What are they going to do to us? she wondered as fear coiled through her intestines. Torture us? What will they put us through before they believe we didn’t find anything?

“Quit stall—”

The voice was cut off by a phut! sound—two of them. And then the light beam left her eyes, and she saw the two figures crumpling to the ground. The flashlight rolled, and the beam washed over the bulging, staring eyes and blood-leaking nose of one of the fallen faces.

Alicia screamed and felt Jack ducking into a crouch, pulling her down with him. She saw his pistol in his hand, aimed at the corner of the house.

“Are… are they dead?” Alicia whispered.

“Sure as hell looks like it.” His gun never stopped moving, ranging this way and that.

“You shot them dead, just like that?”

He stopped moving his gun and held it up in front of her for an instant. “You see a silencer? This was holstered when those guys went down. Somebody else got them.”

“Somebody else? But weren’t they the guards from out front?”

“The same.”

“Then who—?”

“Damned if I know. Yesterday your brother’s Arab friend mentioned being afraid of whatever it was he wanted from this place falling into ‘the wrong hands.’ I think this means we may have a third player in this game.”

A trilling sound made her jump.

“What’s that?” Alicia said, her fingertips digging into Jack’s upper arm where she clutched it.

The sound repeated, coming from one of the corpses.

“Sounds like a cell phone. Someone’s calling one of them.”

Jack looked as if he was about to go find the phone and answer the call.

“Let’s get out of here,” Alicia said.

“No alley on the other side, is there?” Jack said.

She shook her head—the house was flush against its neighbor on the west side.

“Then we’ll have to escape through the house. It’s safer than stepping into that alley.”

She couldn’t argue with that. And for once in her memory, it felt good to step through that door.

As she led him through to the front, she heard Jack curse himself all the way.

“I let them wake up! What a damn stupid thing to do. Careless idiot. Could have got us both killed.”

He stopped when they reached the front door. He unlocked it, then slowly, gently pulled it open a crack.

Alicia peeked over his shoulder. The guard car sat at the curb, engine still running, the doors closed. Jack stuck his head out and checked the front yard.

“Looks clear,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He pulled the door open and guided her onto the front stoop.

“Get moving and keep moving. Don’t run but walk fast—real fast—to your right. We’ll take the long way around to the car.”