Long Road to Mercy (Atlee Pine, #1)(56)

Or someone else had.

Melanie Renfro hadn’t mentioned any moving vans, and the furniture was still here, what little there was.

She stared at the bed and then performed the obvious: She looked under it.

Her Maglite hit on something. The bed was high off the floor so there was room. She stretched out a long arm and snagged it, pulling it toward her.

She sat on her haunches and examined the contents of the old cardboard box.

A ratty basketball jersey, a tarnished trophy. She checked the date. It was from more than twenty years ago. She read the inscription.

“Most Valuable Player—Football, Ben Priest.”

It was from the high school Priest had attended.

There was a pair of tube socks with blue stripes at the top.

And an old basketball, partially deflated.

Why keep this? Did he forget it was even under there?

She sat on the bed and examined the items again.

Jersey, socks, trophy, basketball.

Basketball?

What had Ed Priest said?

His brother hadn’t even liked basketball, but he knew he was good at it.

So why keep a basketball here? And a partially deflated one at that.

She scanned the ball with her light, inch by inch.

Then she probed with her fingers.

Because of her height Pine had been recruited to play basketball in high school and had also competed in the AAU program. She had held thousands of basketballs. Her fingers instinctively knew what the surface felt like, though each ball was slightly different.

Then she found it.

There was a faint short seam, one that did not really line up with the others.

She hit this spot with her Maglite. It ran along one of the black stripes on the ball, barely perceptible. She wouldn’t have even seen it, if she hadn’t felt the anomaly. It was only about two inches long. She felt with her fingers along this line and sensed a bit of a bump.

Hardened glue. The manufacturer hadn’t done that; it was an add-on.

Pine pulled out the Swiss knife she always carried with her and made the cut right along the seam. The leather opened up easily under her blade, and the remaining air quickly escaped as she cut the ball open and separated the two halves.

There was no interior bladder, just a black lining under the leather exterior.

She wasn’t focused on that. She was riveted on the flash drive that was glued to the interior liner. Glued, not just pushed through the hole. Because otherwise it would rattle around if someone picked it up, giving the secret away.

She used her knife to gently free the device from the liner.

She put it in her pocket, put the cut-up basketball back in the box, and slid it under the bed.

She had risen to her feet when she heard a door downstairs open.





Chapter

30



P?INE SLIPPED OUT HER PISTOL.

She knew if she moved, the old plank floor was going to creak, alerting whoever was down there to her presence.

She looked at the window, a foot away. Could she make it without treading on the floor?

She didn’t think so; consequently, she didn’t move at all.

But that status was going to quickly become unsustainable.

Normally, in this situation she would announce herself and tell whoever it was to identify themselves. But she had broken into the house, and she was acting outside her duties as a federal agent. If it were the police down there, she was potentially in a world of trouble.

If it weren’t the police, she was potentially still in a world of trouble.

So she stood there, not moving and waiting.

If they were cops, they should call out a warning to anyone in here to show themselves.

She pivoted her head to the side of the house facing the street. Through the window she didn’t see any lights shining through it, so there was no cop car out there with its rack lights ablaze.

She heard footsteps move across the planks downstairs and then stop.

She could imagine the thought process.

Move, stop, process. Move again. Stop. Process.

The footsteps reached the stairs and she heard them coming up.

Okay, this was going to get very dicey, because the spot where she was standing would leave her totally exposed as soon as they opened the door to the bedroom.

Suddenly, outside a slash of lightning lit the sky.

Wait for it, wait for it.

The resulting pop of thunder was so loud, it shook the house.

Pine took advantage of this to slide across the floor and behind the door.

The footsteps started up again. Then she thought she caught words spoken back and forth. She couldn’t hear what, but that meant there was definitely more than one person down there.

She still liked the odds so long as she could take them by surprise. If not, then the odds would quickly turn against her.

The sounds of the footsteps mingled with hushed voices reached the top landing. They moved, as she had, from one bedroom to another, until there was only this one left.

She followed their progress by listening to the creaks and squeaks of the planks.

Pine didn’t move as the sound of the steps came toward the door.

She saw the door move an inch. And then it was pushed open until the bottom of the door caught on the uneven floor and halted before it hit her.

Two figures came in.

Pine cautiously peered around the door. They weren’t cops, unless the police had started wearing black ski masks.