The Storm King(53)
Nate swore to himself as he walked in, shucking apparel aside so his hands could verify what his eyes saw. He was sure he’d find something here, but the only thing he’d learned was that closet space was at a premium in the Buck household.
He was on his way out of the little room, thinking about what to do next, when he knocked a pair of galoshes out of their military alignment with the other sets of footwear. He stooped to nudge them back into order when he saw a squat filing cabinet pushed against the wall behind the coats.
Finally. Nate swept the clothes out of the way. This was what he’d returned home to discover. Finally, he would have every scrap of information the police had gathered. But when he got a closer look at what he’d found, his excitement sank.
His own name typed in all-caps Courier stared back at him from the cabinet’s drawer.
TOM MARVELED AT how easy it was to roll the car into position.
Even packed with three girls’ luggage, it took only a stretch of the muscles to bring Lindsay Stone’s brand-new silver Jetta to the edge of her patio.
Tom had worried that this Thunder Run relied too much on luck and timing, but, as usual, Nate had been right about everything.
The friends had spent the evening with the rest of their class on a boat the high school had chartered for its newest graduates. The school administration hoped a wholesome night cruise around the lake would curtail the anticipated debauchery, but bags of vodka-soaked gummi bears made their appearance even before the first brassy strains of “Pomp and Circumstance.”
As Nate predicted, Lindsay Stone hadn’t abstained from these revelries. She’d been tottering by the time they disembarked. Johnny had the nimble fingers of a Dickensian street urchin, which he used to snatch the car key from Lindsay’s purse, but the truth was he probably could have asked her for the fob and she’d have handed it to him with no memory of the event. Still, Nate had praised Johnny up and down as they got into position for the Thunder Run.
After the boat docked, they donned their black raincoats and leapt from shadow to shadow until they got to the Stones’ colossal Tudor on the Strand. In silence, they watched the looming house from a hedgerow across the street.
Lindsay’s car had remained parked here because it was already crammed to capacity with luggage. She and the Sarahs planned to spend the rest of June and all of July on a road trip across the country. This sounded like fun to Tom, but Nate thought it terribly cliché.
“How much will they actually see, hopping from one five-star hotel to the next?”
“Obviously they’re not doing it right, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing,” Tom told him. “I’d like to see the desert, and the mountains. Real mountains.”
“We should do it,” Nate said, after thinking about it. “Maybe next summer. When we get to California we could drive up the Pacific coast. That’d be cool.”
It would be cool.
Tom and the others hid in the shrubbery for half an hour before Sarah Carlisle pulled up to the Stones’ mansion and punctuated the night with three blasts of her Audi’s horn.
Lindsay soon appeared, still wobbly but more casually dressed. After a tense moment with a slippery flagstone, she was in the car and off to Jim Tatum’s house, where the rest of their class was assembling.
They waited another five minutes. When the Stones’ residence remained dark and the Strand stayed empty, they crept along the perimeter of exterior lights to the car park in the back.
Nate handed Johnny the key fob and smiled. Lindsay wasn’t at the top of Johnny’s list, but she was on it. The key was a gift from the Storm King.
Johnny unlocked the door, and Tom cringed at the accompanying tone and flare of lights. The engine was started, the gear set to neutral, but Nate insisted that they push and not drive the car down the grassy embankment. He didn’t want to risk the uneven tire treads on wet ground that might come with putting the car into drive.
Had she really left the car on with the key in the ignition, Lindsay would wonder. Was the wind from the lake matched with the incline of the driveway really enough to propel the Jetta such a distance? These were the kinds of questions that plagued the target of a Thunder Run.
“The speed at the end here is important, gentlemen,” Nate said. “Don’t let up until she goes over. I don’t want her to get stuck on the edge.”
Tom was steaming inside his black raincoat. There’d been a brief downpour, but he hadn’t felt a drop since they’d been on the water. Still, they couldn’t risk being seen. Especially now that these adventures were finally coming to an end.
Nate counted off, and they leaned into the car.
Of course, Nate was right, and they needed to coax every spark of momentum from the Jetta. The car still caught on the lip of the pool for a moment before plunging nose-first into the deep end. Water erupted in fantastic quantities, surging across the patio and drenching them to their knees. The rear of the car swayed uncertainly before settling, its taillights glaring just above the churning water. It remained in that position, vertical in the pool like a piece of modern art. Tom glanced at Nate and was relieved to see his friend found this hilarious.
“Away! Away!” Nate whispered to them. A Thunder Run quickly exited was a Thunder Run well done.
They slid among the trees, through lawns, and over fences until they reached Johnny’s BMW, parked several streets away. Even then, they didn’t utter a word until their raincoats were out of sight in the trunk and they were all safely inside. The Storm King had rules no one dared break.