Chapter 4 #2
“Did you notice any other buildings that lost power?” I glance in the rear view mirror to check. But with the dark, the increasing snow, and the relative isolation of the property on the outskirts of town, it’s hard to tell.
“Not in town,” Nora answers. “There could be something wrong with the generator, I suppose.”
“It’s possible.” A splinter of unease pricks at me. Not that anything overly unusual is going on—we lose power at least a few times a year, which is why Cole had the generator installed, and generators I’m sure have been known to fail.
But there’s just this feeling.
As I turn into the driveway and pull to a stop in front of the gate, Nora says, “I’m getting a feeling. Are you?”
“Yeah.” The splinter digs deeper. If Nora’s feeling it too, I’m much more concerned.
I lower the window to enter the passcode into the keypad, but the buttons are stubbornly dark. I poke at them, belatedly realizing if the power is out, the mechanism for the gate probably won’t work, either. “Shit.”
Nora leans across my lap to look. “Shoot. If the power’s out, the security system won’t let us in.”
“Is there a manual override?”
Nora thinks. “Inside, there is.” She pauses. “I hate to wake someone up to open it, but it’s better than scaling the fence.”
“How about Hanna?” I suggest. “She’s usually up late. And we don’t have to worry about waking up the kids by calling.”
“True.” Nora pulls out her phone and taps the screen a few times. “Anyway, I’m sure she won’t mind.”
But seconds later, she lowers the phone with a frown. “It went straight to voicemail.”
“Maybe she turned it off accidentally. Or the battery died while she was working in the darkroom, and she never realized.”
Nora doesn’t look convinced. “Maybe.” She taps the screen again, then raises the phone to her ear. “I’ll try Rylan. Since he and Charlie are both home, it won’t be—”
“What?”
“It went straight to voicemail again.”
After a worried glance in my direction, Nora tries her phone again. Her expression grows grimmer as the seconds go by. “No one is answering,” she finally says. “I tried everyone. And each time, it just went right to voicemail.”
The splinter of unease wedges deeper. “I’m going to check the gate,” I say. “Just to see. You stay in the car. And if anything happens—”
“Stay in the car?” Nora shoots me an are you kidding look. “If you’re checking the gate, you’d better believe I’m going to have your six.”
Right. I don’t know what I was thinking. As if my wife would ever sit passively in the car while I investigate potential danger. “Fine,” I reply. “But at least let me go first.”
Yes, I’m aware that Nora is just as capable—shit, probably more capable—than me. She was trained for this kind of thing, while, as a Night Stalker, I was more focused on flying. But fuck, she’s my wife. I should be protecting her.
Nora’s already out of the car by the time I reach the passenger side. The wind tugs at her hair, pulling it free of her braid. Her chin is held high, and her shoulders are squared. Her jacket is half unzipped, no doubt to provide easy access to the Sig I know she has tucked inside.
“After you,” she says while gesturing at the gate. Her lips twitch. She knows as well as I do that she could easily go first. But she also knows how I feel, and she’s okay with it.
As we approach the gate, a sense of foreboding settles over me. It’s like the time when I got the call telling me Adam and Vince had been killed. As soon as the phone rang, I just knew it was bad news. And my instinct was right.
But that was different, I reassure myself. Adam and Vince were on an op. They were piloting a Black Hawk through enemy territory. Death was always a possibility. Here, we’re supposed to be safe.
Safe like Nora thought she was before that asshole abducted her? a doubtful voice whispers in my head. Safe like Finn and Hanna thought they were, before the garage was bombed? Safe like Charlie thought she was right before she was snatched up by her stalker right in downtown Sleepy Hollow?
“I’m getting a bad feeling,” Nora whispers. “I can’t explain it. I just am.”
Though I want to tell her not to worry, I’m not going to lie to her. “I know. But maybe it’s nothing. Maybe—”
As my hand touches the gate, it begins to swing open.
My heart stalls.
It’s not supposed to do that.
Ever.
If the power goes off, there’s supposed to be an automatic shutdown. All the doors and gates and windows are supposed to lock from the outside, and only people on the inside can open them. Leo explained it to me when I first moved in with Nora, and I’m certain it hasn’t changed since then.
Nora flashes me a worried look. “It’s not supposed to open. Not from the outside. Not like this.”
“I know.” My pulse speeds. With a light push, the gate opens further, leaving us enough room to squeeze through.
Just as I’m about to move, Nora says, “The car. We should turn it off. Just in case—” She darts off before I can stop her, and seconds later, the engine falls silent. The headlights switch off. Then she’s back beside me, her gun now at low ready.
“Something’s wrong,” she adds in a whisper. “The lights all out, the phones not working, and now the gate…”
“I know.” I cast a quick glance at the darkened building. “Maybe we should call the police.”
Nora jabs me in the ribs. “The police? And what are we going to tell them? The power is out? The gate is unlocked? Hardly reason to send out a squad car.”
“But Oliver,” I argue. Maya’s brother, Oliver, is an officer with the Sleepy Hollow PD. At the very mention of trouble at B and A, he’d come right here.
