Author: James Hankins
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/james-hankins/page,17,260489-shady_cross.html
“Hello,” he said.
“In a few hours you’ll see your daughter again,” the kidnapper said. “You ready?”
Stokes still couldn’t tell whether it was Iron Mike on the line or Danny DeMarco. It didn’t matter, so he stopped thinking about it.
“Just about.”
“Good. She’s sleeping. Want me to wake her again?”
Stokes wanted to talk to Amanda, to make sure she was OK—as inconvenient as the hourly calls from the kidnappers had been, Stokes now definitely understood Paul’s need to talk to her every hour—but he’d already woken her once. He didn’t want to wake her again into the nightmare she’d find when she opened her eyes.
“Nah, just put the phone up to her face. I wanna hear her breathing.”
“Whatever.”
A moment later, Stokes heard peaceful breaths coming over the phone line, a rhythmic breathing that took him back to the little breaths he’d felt on his neck thirteen years ago. After a moment, the breathing was gone, replaced by the kidnapper’s voice.
“Satisfied?”
“Yeah.”
“Talk to you in an hour.”
The line went dead. Stokes pocketed the phone, then left the security of the moon shadow beneath the big tree and hurried across Wiggins and Martz’s beautifully tended lawn, around the back of the house, across a small brick patio, to a back door. As usual, he carried the bag of money on his back. In his pocket were Officer Martinson’s pepper spray and the last of his plastic ties. Crammed into the backpack with the money was the cop’s baton. Stokes had chosen to leave the gun in the car. He really didn’t want to kill anyone else today. Besides, the men inside were in their midsixties. He figured that if things went wrong, the threat of the baton should be enough. He took off his leather jacket and shrugged out of his western shirt, leaving him in his black T-shirt. He put the jacket back on, then wrapped the cowboy shirt tightly around his head, adjusting it so the eyeholes he’d cut a few minutes ago in the car lined up properly with his eyes before tying it tight in back. In the outer pocket of the backpack were the black gloves and the small leather case he’d taken from the storm drain at the trailer park.
He knelt by the back door, in the shadow of the house, and peered into the window in the door. He saw an alarm panel on the kitchen wall just inside. A little indicator light glowed red, telling him the alarm was activated. A green light would have been too much to hope for. Stokes looked at his watch. This could go relatively quickly or this could take a while, depending on whether the cops showed up. He hoped he’d finally get a break and it would go quickly. He knew he didn’t have a guardian angel, but if Amanda Jenkins did, maybe it would start pulling its weight.
He removed the gloves from the backpack, slipped them on, and inspected the door. Maybe Amanda Jenkins had a guardian angel watching over her after all. He’d gotten lucky with the lock on the door. No dead bolt, just a key-in-lock knob, which meant that to lock it from the inside, you’d push a button or turn a little knob on the doorknob inside the house. To unlock it from the outside, you’d just insert a key into the knob and turn. Easiest lock to pick, and it told Stokes how he might get around the security system. Perhaps the old guys believed that their beefed-up system would deter any future prowlers from even attempting to break in. Or if a burglar did break in, the resulting shriek of the alarm would send him running into the night. Whatever their reasoning, it was Stokes’s good fortune.
