When No One Is Watching(42)

I head down the stairs, passing him and going through Mr. Perkins’s gate—he’s more likely to be hanging out in City Hall watching Good Day New York than up in the apartment. I knock on the window, wait a beat, and then knock again. After three more attempts, I head up the stairs, ringing the buzzer for the first floor, pressing more insistently as my worry starts to pummel me.

Scary Uber driver. Preston in jail. Fake Con Ed guy the morning after Theo saw something in the window.

I think about Mr. Perkins jerking in his sleep the other evening.

I think about how he’s been around for my whole life, and how everything I care about is getting torn away.

I suck in a breath. He has to be okay.

Melissa, the college student whose parents paid a year’s rent up front, according to Mr. Perkins, comes down. She has on shorts and a too-large tee, and her short dark hair is artfully disheveled. Her bike helmet is in her hand.

She looks back and forth between me and Theo in surprise, as if she didn’t expect us to be standing there.

“Sydney, right?” She looks over my shoulder to Theo, a sudden playfulness in her gaze, then she looks back to me. “What’s up?”

“Hi. We were looking for Mr. Perkins. Have you talked to him today? Kind of worried about him because I didn’t see him take Count for his walk.”

“Oh, he didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?” I ask, not even trying to blunt my annoyance. I hate when people ask a question instead of just giving the damn information off the bat.

“His daughter took him to the hospital. She came by last night.”

“Wait, his daughter? She lives in DC. Why would she be up here in the middle of the night?”

Melissa’s eyes go wide. “The woman said she was his daughter. Do you think she lied?”

“Did you hear anything strange last night?” I ask. “After his daughter came?”

“No, but I was at work after that.” She shrugs, her doe-eyed fear fading. “There was a show at the bar and we all hung out after. I got back super late. Or super early, rather.” She glances at Theo. “You saw me come in, right? You were watching from your window.”

Theo nods jerkily and she smirks. “You look like you had a rough night, too. What were you up to?”

“I think we can call the hospital and see what they have to say,” Theo says, his gaze returning to me.

“Okay,” she says. She pulls the door shut behind her and jogs down the stairs. “Keep me in the loop. You know where to find me,” she says to Theo with a wink as she passes him.

She pops AirPods in her ears as she unlocks her bike. I’m staring, my brain trying to catch up with what’s going on.

“Where’s Count?” I call out as she kicks off, but she doesn’t hear me.

“Count!” Theo calls out while leaning over the banister, but there’s no bark or even whine in response. He looks over at me. “If Mr. Perkins is at the hospital, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t just let a dog hang out in the waiting room. If Count is in there, he could starve. Die of thirst.”

I care about Count, too, and I know white people love them some dogs, but Theo’s talking probable cause, not liberating paws. A reason to break and enter. A way for us to not have to rely on the word of some girl who may or may not have been up until the crack of dawn doing coke.

I look around. A breeze blows through the leaves of the trees lining the street, but there isn’t anyone else on this end of the block. Theo follows me as I walk slowly into the plant-enclosed area that leads into the garden apartment.

“Don’t tell anyone, but his door is always unlocked,” I say as I turn the knob and push. “Okay, not always.”

“I can pick the lock,” Theo says casually. “Wait. No, I can’t. That wasn’t here on Monday.”

I’m trying not to freak out, but when I follow his gaze I notice one of the doorbell camera systems has been installed. Since when? Mr. Perkins is into gadgets, but not enough to install a camera, and especially not now when the neighborhood is supposedly the safest it’s been in years.

“The fuck? Okay. Okay.” I walk over to the window and peer into it—was that movement back there? Or just Theo’s reflection coming up behind me? The heat of him radiates along the left side of my body as he moves in closer to peer inside, too.

“I really thought I saw something,” he says quietly. “I hope it was a dream.”

His words remind me that I’d dreamed of demons in the walls, trying to scratch through to me. Had the demons howled as well? Had it been a dream at all?

“Sydney!”

I turn to find Ms. Candace watching us from the sidewalk. She pushes her sunglasses up onto her cap of gray curls.

“You two look like criminals casing a joint. Trying to get your picture put up on OurHood? ‘The Ebony and Ivory cat burglars.’ You just need matching striped shirts.”

She cackles at her bad joke.

“Have you seen Mr. Perkins?” I walk over to her. “His tenant said something about him being taken to the hospital? We’re worried.”

She looks between me and Theo and I can just imagine a little caption that says NEW GOSSIP ACQUIRED popping up over our heads. The Day Club Crew are gonna have a field day. Then her gaze settles on me and I see the connection form in her head. Her smile fades.