Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3) by Brett Battles (most inspirational books of all time TXT) 📗

intersection behind us, down the street we were on earlier. But neither of the two officers inside looks our way.

I give it another two minutes, and then we’re moving again.

Taking side streets, we work our way to a road about halfway between our duplex rental and the Prices’ house. I find a spot to park that’s not directly in front of any house. Though all the windows of the nearby residences are dark, Jar scans them with our binoculars to make sure no one is watching us.

“We’re clear,” she says, and lowers the glasses.

From her backpack, she withdraws our comm gear and hands me a set. Once our radios are in place, I open my door as quietly as possible and slip outside. Jar climbs across the cab and exits the same way.

Our goal tonight is to get an up-close look at the Prices’ house, and hopefully figure out how I’ll get inside it to plant our bugs. While I don’t expect to actually enter tonight, I have an array of audio and visual bugs with me on the chance that opportunity strikes. It’s a limited supply, probably enough to cover the house, but not much more than that. Vacation, remember?

Staying in the shadows, we work our way to the street that runs by the side of the Price property, where the entrance to the driveway the Winnebago used is located.

The neighborhood is as quiet as if we were in the middle of the deserted countryside, which means we have to be extra careful to not make a sound. One moderately loud misstep and we’d probably wake up a half dozen people. Thankfully, there are no streetlamps on this particular block, though one does sit on the road that runs in front of the Prices’ house, just across the street from their front door.

This does not mean the side street is completely unlit. An outdoor light on the back of the Prices’ house illuminates the space between the building’s rear entrance and the RV.

I doubt someone forgot to turn it off. Chuckie doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d put up with that kind of error. I have a feeling it’s on because he wants to deter anyone from trying to mess with his Winnebago. Which is kind of paranoid for a small city like this. While I’m sure things go missing now and then here, motorhomes are hard to hide, and I’d be willing to bet that the number of vehicle thefts in Mercy per year can be counted on one hand.

Using the binoculars, Jar checks the windows of the house for signs of life. The Prices, like most of their neighbors, appear to have turned in for the night.

Once she gives me the okay, I sneak across the road to the gate that closes off the driveway. Unlike the picket fence that separates the rest of the Prices’ property from the public sidewalk, the gate is made of chain link. It’s also high enough that I can’t just step over it.

I give it a gentle shake, thinking maybe I can hop it. The chain link feels tight to the frame, but not tight enough to be soundless. So much for going over the top.

I’d rather not go over the picket fence, either. As I’m sure you can understand, I like to avoid pointy things between my legs whenever possible.

Thankfully, I have other options.

The easiest of these is via the backyard of the neighboring house behind the Prices’.

The fence between the two places is six foot high, made of wood, and looks solid. This same fence encloses the neighbor’s entire backyard, and while it’s taller than the picket fence, it’s less spikey, and as a bonus, includes an unlocked gate next to the house. Before I open it, I toss a few pebbles into the yard to wake up any sleeping dogs. When nothing happens, I lift the latch and push the gate open.

A half minute later, I’ve hopped over the back fence and am now standing in the Prices’ yard, hidden from the house by the Winnebago. I crouch here for a whole minute and wait to make sure my arrival has gone unnoticed, then I creep along the RV to the front end and peer around it.

A deck juts out from the house about five meters and runs nearly the length of the structure. The rest of the yard is covered with grass that’s in the early stages of making a comeback from a dormant winter.

The only entrance into the house that I can see is a sliding glass door at about the midpoint of the deck. Curtains are pulled across the glass, but it’s a pretty fair guess that a living room is on the other side. From the other windows, I determine the kitchen is to the left of the glass doors, while immediately to the right is a bathroom. On the other side of the bathroom, two more windows belong to what is probably a bedroom or den. It, too, has curtains closed. Along the second floor are multiple windows—another bathroom and what I assume are two bedrooms, if not three.

I creep onto the deck and step up to the sliding glass door. From my pocket, I remove my phone and a wand-like device and attach them to each other. After opening my alarm detection app, I move the wand along the frame of the door.

The house has an alarm system but it’s a standard model, used by a lot of home security companies. Which means it’s well known to my software. I tap a button on my screen and thirty seconds later, the red warning that reads ACTIVE ALARM switches to a green INACTIVE ALARM.

Again, the purpose of this trip is not to actually go inside. But now that the detector knows the way into the Prices’ system, the next time I tap DEACTIVATE, the delay will be a second or two at most. I turn the alarm back on.

Sliding glass doors