The Nosy Neighbor (15 page)

No one moved when they heard a car door slam shut. All of them relaxed when a voice called out. “Yo, Mitch, you up there? It’s me, Drew.”

Mitch’s gloved hand fell to his side as he maneuvered his way to the driveway. Lucy saw a tall man wearing a backpack coming up the driveway. A suntanned man who looked like Charles Atlas, the body-builder. He was handsome, probably in his late thirties, possibly his early forties, with a buzz cut like Mitch’s. He wore jeans, probably over long underwear, boots, a long-sleeved shirt, and a hunter green down vest. When he removed his sunglasses, Lucy saw he had bright, summer blue eyes.

Introductions were made, hands shaken, then Lucy was outside of the loop as the men traded gear, poked and probed each other’s tools, and talked in low voices. The minutes crawled by. Lucy climbed into the Land Rover and turned on the engine. The heat kicked on almost immediately. She sighed with relief. She leaned back and stared out the window at the house the feds said belonged to her. Why did Jonathan need all this security?

Then she heard it. If she had been standing next to the men outside the truck, the words couldn’t have been any clearer. She was hearing Mitch’s thoughts.

And then Wiley’s thoughts. She was sure they were Wiley’s thoughts.
She can’t be involved in this. There’s no way. She’s scared out of her wits. Hell, I’m scared out of my wits, and I don’t even know the stupid guy.

Then the newcomer, a man who didn’t even know her.
There’s something weird going on here. The word
trap
comes to mind. This is New Jersey, for God’s sake. Stuff like this doesn’t happen around here. No stakeouts. Where the hell are the feds when you need them?

Jake’s thoughts were different.
A nice juicy cheeseburger, with onion rings on the side. Maybe a double malt. French fries with loads of ketchup when this is over.

Lucy sighed. If, and it was a big if, Jonathan was responsible for this security, this house, and everything the feds said, what did the word
safe
really mean? If Jonathan had the kind of money they alluded to, he would be able to find her anywhere.

Minutes crawled by. Minutes that turned into an hour. The sun that had been bright just minutes ago was gone, the day turning gray and ominous. Lucy rolled down the window. The air felt heavy with the threat of more snow to come. She shrugged as she watched the gray overcast sweep across the sky. The weather was just as freaky as what was happening to her. She wiggled around in her seat to see what the four men were doing. Mitch and Drew both had cell phones to their ears. That told her they were stymied. They must be calling other experts, hoping for clues as to how to disarm the sophisticated systems in place. Wylie and Jake looked like they were frozen to the ground. Jake’s nose was as red as a cherry. Wylie ran in place to keep warm. She knew they were chilled to the bone.

Wylie looked in her direction, saw the rolled-down window, and ran over. He leaned into the warm car, little puffs of steam escaping from between his lips.

“What’s wrong?” Lucy asked.

“Mitch said he hasn’t seen anything like this before. Drew agreed. They said this stuff is updated practically on a daily basis. I think they’re checking with members of their old units. Drew said he knows a spook at the CIA who might be able to help. This gadgetry is way beyond anything I’ve ever heard about.” Wylie shook his head and walked back to join the men.

Lucy cracked the driver’s-side window before she settled down to snooze. That was when she heard the sounds on the windshield. Snow was silent. This was hard-driving sleet slamming against the windshield. Sleet meant the roads would freeze up. Suddenly she felt frightened and didn’t know why.

What
were
they doing out there? Just seconds ago she was thinking about taking a nap. Suddenly she was too angry and frightened to sleep. Her adrenaline pumping, Lucy hopped out of the truck, her head down to avoid the stinging sleet as she slogged her way over to the men by the gate. “Why don’t we just climb over the damn thing?” she shouted to be heard over the wind and sleet.

“That’s exactly what we’re getting ready to do, Miss Lucy,” Mitch shouted back. “We’re betting the guts of this security gate are on the other side, inside that stone gatehouse, and the owner has a special encrypted card that he just flashes when he wants to go in and out of this gate. It’s obvious we don’t have one of those particular cards, so we’re going to blow the system. Wylie is going over first and will blow it. I want you to stand back.”