He examined the lock briefly before removing the leather case from the backpack. Inside were the gleaming tools of his part-time trade: his set of lock picks. It was a damn-fine set. Sixty-nine pieces, including single-ball and double-ball picks, large and small diamond picks, short-hook picks and long-hook picks, C- and S- and L- and W-rake picks, and eight different tension tools. He even had twenty-eight picks and tools for use specifically in Europe, though Stokes had never had occasion to use those and couldn’t imagine he ever would. A beautiful lock pick set, worth close to two hundred bucks. It was far more than Stokes ever needed, and he’d never have bought it for himself. He’d won it from Lenny the delivery guy in the same poker game where he’d heard that Wiggins and Martz kept money under their floorboards. Stokes had been cleaned out of cash and had to toss his forty-buck lock pick snap gun into the pot. The snap gun was limited in its use, really only good for opening pin-and-tumbler locks, and when Lenny had raised his bet by tossing the gorgeous lock pick set into the pot, Stokes had been forced to call the bet with his brand new HJC motorcycle helmet. Three jacks had been enough to take the pot. Just four hands later, though, he lost his shiny new lock picks back to Lenny, when he’d held a king-high straight and Lenny had pulled a goddamn flush on the seventh and final goddamn card. So a week later, Stokes was pleased to find that the door to Lenny’s apartment had a pin-and-tumbler lock, on which Stokes’s trusty old snap gun was perfectly effective. He broke into the apartment and took nothing but the expensive lock pick set he’d won and lost. Lenny had a good idea who’d stolen it, but he wasn’t about to call the cops or report the loss to his insurance company, and the poor bastard got himself pinched for carjacking not long after, before he’d had the chance to get his picks back. Perhaps he was sitting in prison at that very moment, dreaming of the day he’d be released and could get his hands on his beautiful lock picks again.
Stokes selected a torsion wrench and the lock pick he wanted and got to work. He tried extraordinarily hard not to leave marks on the knob. Normally, he wouldn’t have cared. But tonight it was important not to leave visible traces of his efforts. After a few brief moments, less than a minute and a half, he stuck the lock pick and torsion wrench into his back pocket. The door was unlocked. If he pushed it inward, the alarm would sound.
He pushed it in and the alarm screamed.
Stokes quickly reached around the door and felt the little button on the doorknob. He pressed it in and pulled the door shut as quietly as he could, locking it again. He scooped up the backpack and sprinted across the yard toward the trees lining the back of the property.
The alarm wailed.
Stokes slipped behind a thick tree trunk in a deep, dark shadow and watched the house. A light snapped on in an upstairs room. He glanced at the windows of the neighbors’ houses. They remained dark, despite the shrieking alarm. A light clicked on downstairs in the Wiggins-Martz house, apparently in the foyer by the front door—Stokes could see its glow through the dark kitchen at the back of the house. No doubt there was an alarm panel by the front door, too, its indicator lights flashing frantically at that moment, a robotic voice saying over and over, “Intruder alert,” or, more likely, something like, “Fault, kitchen door.” A moment later, the alarm stopped. Either Wiggins or Martz had turned it off.
Stokes watched. Depending on how they had arranged things with their alarm company, either the cops would arrive shortly, or the company, which had received the alarm signal, would call the house to see whether there was indeed a break-in or whether, perhaps, the alarm had been tripped accidentally. A second later, Stokes heard a phone ring inside the house. That was good. Either Wiggins or Martz was probably telling the alarm company that everything appeared to be all right. A light snapped on in the kitchen, and Stokes saw one of the men—it looked like Martz, who had a full head of gray hair, as opposed to Wiggins, who was bald—appear at the back door. He wore blue silk pajamas and had a portable phone at his ear. He bent down to look at the knob, must have seen that it was locked. Stokes could see he looked a little sleepy and very puzzled. A moment later, he stepped to the alarm panel, pressed some buttons, and walked away, turning off the light as he went. Stokes watched the lights in the house turn off in reverse order, marking Martz’s progress back up to his bedroom. When the light turned off in that room, too, Stokes checked his watch.
Ten minutes later, he slipped from the shadows of the trees, leaving his backpack behind, and hurried back across the lawn to the shado
w of the house. He knelt by the back door again, saw the red light on the alarm panel, and took the lock pick and tension tool from his back pocket. Barely a minute later, he pushed the door open, setting the alarm screaming again, locked the door from inside as before, and pulled it shut quickly but quietly, before racing back across the lawn to his hiding place. By the time he got there, the light was already on in the upstairs bedroom.
He waited.
