Chapter Sixty-Three

SUSAN PAUSED WITH me at the base of the stairs. I heard signs of life in the house for the first time since we had arrived. I was surprised at Driver’s stealth for his stockiness. As he retreated upstairs, I heard a floorboard or two creak. A piece of furniture moved slightly on a rug, pushed aside. Susan and I waited, silently plotting, trying to breathe through the adrenaline spike that the quick gunfight had inspired in both of us.

The stairwell was the most dangerous way for us to get upstairs. All Driver had to do was turn the corner and shoot down at us. We would have no cover whatsoever. Susan stepped close to me, her breath hot and damp on my face.

“We need to draw him away from the top of the stairs,” she said. “You go back out through the laundry, climb the drainpipe, and get in through one of the upstairs rooms. Draw him to you, and I’ll come up behind him.”

“He’ll see a move like that coming a mile away,” I said and shook my head. “If he hears a noise up there in one of the rooms, he’ll be sure it’s me.”

“Not if he thinks we’re both still down here,” Susan said. She pointed, and I peeked carefully around the corner of the stairwell. I could just see the tip of Driver’s shoe at the edge of the baseboard. It moved, and I looked up in time to see him duck back around the corner, having taken a moment to do the same thing—trying to catch a glimpse of the enemy.

I slipped my shoe off and crouched, positioning the toe of the shoe at the very edge of the baseboard so that it was visible to Driver from his position at the top of the stairs. As I backed away, Susan dashed across the bottom of the stairs. Two pops arrived from upstairs, the bullets puncturing the wall beside us, narrowly missing her as she arrived on the other side of the doorway. I heard the boards creek upstairs again as Driver leaned out to see if he’d hit her. Susan glanced at me and smiled, nodding.

For all Driver knew, we were both still positioned at the edges of the doorway at the bottom of the stairs.

I crept back through the eerily silent house to the laundry and slipped out the door into the night.