Part 63 (1/2)
”Just let me ... wait.”
”Oh, sure, now it's wait after you've-”
”Wait.” He set her aside, his face stony now. She followed his gaze to the alarm panel.
”How did you manage to smudge that up? I'll clean it tomorrow,” she said, reaching for him.
”I didn't.” He stepped over, examined the door. ”I think the door's been forced. Don't touch anything,” he snapped when she went to him. ”Call the police. Now.”
She dug into her bag, then her hands froze when he pulled a knife out of the block. ”Oh G.o.d, Eli.”
”If there's any trouble, you run. Do you hear me? You go out that door and you run, and don't stop until you're safe.”
”No, and now you wait.” She punched numbers on the phone. ”Vinnie, it's Abra. Eli and I just got back to Bluff House. We think someone's broken in. We don't know if he's still here. In the kitchen. Yes. Yes. Okay. He's coming,” she told Eli. ”He's calling it in on the way. He wants us to stay right where we are. If we see or hear anything, we go out, and get gone.”
Her heart picked up another speed when she saw Eli's gaze turn toward the bas.e.m.e.nt door. ”If you go down there, I go down there.”
Ignoring her, he walked to the door, turned the k.n.o.b. ”It's locked from this side. The way I left it.” Still holding the knife, he walked to the back door, unlocked it, opened it, then crouched.
”Fresh marks here. Back door, facing the beach at night. n.o.body to see. He had to know I wasn't here. How did he know?”
”He must be watching the house. He must have seen you leave.”
”On foot,” Eli remembered. ”If I'd just been taking a walk, I might have been gone for ten, fifteen minutes. It's a lot of risk.”
”He might've followed you, seen you go into the bar. A calculated risk that he'd have more time.”
”Maybe.”
”The alarm pad.” Still wary, Abra edged a bit closer. ”I've seen that somewhere-TV, movies-I thought it was just made up. Spraying something on the pad so the oil from fingerprints comes up. You know what numbers have been pressed. Then a computer thing runs different patterns until it breaks the code.”
”Something like that. It's how he might've gotten in before, when my grandmother was here. He could've gotten her keys, made copies. Just let himself the f.u.c.k in after that. But he didn't know we'd changed the code, so he cut the power the last time when the old code didn't work.”
”That makes him stupid.”
”Maybe desperate or panicked. Maybe just p.i.s.sed off.”
”You want to go down there. I can see it. You want to know if he started digging again. Vinnie will be here any minute.”
If he went down and she came with him, and anything happened, he'd be responsible. If he went down and she stayed put, and anything happened, he'd be responsible.
So, Eli concluded, he was stuck.
”I was gone about three hours. G.o.d d.a.m.n it, I gave him a nice, big window.”
”What are you supposed to do? Pull a Miss Havisham and never leave the house?”