The light came on in the upstairs hallway, followed by the light in the foyer downstairs. A moment later, the alarm fell silent. Stokes looked at the houses to either side of the Victorian. Still dark. Inside the Victorian, the phone rang. Light bloomed in the kitchen, and Stokes saw Martz stride across the room to the back door. He tested the knob again, saw it was still locked. He looked more puzzled than before, a little less sleepy, and quite a bit more frustrated. He ran his hand around the doorframe, as if that would tell him anything. He opened the door and inspected the outside knob. This was a critical moment. The man likely didn’t have an eye trained to spot subtle marks left by a decent lock-picker, but Stokes sweated it out for a couple of seconds anyway. But he needn’t have worried. His careful work had left nothing for an untrained eye to spot, and Martz closed the door, no doubt locking it again. He set the alarm yet again and left the kitchen in darkness behind him.
Stokes trotted back to the house, ran through the same routine, and was back behind his tree before the alarm had been shrieking for six seconds. Lights came on in the house again, in the now familiar pattern—bedroom, upstairs hallway, downstairs foyer. This time lights turned on upstairs in the colonial to the left of the Victorian. A silhouette appeared at the window. Stokes knew he couldn’t be seen where he was hiding, especially not by someone standing in a room with the lights on, so he returned his attention to the Victorian. The alarm ceased. The phone rang. Light flooded the kitchen again, but this time both gray-haired Martz, in his blue pajamas, holding the telephone to his ear, and smooth-headed Wiggins, in paisley silk pajamas, crossed the room to the back door. They both tested the knob and found it to be locked. Martz reported that to the alarm company. They both inspected the door frame, and Martz reported those findings, too. Stokes shifted so he was fully behind the tree now, peering out through a tangle of low branches, all but invisible from the house. Both Martz and Wiggins opened the door and inspected the knob on the outside. Martz said something into the phone, then spoke to Wiggins again. Stokes couldn’t hear what they were saying. They debated for a while before Martz lowered the phone and ended the call with a punch of a button.
Stokes watched closely.
The older men pulled the door shut. They left the kitchen, turning off lights as they made their way back upstairs.
They hadn’t reactivated the alarm.
Stokes looked up at the neighbor’s window. It was dark again.
He checked his watch: 11:36. He waited two more minutes before recrossing the lawn, backpack over his shoulder this time. He looked through the window of the back door and saw the light on the alarm panel glowing green. He took the tools from his back pocket and unlocked the door. He returned the tools to their leather case, returned the case to the backpack, and stepped into the quiet house. He doubted the old guys were asleep just yet. More likely they were debating just what to say tomorrow to the alarm company that had obviously installed a defective system.
Stokes moved through the house. Enough light spilled in through the various bay windows to guide him through the living room and into the den. Even in the dim light he could see that the place was beautifully furnished, probably with valuable antiques. The rooms were a little emptier than he would have expected, his mind conjuring images of dusty old houses he’d seen in movies, crammed with solid, imposing pieces of furniture—armoires, secretaries, bookcases, whatever. Perhaps the old guys liked things a little less cramped. Perhaps that was better taste. Stokes had no idea.
He saw a rectangular area rug in the center of the floor of the den. He put his backpack down and very quietly moved two armchairs and a small, round table to the side of the room. Rolling back one end of the rug, he saw in the floor a little wooden trapdoor—maybe two feet square—with a small, recessed metal handle. He pulled on the handle and the trapdoor swung up.
In the space beneath it was a combination safe.
Lenny never mentioned a safe.
Damn it.
This complicated things. Stokes wasn’t a safecracker. Now, he would have to—
A sound made him turn around. Martz was standing in the doorway pointing a big handgun at him. Wiggins stood beside him. The son of a bitch had a gun, too.
TWENTY
11:43 P.M.
“PLEASE PUT YOUR HANDS UP,” Wiggins said. His bald head looked shiny, like a sheen of perspiration had sprouted on it. Stokes figured he was probably nervous. He also figured that if he were bald, he’d probably have the same sheen on his head just then. Staring into two gun barrels was making him a little anxious, too. He raised his hands.
“Easy, fellas,” he said. “Careful with those things.”
