d studied earlier. He considered the buildings on the opposite side, and the offshoot alleys leading away between them. One alley was darker than the rest: a narrow passage between a four-story house and a two-story brick building. Dryden liked the look of it as an escape route. He’d liked it when he’d first seen it, hours before, and by force of habit had considered it repeatedly since then.

Forty feet away through the depth of the apartment, the knob rattled again.

Dryden put a leg over the rail and planted his foot at the balcony’s edge, pointed inward between the balusters. He followed with the other leg, then gestured for Rachel to do the same. He held her good arm with his free hand as she swung herself over.

Something—a shoulder or a foot—thudded hard against the apartment’s front door.

Dryden looked down: flat, empty pavement beneath the balcony, ten feet below them.

He stuffed the SIG in his rear waistband and took hold of Rachel’s wrist.

“Know what I’m doing?” he whispered.

She nodded, nervous but ready.

He lifted her clear of the balcony by the wrist, his other hand gripping the rail. He crouched fast, bringing his seat down onto his ankles, his arm extending as far down as he could reach, until Rachel’s feet were no more than eighteen inches above the pavement. He let go and heard her land lightly; her balance faltered and then she regained it and stepped back, clearing his way. He rose, pushed off the edge with his feet, swung down, and dropped to the ground.