“I don’t get it. What are you — ”
Ballard disconnected. And immediately she felt the euphoria and assuredness of her decision start to slip away.
“Shit,” she said.
She stood up and slid her phone into her back pocket. Picking up the gun, she held it down by her side. She walked to the door, having decided to take another sweep of the house so she would know the layout by heart should she need to maneuver in the dark.
She had just entered the hallway when the house started shaking. Not an earthquake, just a low vibration. A tremor. She realized that someone was opening the garage door.
43
Ballard quickly backed into the darkened office. She stood at the doorway at first and waited. The hallway offered a straight-shot view to the living room and the front door. Through an arched entry on the left was the kitchen and through that she could see the edge of the door to the garage. She fixed on that point, her gun still held down at her side.
Soon the tremor in the floor began again and she knew the garage door was closing. A few moments later, she saw the doorknob start to turn on the kitchen door. The door opened inward, at first blocking Ballard’s view of who was coming in.
Then the door closed and a man in dark blue coveralls stood there as she had, listening to the house. Ballard ducked further back into the shadows of the home office but kept one eye on the man. She didn’t breathe.
The man wore black synthetic gloves and a green ski mask that had been rolled up off his face because he did not expect anyone to be in the house. He would pull it down when Hannah Stovall came back from her walk. He had a fanny pack strapped around the coveralls, with the pouch in front. His eyebrows and sideburns revealed that he had red hair.
“Okay, I’m in,” he said. “Any sign of her?”
Ballard froze. He was talking to someone. She then saw the white earbud in his right ear. There was no cord. It was a Blue-tooth connection to a phone held in a runner’s armband on his upper right arm.
Ballard hadn’t planned for that — that they would be in constant communication. Another flaw in a very flawed plan.
“Okay,” the man said. “I’ll take a look around. Let me know when you see her.”
The man moved out of the sliver of view Ballard had of the kitchen. She heard the refrigerator open and then close. She then heard footsteps on the wood flooring and could tell he had moved into the living room. She also heard a sound she could not identify. It was a slapping sound that was spaced at various intervals. She heard his voice again but it was farther away this time.
“Bitch has almost no food in the fucking fridge.”
He crossed in front of the hallway in the living room and she saw that he was tossing up and down one of the apples she had put in the refrigerator, making the slapping sound as he caught it. She had to think. If the redhead was in constant communication with his partner, she had to figure out a way to take him down without the partner realizing and possibly fleeing.
She wanted them both.
The footsteps grew louder and she knew he was heading to the hallway. She quickly and quietly moved to the blind side of the file cabinet and slid down the wall to a crouching position. She held the gun in a two-handed grip between her knees.
The steps paused and the overhead lights flicked on. Then the man spoke again.
“We’ve got a home office. Double monitors. Man, she doin’ some bidness up in here, y’all … Might need to take one of these for my own setup.”
The lights went out and the steps continued down the hallway. Ballard heard the man report what he saw in the hall bathroom, the guest room, and then the master suite. Their MO had obviously changed, possibly because of the exposure in the media, or dictated by Stovall’s stay-at-home schedule. Either way, the break-in came much earlier than in the three prior cases. She knew that this most likely meant they would not wait several hours in hiding, until Stovall went to sleep. Ballard believed the plan was now to move quickly, incapacitate and control Stovall, and then bring in the second man. The master suite was probably out as a hiding place, because that would be where Stovall went after her walk. That left the spare bedroom, the office, and the hall bathroom. Ballard believed the office was the best bet. The desk was set against one wall and the closet was directly opposite, meaning that if Stovall sat at her desk, her back would be to the closet door. The redhead would be able to surprise her from behind — if she went back to work after returning to the house.
Ballard waited, rehearsing in her mind the moves she would make when he returned to the office. One move if he saw her, and one move if he walked by without noticing her on his way to check out the closet.