“Shea’s pregnant,” Nora says. “She’s been having a rough time of her first trimester.” Hesitating, she adds, “Let’s get closer to the house. See if we notice anything else off. If it looks like we need backup then, we’ll call it in.”
“What about Cole?”
“I’ll text him.” She pulls her phone from her pocket and types for a few seconds. Then she puts her phone away again. “I gave him the sitrep. If he wants to call Oliver right away, he can.”
Nora catches my hand and tugs me towards the gate.
“But I really want to get in there. Now. Maybe it’s nothing.
Maybe everyone’s asleep, and they never noticed the generator didn’t kick on.
But—” Her gaze holds mine. Tiny white flakes dot her eyelashes and brows.
“We’re trained for this. A lot of the cops in town aren’t. ”
She has a point. Oliver was CIA, so he’s more skilled than most of the patrol officers, and his partner, Kane, is extremely competent, as well.
But Nora and I don’t have to follow the rules of the law, not like the police do.
Which means if there’s a threat inside the house, I’d rather we deal with it than anyone else.
“Okay,” I agree. “Let’s take a look.”
Nora falls behind me as we run towards the main building, her footsteps in rhythm with mine.
With the sky thick with large white flakes and the snowy lawn reflecting the moon peeking through the clouds, there’s no way for us to move undetected.
Our best bet is to move as quickly as we can, using the scattered trees for occasional cover.
Once we reach the front door, I hold my hand up in a gesture to hold. Nora gets into position at my six, her back to mine as she scans our surroundings. I grab the door handle and give it a twist, but it doesn’t move.
“It’s locked,” I whisper. When Nora moves back beside me, I add, “If the gate was open, but the main door is locked…”
“I’m not sure what it means,” she replies. “But I do know I want to get inside.”
“We can knock,” I start.
“No.” She grabs my hand and tows me away from the door. “That feeling? It’s even worse now. If the gate wasn’t working, it should stand to reason that the front door wouldn’t work, either. Since they’re all linked to the same system. But with this locked…”
As she looks at me, her gaze is solemn. “I’m worried someone’s inside, Jack. And I don’t want them to know we’re coming in.”
“The garage, then.” There’s a passageway from the garage to the basement, and I know the Bilco doors in the garage aren’t locked like the others.
Ever since Finn and Hanna were trapped in there and had to use the secret passage to escape, the Bilco doors have always been kept unlocked, just in case.
“The garage is locked, anyway,” Leo explained. “So we don’t have to worry about someone breaking in that way. Not that I think anyone’s going to bomb the garage again, not with the drone detection system up and running, but still. We don’t want anyone to get trapped in here.”
Of course, the garage could be locked, too. But it’s worth trying, at least.
Less than thirty seconds later, Nora and I arrive at the garage. We stare at the overhead door for a moment before turning to each other. “If the door’s locked, we can break one of the windows,” Nora says. She turns her gaze to a small window about eight feet up from the ground.
“Maybe. Or maybe the door isn’t locked, either.”
Nora lifts her chin. “Only way to find out is to try.”
In silent agreement, we both grab hold of the door handle and give it an experimental tug. For a second, it doesn’t move.
I’m not sure whether I’m disappointed or relieved.
But then.
The bit of ice that must have created a seal at the bottom breaks free, and the door starts rolling up. Nora flashes me a quick smile of victory. Despite the worry snaking through me, I can’t help smiling back at her. “We did it.”
She kisses my cheek, her lips soft and warm on my skin. “We did.”
As soon as the door is open a few feet, we scurry under it, then hurry over to the Bilco doors in the corner. Nora grabs one of them and pulls it open, then takes out her phone and switches the flashlight on. “It’s pitch black down there,” she explains.
Following her lead, I use the flashlight on my own phone, as well.
With the twin beams lighting a path ahead of us, we make quick time of the distance between the garage and the house.
When we reach the next door, I have another brief moment of worry—what if this door is locked? And we have to go back to the start?
But in a stroke of luck—or at least, I hope it’s luck, and not misfortune leading us to our doom—the door opens. With me still in the lead, we creep into the basement, our flashlights illuminating the empty hallway.
“I don’t hear anything,” Nora whispers. Which isn’t too odd, given that we’re in the basement, where the gym and shooting range are, and it’s highly unlikely that Rylan would be using either of them at one in the morning.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I tell her, adding unnecessarily, “Stick close.”
Like two shadows in the night, we move down the hallway and towards the stairs that lead to the first floor. I open the regular door to the stairwell—no special security this time—and start to creep up the stairs.
Everything is still quiet. Almost eerily so, without the furnace running.
Then I hear it.
A distant voice.
“What the fuck! This isn’t part of the plan!”
Shit. Shit.
I glance back at Nora, who’s only steps behind me. “Someone’s in there.”
Her expression is grim. Determined. Dangerous. “I know. But he doesn't know about us.” Her chin lifts. “And whatever he thinks he’s doing, he’s going to be sorry.”