Stevie swallowed, checked to make sure she was still breathing, examined Nate for signs of life, and then tilted her head toward the kitchen door. She got up, moving first to her knees, then up to her feet, tiptoeing over to it. It had a deadbolt, plus a twisty thing above the knob. She turned both of these gingerly. That went well, but as she pulled the door open, the door made a strange rattling noise. The footsteps overhead stopped moving.
There was no time to be precious now, no time to pretend they weren’t there. She grabbed for Nate and yanked him through the door, only barely concealing the sound of their leaving. Outside, night had fallen, and fireflies twinkled around the warm garden behind the house. If they ran straight out, whoever it was would be able to see them from
the windows. She gestured for Nate to follow her, creeping close to the house. They went around to the front, which faced the trees and the driveway.
“Go!” she whispered to him.
The two of them tore off, running as fast and as quietly as they could down the gravel driveway. The moon was unfortunately high and bright and there were fireworks going off overhead, so there was no cover as they hurried away, but they were soon through the opening in the trees and down into the wooded part of the drive, away from the view of the house. Once they reached where it met the street, she turned back.
“Wait,” she said, catching his arm. “Wait, wait, wait . . .”
Stevie turned around and was taking a few steps back up the drive toward the house.
“Stevie.”
“Look,” she said. She remained there until he came up beside her to see what she was indicating.
“What?” he hissed. “There’s nothing.”
“Right. There’s nothing. There’s no car.”
Nate had nothing to say for a moment.
“What does that mean?” he finally replied.
“It means someone came here on foot.”
“But what does that mean?” he said again.
“Something,” she said. “Probably bad. Come on.”
They hurried back down the lane. Nate went ahead a bit and ducked into the trees. He emerged a moment later and stood there until Stevie reached him.
“The bikes are gone,” he said simply. “Must be the wrong spot, but . . . we put them by this sign right here. . . .”
On some level, once she had noticed there was no car in the driveway, Stevie had expected this. When things go bad, they tend to go bad all over.
“Come on,” she said, pulling him into the trees. “We’re going to walk back, but we’re going to stay off the road. We’ll go around the lake.”
She pulled out her phone as they walked and thumbed open a map. It was slow to load. The signal was poor. It finally opened the map, but it was of no use.
“It thinks we’re in the middle of the lake,” she said, shoving the phone in her pocket. “We’ll have to get to the lake somehow and follow it around. It’s got to be this way.”
“So we’re going to wander around the murder forest in the dark when there’s someone at the house we broke into.”
“Unless you have another plan,” she said.
“Just making sure I was up to speed.”