Although he snorted, he moved back to the door. “Fine, but you be careful, too.”

“I will.” She made shooing motions. “Go kick some doors in. You know you want to.”

His grin made her stomach swoop and dive. “Not every day I get to kick a door in…at least without getting yelled at after.”

As he left the room, she immediately started searching, moving methodically from one side to the next, looking in the heating vents and air returns and checking for spots on the wall that appeared to have been recently restored. The floor creaked alarmingly under her feet, but it held.

She was checking the mattress for openings when the first bang of John’s boot hitting a door sounded, and she closed her eyes, waiting for another explosion. After she counted to twenty, she let out her breath in a rush and opened her eyes again. She resumed her search, checking the floor for any loose boards or bigger-than-normal gaps. Sonny was apparently a terrible housekeeper. Dust—regular dust, along with the plaster—coated everything. Making a face, she slapped her dirty hands across her pants, but that didn’t help much.

At the sound of another door being kicked in, Molly started to count again, although she didn’t pause her search that time. Quickly, she reached the opposite side of the room without finding anything except clothes and other uninteresting personal items. She’d even rummaged through the pockets of all of his pants and jackets that she’d found strewn around. It wasn’t pleasant. Sonny seemed to have the same aversion to doing laundry as he had for dusting. The closet was completely empty.

Running a hand over the top of her head to remove a spiderweb, she grimaced at the grainy feel of plaster dust coating her hair. She looked around the room, trying to figure out what she’d missed. There was no way that Sonny could’ve known they were coming, so he would’ve had to leave in a hurry. A glance out the window told her that he must’ve climbed down the rickety trellis or somehow scaled the smooth siding down to the ground or up to the roof. Either way, he would’ve only had time to grab the most important things—wallet and phone and possibly a laptop—and run.

Her gaze settled on an electrical outlet. It was strangely clean and dust-free compared to the rest of the room. When she looked at it more closely, she saw that the plate had a fresh coating of paint that didn’t match the dingy walls. The plate around the light switch had been newly painted as well. A loud wail of a siren pulled her attention away from the outlet. They were getting much louder; the emergency vehicles couldn’t be more than a half mile away by now. Stepping into the hall, she called out to John. “Can I use your flathead screwdriver?”

He popped out of the room directly across from the stairs and tossed her his multi-tool. “Be quick. We probably have three minutes before the firefighters will be tossing us over their shoulders and carrying us outside.”