The Fall(81)

The idea that I’d had actual parents—and not some random bastard—was something I gave up on a long time ago. The only comfort in finding out exactly who they were was that I finally had a name. Theirs. Not so I could attach it to mine, nope, that wasn’t the reason I wanted it. It was so I knew whose doorstep to turn up on and unleash my anger.

“Here are the things you asked for.” The same nun who’d shown me the fallout shelter in the first place held out two canvas bags. “I must go and be with my sisters.”

“Go, but remember to keep your mouth shut.” I eyeballed her, her gaze dropping as soon as I’d grabbed the bags.

“You know, she is actually helping us.” Sofia took one of the bags from me and set up one of the kerosene lamps. “I’ve seen you be kind when you want to be.”

“The key words there were when I want to be,” I pointed out, going through the second bag as soon as the door was secure. “And we have bigger issues than my mood.”

I wasn’t talking about the ancestory.com revelations she’d dropped in my lap either. I was more concerned about the fact that she’d decided we needed to go to the house where she used to live—the place her father, mother and three brothers were holed up in—and kill Jimmy. And she thought I had issues with my sanity.

“Have you got a car?” She armed herself, shoving extra clips in her waistband as she multitasked and ate some of the food we’d been given. “I think we need to go over the plan one more time too.”

“I have a car.” Nothing as sweet as the Camaro that I’d had to ditch—sadly, last I’d heard had been impounded—but it would do the job. “And I still don’t think driving to your dad’s house is the way to do this.”

I lifted my fingers to serve as a visual aid because clearly talking wasn’t cutting it. “We’ll have no advantage. No line of sight until we’re in there. And have no clue as to how many guns and people holding them are inside. Not to mention security cameras that line the property and motion sensors.”

“There is a side door up the main drive that has a blind stop.” Her hand got busy with a pencil sketching a rough rectangle, illustrating where Jimmy’s house sat on the block.

“All you have to do is park on the street and jump the fence from the left hand side.” She marked an X over the front extreme corner close to the front gate. “Then as long as you keep your back flush against the metal railings, you can walk the entire length without being seen. Unless someone happens to look at the front window at that exact time, and then you’re shit out of luck.” She smirked, obviously having tested the theory.

“And the motion sensors positioned on the property line are at forty-five degree angles.” She drew circles on the border of the rectangle, with extending lines to indicate their range. “That corner—the one you jump the fence from—is just beyond its reach.” She pointed the pencil toward the heavily drawn X.

“My father was too arrogant to install a backup there because the area not covered is so small. But it’s possible, and when you jump it needs to be dead center or you’ll completely miss the mark. It’s how I snuck out of the house when I was a teenager, and how my brothers snuck their girlfriends in. Everyone assumed the back is more vulnerable so that’s where my father concentrated his efforts. He never thought anyone would be brazen enough to come from the front. And I’m telling you, it can be done.”

“What’s the margin? The jump onto that exact spot.” I pointed to the mystical magical X that would supposedly get us in and out unnoticed.

“Three inches over and the sensors get you.” She cleared her throat. “It’s got to be dead on.”

Three inches and we hadn’t even accounted for shoe size. Yep, this was going to be a motherf*cking good time.

“And you’re sure he hasn’t fixed the oversight? It’s been a few years since you lived there.” Because if I were him, I would have overhauled the system and double layered the dead zone. Hell, I’d have made sure every single one of those cameras and sensors overlapped so not even one blade of grass wasn’t covered.

“Positive.” She nodded. “He upgraded a few years ago but the new motion sensors kept going off. He pulled them out and went back to the old system. Same margin exists that there has always been.”

“And you know this how?” Because it sounded like an awful lot of information and not any of it sounded hypothetical.

“I tested it myself three months ago.” She bit her lip, her feet doing a two-step shuffle before she stood up straight and looked me in the eye. The silent admiration for her skill set and attention to detail remained unsaid. “How do you think I got some of the information on the drive? I had to access the house and scanned some documents from his file cabinet. He hasn’t changed any of the combinations or codes either. Like I said, he’s arrogant.”

“So, assuming we get to that side door.” I resisted humming the Mission Impossible theme, but essentially that was what we were dealing with.

“We will,” she shot back, zero hesitation.

“And we can get in. Not setting off the motion detectors, not getting caught on the cameras and there isn’t some * at the window admiring the view.”

“We can.”