Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

Then there was a crash and the sound of breaking glass and he figured that casualty was his reading lamp on the TV tray. If you backed too far away from the closet without looking, you’d bump into his makeshift nightstand.

Then for several minutes there was no sound from inside. Just when Raley was about to go and investigate, he detected footsteps through the wall, the volume of them fading as they went from bedroom to living area.

Keeping against the wall, he crept to the corner of the cabin and remained crouched there as the screen door was pushed open and a man stepped onto the porch. “Anything?”

Until then, Raley hadn’t realized there was a second man. He was seated in the passenger side of the pickup, apparently searching the glove box.

Raley ducked out of sight and held his breath. If he was seen, he would have to face these guys without a weapon. He was convinced that this was no ordinary burglary, and that it was no coincidence the pair of them had shown up the morning after two men had tried to kill Britt.

He heard the glove box being snapped shut, then the passenger door of his truck. “There’s drying mud on both sides of the floorboard. He’s had a recent passenger. What about inside?”

“I’ll tell you on the way back.” The man on the porch leaped over the three steps and started across the yard. “But I think my hunch was right.”

Raley didn’t want them to leave without his getting a look, so he risked peeking around the corner of the cabin. The one who’d been in his truck had already got in on the passenger side of a maroon sedan. He was in shadow, but Raley could make out his profile. Sloping jaw, sunglasses, receding hairline. Nothing noteworthy that Raley could detect from this distance.

He got a better look at the one who’d been inside the cabin. He was of average height, slender and fit, mid-forties. A no-nonsense haircut. Conservative dark slacks and a light blue knit golf shirt.

There was nothing noteworthy about him, either-except for the pistol he returned to the holster clipped to his belt at the small of his back before he climbed into the driver’s seat, started the car, and backed away. He executed a precise and economic three-point turn, then drove off down the lane toward the highway.

Raley made note of the make and model of the car and memorized the license plate number. He didn’t move until he could no longer hear the car’s motor. Then he slowly came to his feet, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and shaking his legs to return circulation.

Staring down the empty lane, he thought, This changes everything. Then, out loud and with heat, “Son of a bitch.”

Galvanized, he took a more direct route back to where he’d left Britt. When he was still a ways off, he called to her. “It’s okay. They’re gone.” There was no movement of leaves, no sign of her white pants and black shirt. “Britt?” Still nothing. His heart hitched. He ran the remainder of the distance to the clump of shrubbery and pushed aside the branches. “Britt?”

She was where he’d left her, but her back was to the cabin. She was sitting on her bottom, her knees hugged to her chest, and when she raised her head and looked up at him, she looked like she’d just seen a ghost. And in a way she had.

“He was there. At The Wheelhouse. That night.”

Raley hustled her into the cabin. “Gather up that stuff I bought you this morning, whatever you want to take. We’ve got to get out of here, and we may not come back for a while. Hurry.”

While going through the living area, he surveyed it with a keen eye. After Britt’s rampage the day before, when she’d launched a reckless hunt for a telephone, he had put everything back in its place. On the surface it seemed as though nothing had been disturbed. It took someone who lived here, lived here alone, someone trained to store firefighting gear to exact specifications and keep everything spotless and ready for use, to notice that things had been moved, even a fraction of an inch.

Whoever had searched had been meticulous about replacing things, but not so well that Raley couldn’t tell that drawers and cabinets had been opened, cushions squeezed, rugs lifted, pieces of furniture scooted aside, then replaced.

It was the same in the bedroom. Even the TV tray had been placed upright. The lightbulb was missing from his gooseneck lamp. He remembered the long minutes of silence following the crash. Had the tidy intruder been sweeping up the shattered bulb? Obviously. Also obvious was that he’d taken the broken glass with him, because Raley didn’t see even a sliver of it.

He registered all this within a second of entering the room, because he looked immediately toward the bureau. One drawer, which he knew he hadn’t left open, was slightly ajar, but he expelled a light laugh of relief and said, “He didn’t find it.”

Aware that Britt was watching him as she stuffed her new clothes back into the plastic sacks, he lifted the jar containing the sweet potato vine off the top of the bureau and set it on the floor. He pulled tendrils of the vine away from their anchors tacked to the wall and coiled them around the jar.

“You said it was a nice touch. I didn’t think anyone would disturb it.” Then he put his knee and shoulder to the heavy bureau and pushed it away from the wall. “There’s a hammer in a toolbox on the floor of the closet. Bring it to me, please.”

Britt found the hammer in seconds and carried it to him. He used the claw at the end of it to pry away several nails, then pulled a section of the cheap paneling away from the wall. Behind it was a hollow space. He reached in and withdrew several folders. They were banded together with a thick rubber band and wrapped in protective plastic.

“Your files,” Britt said.

“Yeah.”

“Did you see the guy?”

“Both of them.”

“There were two?”

“One searched the truck while his buddy was in here.”

“What did the other one look like?”

“Like the one you saw. Like guys who just walked off the eighteenth tee, except with guns.”

Reaching beneath the bed, he pulled out a duffel bag and placed the package inside it, then grabbed handfuls of underwear, socks, and T-shirts from the bureau drawers. From the closet he got several pairs of jeans and crammed them into the duffel. He gave her a look, then reached into the closet again, took a ball cap from the top shelf, and handed it to her. “Put your hair up under this and pull the bill down low.”

Then he took his one pair of dress shoes and a dark suit from the closet.

“You still plan to go to the funeral?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She opened her mouth, but he cut her off before she could say anything.

“We’ll talk about it on the way.”

“On the way to where?”

“That’s part of what we’ll talk about.”

“Raley.” She caught his arm as he moved past her, carrying the hastily packed duffel bag and his suit. “Were these the men who pushed me off the road last night?”

“I wouldn’t bet against it.”

“Who are they?”

They had no time to lose, but he took a moment, holding her gaze. “I don’t know who they are, Britt. But I can guess who sent them. And I know they aren’t fucking around.”

Raley had heard one of the intruders say “on the way back.” “I assume that means they’re returning to Charleston,” he told her as they sped away from the cabin. “If that’s the case, we’re probably okay for the immediate present.

“On the other hand,” he said grimly, “these two assholes seem to enjoy vehicular homicide. They could be waiting at the intersection with the main road, knowing this road is a cul-de-sac, the only way in to my place, the only way out. Sooner or later, we’d have to pass this way, and these guys strike me as men who wouldn’t mind the wait, even indefinitely.”