Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(15)

She stood frozen inside the doorway. Her gaze swept around the living room. The house was clean, and the furniture looked comfortable and sturdy. She smelled a floral scent and also a hint of lemon, perhaps furniture polish. Her gaze snagged on a large photo collection on one wall.

Several antique photographs graced one section. The rest were more modern. She saw a smiling couple somewhere in their midfifties on a cruise ship, three wedding photos of younger couples, family portraits, candid snapshots of children and a formal photograph of a woman in uniform.

Those pictures told the story of their lives.

This house was the older couple’s home. Their children grew up here. Their grandchildren loved to visit Nana’s house. The family celebrated holidays here. Judging by the beams on everyone’s faces, they were clearly overjoyed when the woman in the uniform came home for Christmas.

Mary’s chest felt tight and hot. What was this? She pressed a hand to her breastbone. It took a couple heartbeats for her to realize she felt a crazy kind of love for this unknown family, a frustrated sense of protectiveness and deep regret.

They were so normal, she thought. And we don’t belong here.

We never did.

“Mary.” The intensity in Michael’s voice broke through her reverie. She shook herself and looked at him. He was a troubling incongruity in the placid peacefulness of the living room, a tough, strongly built man with red-flecked bandages on his muscled chest and arms, his hard-angled face grim with shadows. “It will be far worse on these people if they come home before we get out of here. Hurry.”

Her imagination galloped off with that idea and the results weren’t pretty. She gave him an agonized nod and raced up the stairs.

She found four bedrooms and a hall bathroom. The master bedroom probably had an en suite bathroom, but she kept to the hall bath. She felt like enough of an intruder already.

She used the toilet and gave the bathtub and showerhead a longing glance. So much had happened since her bath at the cabin. She felt filthy. Her jeans had stains from dirt, grass and flecks of blood. But no matter how much she wanted to bathe, she couldn’t make herself strip in this strange family’s home.

There was no point in indulging in too much of a freak-out, or in overanalyzing things. She found a washcloth and scrubbed at her face, neck, arms and torso with cool water and a bar of scented soap. The wash was not as satisfying as a shower, but it was refreshing and helped her to wake up.

She rushed downstairs again.

Michael stood at the open refrigerator door. He was packing food into plastic grocery bags. He gave her a keen glance. “Couldn’t stand to shower, huh?”

“Nope. I had a quick wash at the sink.” She gestured at the fridge. “You’d better go. I can take over that.”

“I’m done anyway,” he told her. He handed her the two plastic bags. “This is quite enough to meet our needs. Take it to the garage and keep watch out the window. I’ll be just a minute.”

“Okay,” she agreed, relieved to leave the house.

He disappeared. She located the door to the garage. The interior was shadowed, cluttered and smelled like engine oil and gasoline. The SUV was a late-model forest green Jeep. She stationed herself at the narrow windows and chewed her lip as she watched the street. A few minutes later, Michael stepped out of the house. He joined her at the window. His hair was wet and he smelled like the soap she had used.

She said, “I hate this.”

“I know.” He gripped her shoulder. “If it helps any, I left money on their kitchen counter to pay for the food.”

It wouldn’t take away the family’s shock at their home being invaded, or lessen the sting from the theft of the Jeep, but it was something. It was very much something, especially since she was pretty sure that Michael didn’t have a problem with anything they had done, and yet he had still thought to leave them money without her prompting him.

She leaned into his touch. “Thank you. Let’s get out of here.”

“I’ll hot-wire the Jeep. Get in the car and drive back to the intersection where we turned out of the development. Wait for me there. I’ll take the lead and you follow me until I stop, okay?”

“I guess,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re going to get away with this. For God’s sake, it’s broad daylight.”

“It’s not that hard.” His voice was calm and reassuring. He located the garage door switch and the door opened.

She sent him an accusing glance. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

His expression remained bland. “When I’ve had to. The critical times are isolated moments when a witness might realize something is wrong. One of those was when I picked the lock. But I’m good at it, and fast, and I stood so my body hid what I was doing. To anyone who might have glanced our way, it should have looked like I used a key. The other critical time will be when we drive away. Even then, the chances are that someone will see the Jeep passing but not the person driving it. Everything else looks normal.”

As normal as the people who live here? She felt again that wild, unnamed surge of emotion. “Even your Ford sitting in the driveway?”

“It just looks like someone’s visiting.” He smiled at her. “Go on.”

She hurried to the car, climbed in and put the two grocery bags on the passenger seat. Then she drove to the intersection and pulled as far as she could onto the shoulder of the road to wait for him.