Sarah ripped off her headlamp and dropped it into her tool bag as she turned right on the sidewalk, heading for the next street-then she pulled up short. She’d patted herself on the back too fast. Sirens shrilled, and Sarah saw a cruiser take the corner and head straight for her.
How she’d been found out, or even if the police were coming for her, was irrelevant. Sarah was holding several hundred thousand dollars in jewels and a bagful of burglar’s tools.
Taking off at a run, reversing her direction, Sarah cut through the backyard of the house to the west of Mrs. King’s. Mentally marking the spot, she ditched the bag of jewels into a basement window well and kept running. She skirted what looked to be the makings of a backyard shed and dropped her tools into a bag of construction trash.
Still at a run, Sarah whipped off her hat and gloves and tossed them under a hedge. She heard the siren stop only yards away, and someone shouted, “Stop! This is the police.”
Without her light, Sarah couldn’t see where to run, so she dropped to her haunches and froze against the rough stucco wall of a house. Flashlight beams swept the yard, but the lights didn’t touch her. Radios crackled and cops called out to one another, guessing at which way she had gone, and for those interminable minutes, Sarah hugged the stucco wall, fighting the urge to run.
When the voices faded, Sarah broke diagonally across a yard full of kiddie toys to a metal gate, which she opened. The gate latch clanked. A big dog barked behind a door. Security lights blazed.
Sarah skirted the reach of the lights, running through shadows into another yard, where she tripped over a garden cart, falling hard enough for her right shoe to fly off her foot. She felt for the shoe in the dark but couldn’t find it.
A woman’s shrill voice called out, “Artie, I think someone’s out there!”
Sarah vaulted over a fence, then took off again, ripping off her black sweater as she ran. She pulled the hem of her neon-green T-shirt out of her pants as she came out of the shadows onto a street she didn’t know.
Feeling nauseous and desperate, Sarah stripped off her other shoe and her socks and left them in a trash can at the edge of a driveway, then headed north at a steady pace in the general direction of her car.
That was when she realized, too late, that her keys were in her tool bag and she’d locked her wallet in the glove box.
She was shoeless and miles from home without a dime.
What now?
Chapter 81
THE BRIGHT WINDOWS at Whole Foods were in sight when Sarah heard a car slowly coming up behind her on the dark street. The vehicle crawled, keeping pace with her, its headlights elongating her silhouette on the pavement.
Was it the cops?
Half out of her mind with fear, Sarah fought her compulsion to turn toward the car. Panic would show on her face. And if it was the cops and they stopped to question her-she was cooked.
Who was it? Who was trailing her?
A horn blared and then tires squealed as the vehicle behind her peeled out and flew past, an old silver SUV with a jerk hollering out the window, “Sweet ass, baby!” Sarah lowered her head as whoops of laughter receded.
Her red Saturn was where she had left it. She could see, by peering through Whole Foods’ front windows, that the store was nearly empty.
A sandy-haired boy was closing down the last open register. He looked up when Sarah approached. She said, “I locked myself out of my car. Could I borrow your phone?”
“There’s a pay phone outside,” he said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. Then his expression changed.
“Ms. Wells. I’m Mark Ogrodnick. I was in your class about five years ago.”
Sarah’s heart revved up again and went into overdrive. Of all the stores in the world, how had she found the one place in Pacific Heights where someone knew her?
“Mark. Great to see you. May I borrow your phone? I have to call my husband.”
Mark stared down at her bare feet, at the bleeding gash on her shin. He opened his mouth and closed it, then fished his phone out of his back pocket and handed it to Sarah. She thanked him and walked down the produce aisle, dialing and then listening to the phone ring several times. Finally Heidi picked up.
“It’s me,” Sarah said. “I’m at Whole Foods. I locked myself out of my car.”
“Oh God, Sarah,” Heidi said. “I can’t come. The kids are sleeping.”
“Where’s Beastly?”
“He’s out, but he could walk in at any minute. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
“I love you, too.”
Ogrodnick looked up and switched off the neon light in the storefront window. Sarah had no choice. She dialed her home phone number and, for the first time ever, prayed that Trevor would pick up.
“Sarah, where the hell are you?” Terror asked with a sharp edge in his voice.
Meekly, Sarah told him.
Chapter 82
AFTER TREVOR THREATENED her, drank, shoved her around, and collected his marital due, he finished a six- pack and went to bed. Red-eyed, sore, and frightened, Sarah sat in his chair, squeezing the exercise ball. She changed hands, working her fingers until they were nearly numb. Then she shook out her hands and booted up her laptop.
Once she was on the Web, she clicked on Google News and typed “Hello Kitty” into the search bar.
To Sarah’s relief, there was no mention of the burglary at Diana King’s house. Not yet. But Sarah was worried about the tools she’d ditched in her steeplechase through Pacific Heights. Specifically, had she been wearing gloves when she changed the battery in her headlamp? She couldn’t remember.
And so Sarah searched her mind for an out. She’d dumped the tools in a trash bag near that small construction site. Maybe if someone found it, he’d think,
Sarah thought about all the other stuff she’d left behind like a trail of bread crumbs: her sweater and socks and shoes. By themselves, they were nothing. But if her prints were on the battery, everything else could be used to back up the charges against her.
Sarah groaned and ran the cursor down the Hello Kitty page. She read a few articles about her burglaries and her growing infamy, taking no pleasure in any of it. A headache bloomed behind her right eye as she tapped into the canon of stories about the Dowlings. The most recent clips were all Marcus Dowling quotes and interviews, but as she scrolled to earlier pages, she found stories from the day after she’d done the Dowling job.
A headline grabbed her attention.
“The Sun of Ceylon Stolen in Fatal Armed Robbery.”
