Chapter 4
1054 Words
4
Trevor pulled up to the curb a few houses down from where Simon Reid lived and turned off the car. He turned to Kira.
“Gum?” he asked. He pulled a pack from the bag at Kira’s feet with a rustle and offered it to her.
Kira ran her tongue over her teeth and nodded. Protein bars and energy drinks didn’t make for a pleasant aftertaste. Her mouth tasted gritty and sour. She eagerly accepted two pieces of gum and popped them into her mouth with a crunch. The pungent flavor of peppermint flooded her nose and mouth, making her eyes water.
She knew it had been a risk going back to her apartment to get her car. Some of Ginette’s people might be watching and decide to follow. But Kira suspected most, if not all of the Pale Lady’s followers had been involved in the abduction of Simon Reid. Even if some of them had managed to escape, they would be floundering about what to do next.
And they would already know where their quarry was without having to use Kira to lead them—Simon Reid was in police custody down at the precinct.
Kira’s blue Corolla fit in with the rest of the vehicles parked along the street. Any of Trevor’s luxury cars would have stood out like a sore thumb.
She gave Trevor a few moments to finish his own breakfast of power bars as she looked up and down the street.
The houses were smaller here than in the area where her parents lived—townhouses for the most part, with a driveway, but no garage. The front yards were minimal stretches of grass. All of the windows along the street were dark. No other vehicles moved. The cul-de-sac was a few streets removed from the main road.
Kira eyed number seventeen—the house were Simon Reid made his home. Where the Procurer made his home, now.
The driveway was empty. There was no sign of Reid’s purple Kia compact.
Not that she was surprised. The Procurer had probably driven it to the retirement home before Ginette’s men had jumped him.
The eastern sky was brightening. It would be dawn soon.
They needed to get inside the house before then.
“Finished?” she asked Trevor as he washed down the last of his energy drink in a series of loud gulps. She slipped on a pair of latex gloves with a snap and tossed Trevor a pair.
“Yup.” He crammed a small handful of gum into his mouth and started chewing. “Let’s get our skulk on.”
Or at least, that’s what Kira thought he said. She winced as he forced the words around the solid mass of gum in his mouth. She shook her head to herself and got out of the car.
She opened one of the back doors to retrieve her laptop bag. She had grabbed it from the apartment when she and Trevor had swung by to get her car, filling Rob in on all the details of what had happened while they were there. In addition to her laptop and several other tech accessories, the bag held her set of lock picks. She crammed the rest of the latex gloves inside as well.
She didn’t know what they were going to find inside Reid’s house, but she wanted to be prepared. She made sure to ease both doors shut, locking them behind her. With one last look around, she headed toward Reid’s house. Trevor followed behind her, slipping on his own pair of gloves.
Kira bypassed the front door in favor of circling around the side. Picking the lock might take some time, and she didn’t want to be too visible when the sun came up and people starting stirring. The dew-soaked grass made no sound against her sneakers, but the damp soaked through to her socks, making them cold and wet against her feet. She suppressed a shiver.
Kira crouched at a windowed side door in the predawn shadows and pulled out her lock picks. Her ponytail fell over her shoulder to brush against her cheek. She did her best to ignore it.
She had tried to use as many opportunities as possible to practice since acquiring them a few months ago, but it was difficult to find targets to work on without arousing any suspicion. Still, she was fairly confident her skills would be up to the challenge of the side door of a townhouse. It wasn’t as if Reid’s home was Fort Knox.
She slid her pick into the lock and went to work, using both sound and feel to guide her small movements. She frowned as she heard a heavy, ceramic scrape behind her. She shushed Trevor over her shoulder.
“Kira—” He spoke her name in a harsh whisper.
“Not now, I’m working.”
Trevor remained silent, but only for a moment. “Is it going to take long?”
Kira ground her teeth in annoyance. “It’ll take a lot longer, if you don’t shut up.”
“Wouldn’t it be faster—” Trevor took an involuntary step backward as Kira craned her neck to glare at him.
“Do you want to do this?” she snapped in a low voice.
He surprised her by offering a shrug. “Sure.”
She rose to her feet and stepped aside with a magnanimous gesture that dripped of sarcasm. “Be my guest.” She held out the lock pick with a flat look.
“Can I use this instead?” A key glinted in Trevor’s hand.
“Where did you get that?” she demanded.
Trevor lifted his broad shoulders in another shrug. “Under there.” He jerked his blond head in the direction of a nearby ceramic planter that housed a cluster of dried out and decaying geraniums.
Kira gave both Trevor and the planter a skeptical look. “Are you serious? I’ve only seen people hide spare keys like that on TV.”
Trevor smiled. “That’s what gave me the idea.”
“The Procurer would never—” Kira caught herself.
The Procurer would never have hidden a key there, but Simon Reid might have. And from the state of the geraniums, they hadn’t been tended in some time—most likely since before the real Simon Reid had disappeared. It was entirely possible the Procurer didn’t even know the key was there.
“Here, give me that,” Kira said.
She jammed her picks into her bag and snatched the key from Trevor’s hand. She tried sliding it into the side door lock.
It fit perfectly.
“Huh,” Kira said to herself. She shook her head in disbelief.
She wasn’t used to things going her way. It almost made her uneasy… She shook off the feeling and turned the key. The door unlocked with a soft click.
She ignored Trevor’s smirk of satisfaction and went inside.
- Writer