“We know how to use them,” Wiggins said. “It might surprise you to know that we both served in the military. It’s where we met.”
“I did two tours in Vietnam,” Martz said. “I’ve killed people,” he added, not proudly, just stating a fact.
“I haven’t killed anyone,” Wiggins said, “but I could in the right circumstances. I’m sure of it.”
“The point is,” Martz continued, “we know how to use these weapons and are willing to do so if we must. You understand?”
Stokes looked at the way they held their guns. They weren’t just a couple of senior citizens who bought guns for protection, then stored them unloaded on the top shelf of a closet, behind a hatbox and a stack of moth-eaten cardigans, praying they’d never have to use them. No, the guns rested comfortably in their hands. They knew what they were doing.
“Yeah,” Stokes said, “I understand.”
“Good,” Martz said. “Now, at first we thought something was wrong with our security system, with the sensor on our back door, just like you wanted us to think. We’d gotten back upstairs again when we got to thinking that we’d spent a heck of a lot of money on our system—”
“A heck of a lot,” Wiggins interjected. “So we thought maybe the system was working just fine after all, and maybe somebody wanted us to think our system was faulty so we’d leave it turned off.”
Martz nodded at his partner. “So we left it off, just like you wanted, only we came back downstairs—”
“In the dark this time.”
“Right, in the dark, but this time we brought our guns with us.”
Stokes waited for Martz to add something, to continue the little dance these two did, finishing each other’s thoughts and sentences like an old married couple, which was essentially what they were. But he said nothing.
“Mind pointing those things somewhere else?” Stokes asked.
“I don’t think so,” Martz said. “Now please, take off your mask.”
Stokes didn’t see any way he could refuse, so he tugged the shirt from his face and let it fall to the floor.
Martz studied Stokes’s face. He turned to Wiggins. “Do we know him?”
“We don’t,” Wiggins said. “Unless he’s the one who broke in here a few years ago, threatened to hurt you until we gave him our money.”
“Wasn’t me,” Stokes said.
Martz ignored that. He looked at Wiggins. “Is he the same one?”
“I’m not,” Stokes insisted. They continued to scrutinize him, and Stokes realized that his fate might rest on whether he could convince them that he wasn’t the guy who had previously traumatized them. “It wasn’t me. That guy’s name was Lenny, and he’s in prison now and will be for another seven or eight years.”
Wiggins and Martz seemed to think about that. �
�You came here to rob us,” Wiggins said. It wasn’t a question.
“That’s right.”
“Not a very good idea.”
“I see that now.”
“Are you armed?”
Staring at the two older gentlemen with the big guns, Stokes formed a radical plan. He’d try the truth on these guys, see where it got him. It was either that or rush them, and he wasn’t eager to do that, not with a couple of Vietnam vets, at least one of whom had seen action and who claimed to have killed and wouldn’t be afraid to do so again—a claim Stokes wasn’t eager to put to the test.
“I’ve got a policeman’s baton in my backpack here,” he said.
“Where’d you get a policeman’s baton?” Martz asked.
“From a policeman.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“Just a little. But I talked to him after, and he was fine. He even offered to forget the whole thing.” Which was technically true, though Stokes left out the part about having to let Martinson go free if he wanted that forgiveness.
Martz nodded, thinking. “That bag looks like it’s got more than just a policeman’s baton in it. What else do you have in there?”
Sticking with his truthfulness plan, Stokes started his answer by saying, “First, let me tell you why I’m here.”
“You’re here to try to rob us,” Wiggins said.
“Well, yeah, I am. But let me tell you why.” Before they could object, he continued. “A little girl has been kidnapped. She’s six years old, I think. I’ve talked to her. She’s scared. Both her parents are dead. And her stepmother, believe it or not, was actually in on it with the kidnappers. They want three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, or they’ll kill the girl.”
Wiggins nodded as he listened. Martz frowned.
“Who is she to you?” Wiggins asked. “The little girl.”
“Nobody. Never met her.”