Card.
Lucy’s memory stirred. “Wait a minute. What kind of card are you talking about?”

“You know the kind you swipe through a lock or show it faceup to a small screen. Sometimes they go by eyes or thumbprints for ID. It’s okay, we know what we’re doing, Miss Lucy.”

“Wait. Please wait. I think I might have the card. Jonathan gave me a card several months ago. Early in the summer. He said it was for international shopping, you know, for when we went to Europe. Okay, okay, so I was stupid. To me it was just a weird-looking credit card,” she said defensively at the skeptical looks on the men’s faces. “I put it in my wallet and forgot about it till just now. You can make whatever you want out of that. If you give me a minute, I’ll get it for you.”

Minutes later, when Lucy handed over the card, Mitch looked at it, then at her. His gaze was so intense, Lucy felt like he had nailed her to the ground. He handed it to Drew Warner, who walked up to the gate and simply waved the card in front of the monitor. The gates slid open with barely a sound. Lucy felt queasy and light-headed as she followed the men through the gate.

Wylie reached for her hand. He bent over, and shouted into her ear, “Smile, it adds to your face value. Look, we’re inside, and that’s all that matters.”

Lucy nodded as she watched Drew and Mitch roam the property inside the gate. Even through the stinging sleet, she could see small dots of green, yellow, and red on the equipment they carried. Wylie led her to an overhang by a small round-arched back door. The narrow eave deflected some of the sleet. Jake joined them a few minutes later.

There, close to the house, Lucy found she didn’t have to shout at the top of her lungs to be heard. “I swear, I forgot about the card, I actually believed it was what Jonathan said it was, an international credit card. Since I never had one, how could I know if it was real or not? I was taking everything Jonathan said back then at face value. The card did say
GLOBAL
on the front of it. It looked like a damn credit card, Wylie.” If she hadn’t been so cold, she would have burst into tears of frustration.
Why is this happening to me?

“If he tried to keep this house secret, why would he have given the card to you?” Jake asked. “How were you supposed to get into the house? All it does is open the gate.”

“I don’t know, Jake,” Lucy wailed at the outright suspicion in his voice. “I don’t know anything about how or what Jonathan did. You have to believe me.”

Jake took off his gloves and blew on his fingers. “No offense, Lucy, but your fiancé must have thought you were really stupid.”

“Yes, I guess he really did,” Lucy snapped. “And, I just proved to everyone how really stupid I am. He bamboozled me, okay. I take full responsibility for my own stupidity, but I am not involved in anything he did or said.”

Wylie put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “We’re going to figure this all out, Lucy. Don’t go off the deep end now.”

The trio remained under the narrow overhang shivering, their teeth rattling with cold for another forty minutes—at which point Mitch and Drew returned their gear to the truck and brought back different equipment. Another forty minutes passed as they explored for trip wires, then deactivated the alarm system and locks.

At last they were all inside the garage. Mitch fumbled for a light switch. All of them reared back at the huge black Chevy Suburban sitting squarely in the middle of the six-car garage. For some reason it looked obscene to Lucy. Obscene
and
frightening. Lucy wondered about the other six cars the FBI agents had mentioned. Nothing had been said about anything as prosaic as a Chevy Suburban.

Another twenty-five minutes passed while Drew checked out the Suburban and Mitch worked the keypad outside a door that led into the main body of the house. Eventually they were inside the house, all of them standing in the kitchen. Jake pressed a wall switch, and the gray room sprang to light. Outside, sleet hammered against the windows, sounding like nails being shot from a nail gun. Wylie looked around for a thermostat and turned it up to ninety degrees. Immediately a warm rush of air spewed from the baseboard grates.

