Jordan’s voice was stifled, weak.
“In In Cold Blood, once inside they separate the Clutter family. Are we going to…”
She, too, halted in mid-sentence.
None of the three said the words home invasion, although that was exactly what they were engaged in. This was the sort of crime that assaults some deep-seated American notion, that one should always be perfectly safe inside one’s home. Bank robberies, drive-by shootings, illicit drug turf wars, even estranged couples divorcing with gunfire-all made a kind of contextual, rational sense. A home invasion did not. It was usually driven by bizarre fantasies of rape or hidden riches that rarely materialized. It was the type of crime that Jordan had studied over the past days. Usually, though, in this type of crime, Jordan had learned, it was the psychopathic bad guys assaulting the safety of some complete innocents. This night was the reverse-it was the innocents attacking the home of a murderous Wolf. But while this seemed the case inside the car, she guessed that somewhere out in the cold all the roles would switch around 180 degrees.
“Anyone want to say anything?” Karen asked.
“Answers,” Sarah coughed in response. “Let’s go get some answers.”
The three Reds slipped from the car like spills of black ink creasing the nighttime. They tugged hoods down over their heads, adjusted their face masks, and moved swiftly toward the house. A dog barked from inside a neighbor’s place. All three Reds had the same frightening thought: Suppose he has a dog-a pit bull or a Doberman willing to defend their master. None voiced this concern. It seemed to Karen that every stride they took forward underscored how little they knew about committing a crime, especially one as profound as they were engaged in.
Each Red wanted to grab the others, stop in mid-attack, and say, “What the hell are we doing?” None actually said this; it was as if the three of them were tumbling headlong down a steep hill, and there was nothing to grab that might arrest their momentum.
Red One felt sick to her stomach.
Red Two was dizzy with doubt.
Red Three felt suddenly weak.
Each Red was nearly crippled with tension as they moved silently through the night. The cold air did little to dissipate the heat of anxiety. It seemed to them that all that had happened to them made each of them somehow smaller.
At the front of the house, Karen quickly gestured toward bushes adjacent to the main door. Jordan ducked in, concealing herself as best she could. The two other Reds slid seamlessly around the edge of the home, heading toward the back.
Suddenly being alone in the night nearly crushed Jordan. She listened for some sound, afraid that her own breathing was so loud it would wake the occupants, wake the neighbors, wake the police and fire departments. Any second she expected to be surrounded by sirens, flashing lights, and voices ordering her to stand with her hands up. Police or Wolf. She was trapped between the two.
She slowly worked the zipper on her duffel bag as quietly as she could. She removed her knife and gripped it tightly.
She no longer believed she had the strength to wield it. The ferocity that had come so easy and natural a few days earlier now felt impossibly difficult to achieve. It was as if the athlete Jordan, the faster-than-the-others Jordan, the Jordan stronger than anyone else on the team, the smarter, prettier, and roundly taunted and teased Jordan, all disappeared in that moment of waiting, replaced by some stranger Jordan couldn’t recognize and certainly didn’t trust. If she had known any prayers, she might have tried them. Instead, she hunkered down by the front steps, her black outfit fitting as perfectly as a jigsaw puzzle piece into the night, her muscles twitching and quivering, hoping that this new and unrecognizable Jordan would be able to summon the necessary fury when she needed it.
Break the window. Reach inside. Throw the dead-bolt lock. Attack.
Karen’s plan had little subtlety. In the movies, it always appears so simple: Actors are calm, intelligent, unhurried, and they make clever choices and behave with easy determination. Life isn’t so simple, she thought. Everything conspires to trip you up. Especially the person you are. And this is not who we are. I’m a doctor, for Christ’s sake. I’m not a break-in artist. And I’m not a killer. She held the rubber mallet in her hand, getting ready to smash her way into the house, and had just begun a fierce backswing when Sarah abruptly grabbed her arm. Karen heard the younger woman’s sharp snatch of breath from the cold night. She turned toward her, wondering what had made her act so precipitously.
Sarah said nothing, but pointed to their right. On the window in what they guessed was the kitchen was a sticker. It was a shield emblazoned with the words: protected by alpha security.
Karen’s head spun dizzily. A simple irony wasn’t lost on her: This was the same company that she had hired to install the system on her own house, after the Big Bad Wolf’s first letter. It had never occurred to her that a killer might hire the same home security company.
She hesitated. Then she whispered: “Okay, here’s what happens. We break in. It triggers a silent alarm at the company headquarters. They call the home owner, who has to respond with a predetermined signal that indicates they’re either okay, it’s all a mistake, or that there’s trouble, which makes the company call the cops, who are here in a couple of minutes.”
Sarah nodded. The two Reds were stymied for an instant. “What should we do?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know,” Karen responded. She was suddenly becoming aware that every second they remained outside, every moment they left Jordan hanging at the front, their risks grew exponentially. It was like watching diseased cells on a laboratory slide join together, becoming larger, more complex with each passing instant.
“Make a decision,” Sarah said. “Either forward or back.”
A slow, burning anger took root inside Karen. If we run, we might be running into death. Maybe not tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Or next week. Or next month. We will never know when. She sucked in cold night air. “Got your gun?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay. You go for the upstairs bedroom on the right as soon as we break in. I’ll be behind you. I’ll let Jordan in. And Sarah…”
“If it is the bedroom. We don’t know for certain.”
Karen wanted to say “We don’t know anything for damn certain,” but instead she merely added, “Don’t hesitate.”
Sarah nodded. Easy to say. Hard to do.
Left unsaid was what she was supposed to not hesitate and do. Kill them both? Just start shooting? What if he’s not the Wolf?
Karen knew that if she waited one more second, panic would replace determination. She grabbed the mallet and swung it hard.
At the front, Jordan heard the tinkle of glass breaking. If seconds earlier she’d thought her breathing was thunderously loud, this noise seemed to her to be violently explosive. She shrunk back, clinging to shadow edges with a drowning person’s embrace.
A stray shard frayed the cloth of Karen’s sweatshirt. For an instant she believed she had sliced her arm open, and she choked out some guttural sound from deep inside her chest. She imagined dark arterial blood would pulse through the fabric, and she expected a sheet of pain to strike her. This did not happen, which surprised her. Her skin was not even scratched. She reached inside the broken window and threw the dead-bolt lock. Within a second, she had thrust the door open.
Sarah pushed past her. She raced forward, her flashlight in one hand and her gun in the other. The small beam of light swept back and forth crazily as she sprinted into the house. Up and to the right. Up and to the right. She grabbed at the banister and leapt up the stairway.