CHAPTER TEN

 

 

JEAN WATCHED AS Mary Jo pulled into her garage and the door slid shut. She had been gone for just over forty minutes.

What was she up to? Where was Sam?

Jean really, really wanted to just go bang on the door and ask what had happened to Sam, but that would blow her cover completely.

But honestly, she wasn’t sure that her cover wasn’t already blown. She needed to be prepared for that possibility.

She quickly went out to her garage and clicked open yet another secret panel behind some boxes she stored there. Sam had been handy with tools, but he had no idea how good she was as well, and she never let on that she was a master carpenter who could build just about anything she needed.

In the panel was what she called her “go bag” meaning guns, clothes, an extra pair of shoes, fake passports and drivers’ licenses, and some rolls of cash.

She also had two different full face and hair disguises in the bag.

If she needed to go, there was a way she could go under the hot tub, through an opening in the deck siding and through their fence and into the neighbor’s back yard.

She kept an SUV gassed and stored in a self-storage place five blocks away.

She closed up the panel and put her go bag near her back door where she could get it on a run, then went back into the living room and sat, watching Mary Jo’s house.

She had often sat in the same chair, watching for her target, Chief Hanson, to get home. She knew their routines as well as her own. He should be home by now, but clearly he hadn’t come in yet.

A few moments later the garage door on Mary Jo’s garage opened again and she backed out. The windows on Mary Jo’s Jeep were tinted, so no way Jean could tell what she had.

And still no way that Jean could try to go into that house to investigate what happened to Sam.

She watched Mary Jo drive away, then stood and went into her kitchen to make a quick sandwich and grab a bottle of a sports drink.

This was going to be a long night.

A very long night.