Lucy looked around the huge kitchen. This was not a kitchen Martha Stewart would love. While state-of-the-art, there was nothing warm and cozy about the room. The word
institutional
came to mind. Every appliance was Sub-Zero, and stainless steel. Even the sink. The floor was dove gray granite. The hanging pot rack over the center island was loaded down with shiny stainless-steel pots and pans.
Never used,
Lucy thought as she looked up at the contraption. She could see the glue marks on the pots where the price stickers had once been. Out of curiosity, she opened the refrigerator. It was empty. She opened the freezer, and it was full. She reached for a package of frozen ground coffee and a container of half-and-half. “I’ll make some coffee,” she said curtly. “We all need to warm up.”

Mitch nodded as he walked away, Drew Warner on his heels. Jake and Wylie stayed with Lucy in the kitchen. Her voice was a whisper when she said, “I don’t think anyone lives here or has ever lived here.” Lucy pointed to the glue marks on the pots hanging overhead. The tears she’d been holding in check escaped and rolled down her cheeks. “What
is
this place?”

Wylie grimaced. Jake looked at the pots. “I don’t know, Lucy. Mitch said he thought it was a safe house. What that means exactly, I don’t know. It’s getting warmer; let’s check out the rest of the place. C’mon, it’s going to be all right. We have professionals helping us now. Right, Jake?”

“Absolutely,” Jake said as he removed his topcoat and muffler. “Actually, it’s getting downright toasty in here.”

A short hallway led them to an immense room that seemed to be, aside from the kitchen, the entire first floor. Lucy blinked. It was a round room. Lucy was reminded of a soccer ball. How could a square house have a round room? And it was white, so white it was dazzling.

Around white brick fireplace sat squarely in the middle of the room, the venting hood going all the way up to the ceiling and probably through the roof. Lucy couldn’t remember if she’d seen a chimney when she was outside or not. She tried to calculate the size of the pit and finally likened it to two circular hot tubs. Six huge cherry logs with strips of kindling laid between them were ready to be ignited. A circle of deep, white, velvet couches surrounded the strange-looking fireplace. No matter where you sat, you would have a view of the fire. There were no tables, no plants, no pictures on the wall—no knickknacks of any kind. The floor was hardwood, probably oak, and strangely enough it wasn’t the least bit dusty. She wondered if the house was hermetically sealed. The thought sent chills up and down her arms.

The wraparound windows were cloaked in heavy white brocade shot through with silver thread, the only concession to color. Was silver a color?
Is there a silver color in a Crayola box?
she thought inanely. She decided silver wasn’t a color. And the world would go on with the knowledge Lucy Baker deemed silver not to be a color. She must be losing her mind.

Lucy peered down into the pit and frowned. For some reason she didn’t expect to see ashes. But there they were. Someone had been there, and that someone, at some point, had built a fire. A few of the bricks on the bottom were scorched and black. Little piles of ash rested under the neat pile of wood.

“It smells like…wallpaper paste,” Jake said thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s a paint smell. Maybe just a new house smell. What do you think, Mitch?”

“I think it’s a paint smell combined with the fact the house has been closed up. This is definitely either a safe house or a stopping-off place for people on the run. I’m going to check out the rest of the house. Don’t open those drapes,” he cautioned.

“Check this out, Mitch!” Drew called from the front foyer, which was out of sight of the round room. They all ran through the arched doorway to a small foyer littered with mail. “The guy has one of those chutes like banks use at their drive-throughs. When the mail gets to here, the cylinder just opens, dumps the mail, and returns to the mailbox, probably someplace at the bottom of the driveway. I must have missed it on our way in. There’s nothing here but catalogs and junk mail. Everything is addressed to ‘Lucille Baker’ or ‘Resident.’ ”

If Wylie hadn’t been holding on to Lucy’s arm, she would have fallen. To prove what Drew was saying, Lucy stooped down and picked up a Crate and Barrel catalog. Sure enough, her name was on the label. She started to feel sick all over again.

“It’s just a catalog, Lucy. It doesn’t mean anything,” Wylie said.

“Like hell it doesn’t mean anything. This junk says I live here. Me—Lucy Baker—I get mail at this address. No wonder the feds are on my back. God, how I hate that man for doing this to me!”