Now he had a space a foot and a half by five feet, with a two-by-six stringer across the middle and Sheetrock underneath. Using the bracket, Parker sliced through the Sheetrock a piece at a time, breaking the pieces off to bring them up into the closet and lay on the floor here, not wanting pieces of ceiling to fall and make a racket.
When he made the first hole in the Sheetrock, he saw gray light again, very dim, defining the jagged hole. There was no door on the ground floor closet, and whatever light was coming in the study windows reached back to here.
Parker removed chunks of ceiling, clearing the space, then slid down through the opening feet first. He had to wriggle his torso through the narrow opening, had to hold his arms over his head and at last just permit himself to drop.
He landed with knees bent, and let himself fall forward, hands hitting the floor, elbows flexing, allowing his body to drop to the left, until his shoulder hit the side wall of the closet. He stayed in that position, awkward, crouched on hands and knees, bent body leaning leftward, shoulder against wall, back to the open doorway. He listened, and waited, and heard nothing.
In silence, he shifted away from the wall. He put his left hand on the wall, and straightened. On his feet, he turned to look out across the stripped study at the angled row of windows, and they were bathed in blue-gray light. He moved toward them. There was stiffness to be worked out of his system, so as he crossed the study he moved his arms and shoulders, limbering up, feeling the sore points.
A half moon had risen above the ravine, and now looked down toward this side of the house. The newspaper had said it might rain by tomorrow, and there was just a hint of haze over the moon, but for right now it gave plenty of light. Maybe too much. Later it would climb above the house and give almost no light to the interior. And if the clouds came in, there'd be nothing but darkness inside here.
Parker moved slowly through the house, up through the levels, carrying the L bracket, his only weapon and tool. He searched the rooms as he went through, but they'd all been stripped, there was nothing left he could use.
And there was nobody here. The moonlight let him see his watch, and the time was nine-twenty. So Liss and Quindero must be out picking up a car. Parker needed them to come back soon, so he could finish this in time to meet Brenda and Mackey.
The dining room, where they'd waited out the afternoon, was very bright, being closer to the top of the ravine and with all those large windows facing right at the moon. Quindero had left his newspaper on the floor near the box where he'd been sitting, and the light was bright enough to read the headlines. If you held the paper close to a window and squinted, you could probably read everything in it, but there was nothing in there Parker needed to know.
He went on up to the top floor, and crossed to the spot in the rear corner where you could look out through the plywood sheathing at the road and the fence. The fence now gleamed silver, reflecting the moonlight, to make everything behind it a fuzzy blurry black.
Parker leaned against the wall and watched the road. He had come here to this house in the first place only because there were too many people in this town looking for him. He'd needed somewhere to lie low until it was time to go meet Brenda and Mackey, and this was the best place he knew. Finding Liss here had been an extra gift, a way to close the books on this job entirely, but if it wasn't going to work out it wasn't going to work out.
If Liss and Quindero didn't come back by ten, he'd have to leave, forget about them. Go meet with Brenda and Mackey, if they were there, and worry about dealing with Liss later.
Ten o'clock. Half an hour from now. Working the stiffness out of his shoulders and arms, Parker waited.
10
Nine-fifty. Light, moving through the woods.
Is he driving the car in here? Over that road?
But maybe it made sense. The road was almost nonexistent, but Liss might be more comfortable driving on it than having to walk back to the main road in total darkness. Particularly with Parker at his side.
Yes, here it came, very slowly. Some sort of four-door sedan. Liss drove with parking lights only, just enough amber illumination out front to give him a sense of where the road was. Now he swung the car to the left, just the other side of the fence, reversed, swung forward again, and backed up almost to the fence, facing out. Making it easier for himself for the return.
Liss hadn't removed the interior light. It flashed on as they got out of the car, and Parker saw that Liss had been driving and his new partner was still alive.
Parker moved into the shadows away from where they would enter the house. He could hear them talking as they neared it, and when they came through the break in the plywood he could make out the words. Liss was saying "—trust him. He doesn't trust me, and he's right, and I don't trust him, and I'm right. If he can take us down, he will. Ralph, you listening?"
"Yes." The voice was small, quavery, frightened, but determined.
"We gotta work together," Liss said, "or he'll kill us both. You hear what I'm saying?"
"Why don't we just leave him?" Quindero asked. "Just walk away now and take the car and get away from here and just leave him down there."
"I need the money," Liss said. "We need the money, Ralph, you and me. Your half is two hundred grand, just keep thinking about that. You need that money, if you're gonna get to Canada, start over."
So that's the fairy tale they're telling each other. Parker followed, well behind, as they went downstairs toward the dining room.
Liss said, "We gotta keep him with us, and we gotta keep him alive, until we see if he really
does know where the money is. Then we can deal with him. But before then, we gotta keep him from doing its. Jesus, it's bright in here."
They were in the dining room now, Parker on the stairs behind them.
Quindero said, "That's good, isn't it? If there's light, we can see him."
"Here's what we're going to do," Liss said. "I'll wait here. You go down and— Wait. Where's that gun of his?"
"Here."
"Give it to me," Liss said. "I don't want him taking it off you."
"You want me to go down there without a gun? Where are you going to be?"
"Up here."
"But—"
'Just listen," Liss said, and Parker sat down on the stairs to listen. Liss said, "You go down there and take that piece of wood out of the lock. Do it quiet if you can. Then get back into some dark corner somewhere that he's not gonna see you, and then shout to him to come out. Then I'll shout from up here, and I'll tell him to come up. Then he'll come up and you'll come up behind him."
"So he's in between us."
"That's right," Liss said.
Quindero said, "But if I don't have a gun? What good is it if—"
"Does he know that? What if he sees you, and instead of coming upstairs he makes a jump for you? If you've got a gun, you're not gonna use it. So you show him your hands, you tell him you don't have any weapons on you, they're all up with me. He knows he has to come up past me before he can get out. And I'll call to him, I'll say, 'Don't mess with my partner, I'm up here, come up.' And he'll come up."