No life at all on the street. The days of the milkman are long over. The first dog-walker doesn’t appear until 5:30 a.m.
The earliest indication that anybody is up in the Dunleavy house comes at 6:01 a.m., when Mike retweets a tweet from Tom Brady. Then Helen wakes and begins Facebooking. She Likes a dozen posts from her friends and shares a video about women soldiers fighting Isis in Syria. Helen is a moderate Democrat. Her husband seems to be a moderate Republican. They care about the world, the environment, and their kids. They are harmless, and in completely different circumstances, Rachel could imagine being their friend.
The kids are lovely too. Not spoiled, not bratty, just great little kids.
“Look at this,” Pete says. “Helen has just Instagrammed a picture of the Seafarer Restaurant on Webb Street in Salem.”
“It’s on Facebook now too,” Rachel says.
“She says she’s having breakfast there with her friend Debbie. How far is Salem from here?”
“Not that far. Five minutes, maybe ten if there’s traffic.”
“Not ideal. But a breakfast with an old friend has gotta take a minimum of forty-five minutes, right?”
Rachel shakes her head. “I don’t know. If it’s only coffee and muffins, it could be less. But then again, they’d go to Starbucks if they were just getting coffee and muffins. Why, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that once Mike’s gone and the kids are safely at school and Helen is safely at her breakfast, the house will be empty.”
“And then what?”
“I go in the back door. Scout the place. Maybe upload a little spyware bug of our own onto the family desktop.”
“You can do that?”
“Oh yes.”
“How?”
“The B-and-E stuff is pretty easy, as you found out at the Appenzellers’. The bugging tech I learned from my buddy Stan when I worked for him after the Corps.”
Rachel shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“Gives us an advantage. We’ll know what they’re thinking. The shit’s going to get real when we take Toby.”
“Is it safe?”
“Is anything we’re doing safe?”
Mike Dunleavy finally leaves for work at 7:15. He drives himself to the Beverly train station and leaves his BMW in the lot. Helen gets her kids outside at 8:01. It’s not really cold enough for winter coats but Helen has bundled them up anyway. Rachel thinks they look adorable in their oversize parkas and their hats and scarves.
“Do you want to follow them?” Pete asks.
Rachel shakes her head. “No point. Helen will let us know when she drops them off at school and gets to the restaurant.”
They sit in the Volvo and wait, and, sure enough, at 8:15, Helen Facebooks a selfie taken inside the Seafarer.
Pete scans the street. A college-age kid is shooting hoops down the block, and across the street, a little girl comes out of her house and starts jumping up and down on an enclosed trampoline. “Look over there—front door’s closed, kid’s on that trampoline by herself. She’d be perfect,” Pete says.
“Yes,” Rachel agrees. “But that’s not the plan.”
“No? OK, I’m going in.”
Rachel grabs his hand. “Are you sure about this, Pete?”
“We need all the information we can get about these people. In a raid, you gather all the intel you can for days, sometimes weeks, before you move. But we don’t have days or weeks, so we gotta get as much info as quickly as possible.”
Rachel can see the sense of that.
“Which is why I’m going in now while the house is, presumably, empty. If crazy old Uncle Kevin’s in there with a shotgun, I guess I’m screwed. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes or so, you should go.”
“What are you actually going to do?”
“Whatever I can in fifteen minutes.”
“OK, so that would be eight thirty.”
“Yeah.”
“What does it mean if you’re not back by eight thirty?”
“It means I’m compromised somehow. I won’t talk, of course, but you should move on to target B or, better yet, make a completely new target list that I don’t know anything about.”
“I’ll call you if there’s trouble in the street.”
“OK, but if things are looking hairy, just get out of here.”
Pete puts his backpack over his shoulder, checks to see that no one is looking, and runs to the fence between the Dunleavy house and a little patch of wood sandwiched between the beach and the road. Rachel sees him climb over the fence into the Dunleavys’ backyard.
She listens for the sound of screaming or crazy Uncle Kevin firing his shotgun, but there’s nothing like that.
In the rearview, she watches the little girl across the street play on her trampoline. There doesn’t seem to be anyone supervising her. The front door of her house is firmly closed. It would, in fact, be easy to walk over there and take the child.
Jesus Christ, who thinks things like this? What the hell have you become, Rachel?
She turns on her phone and looks at the time: 8:22.
She closes her eyes and thinks about Kylie. Has she been able to sleep? Knowing Kylie, she was probably thinking about her mom and dad the whole night, worrying about them.
Oh God, Kylie, I’m coming for you. I’ll get you back. Never let you out of my sight. Be a better mom. Keep you safe. Kill social media. Trust nobody. Full tinfoil hat.
She looks at the phone again: 8:23.
A white van drives slowly along the street, the kind of beat-up white van that’s always up to no damn good. The driver, however, pays no attention to her, and the van keeps going.
She rummages in her coat pocket for Marty’s cigarettes, but she can’t find them. A dog is barking like crazy somewhere.
Barking where? The Dunleavys do not have a dog. Rachel would know.
Maybe their neighbors? Maybe a dog next door saw Pete go into the house and recognized him as a stranger?
The phone reads 8:28.
She puts on the radio. It’s one of those endless reruns of Car Talk. One of the two brothers is ranting about the VW microbus.
Now it’s 8:31.
Where’s Pete?
The dog is barking louder now.
The little girl gets off the trampoline, picks up what seems to be a can of soda, and gets back on the trampoline.
Not a good idea, sweetie. Not in your nice dress, Rachel thinks.
It’s 8:34.
A black-and-white from the Beverly Police Department appears in her rearview mirror. “Oh no,” Rachel mutters. She turns the key in the Volvo’s ignition and the reliable old engine roars to life.
The police car starts driving slowly down the street. There are two officers inside. They’re coming right toward her.
And now it’s 8:37.
The dog’s barking gets louder still.
The police car gets closer.
She slips the Volvo into first gear, her left foot on the clutch, her right ready on the gas.
The little girl on the trampoline does the inevitable and manages to upend the soda all over herself. She starts screaming. The two cops turn to look at her.
Pete appears on top of the Dunleavys’ fence. He drops down to the little patch of woods, runs to the Volvo, and gets in the back seat, panting heavily. “Go!” he says.