It took them a few minutes to navigate around to the front of the carriage house. Marceline measured each step with caution. Sensing this was for his sake, Rusty urged her to pick up the pace. The pain in his head had receded to a tolerable level, feeling less like two burning spikes had been thrust into his eyes than an unusually intense migraine.
They soon found themselves on the same cobblestone pathway he’d walked before. Marceline led them toward the main house, seeking cover from any lights wherever possible.
“Let’s hold up,” she said, crouching behind the stone well and pulling him down with her. “We’re behind a well.”
“All right,” he nodded, locating it within the mental snapshot he’d taken earlier. By honing in on individual details like the well and the copper lanterns, a fuller picture assembled in his mind’s eye.
“There a magnolia tree up on the right,” he said. “Fifteen feet or so?”
“Uh huh. I can smell it from here.”
“That’s our next checkpoint.”
“Hold it.”
Marceline lifted her head above the well’s rim to scan the back of the house. She glimpsed a silhouetted figure pass by a pair of French doors on the ground floor. It may have been more than one person, she wasn’t sure. Lace curtains behind the glass prevented a clear view.
“Good to go?” Rusty asked.
“I just saw someone in the house.”
“Man or woman?”
“Couldn’t tell. Let’s hang for a minute.”
Marceline kept her eyes on the French doors, waiting to see if the figure reappeared. Rusty ground his teeth and muttered with the frustration of being sightless until she told him to hush. After what seemed like a safe interval, she stood.
“Looks clear. Let’s move.”
Keeping low, they jogged hand in hand across the grass until the magnolia’s leafy boughs offered a veil of protection.
“How far’s the house now?” Rusty whispered.
“There’s a porch about twenty feet in front of us. No lights, looks empty.”
“We need to get to the driveway out front, but we can’t risk going through the house.”
“So what do we do, climb over it?”
“Might be fun to try if we had more time,” Rusty said, once more calling upon his mental snapshot. “There should be a gap up ahead on the right, between the house and some hedges. See it?”
Marceline squinted into the darkness and shook her head.
“Not really, it’s dark over there. Might be a little bit of space.”
“Let’s try it. If I’m wrong we’ll try something else.”
They rapidly closed the distance from the magnolia to the back corner of the house. Marceline flattened herself against the wall and peered in the direction he’d indicated.
A narrow path stretched between the west gallery porch and a high row of hedges along the property line, just as he’d described. It was covered almost entirely in darkness except for some faint moonglow. This side of the house featured fewer windows than the front or back, and none of them were lit.
“Goddamn,” Marceline said, squeezing his hand. “I forgot how good you are at this.”
“I’ll hold off on taking any bows until we’re out of here.”
“Can’t see how far it goes,” she whispered. “Maybe all the way to the front.”
“Let’s find out. If we have to go over a wall, so be it.”
Twenty paces down the tight thorny path brought them to the front corner of the porch. As Rusty had predicted, a brick wall six feet in height connected the space between the porch and the hedges.
Marceline was ready to move herself over it with a swift two-handed vault. Rusty calmly reminded her she was five months pregnant. He insisted she use his cupped hands for leverage and begged her to take it slowly.
Once she was on the other side, Rusty followed. He didn’t need his eyes to scramble up and over the wall with ease.
A faint glare appeared in his left field of vision, coming from a bright lamp above the front door. It was the first flicker he’d seen since his exposure to the plant residue. He thought he could barely discern the shape of the house’s front facade.
Don’t get too excited just yet, he cautioned himself. Could be a trick of the brain, easy.
Marceline took his hand and they walked a few paces toward the front door, which stood open an inch or so.
“We’re looking at the driveway, right?”
“Yeah,” Marceline answered. “Straight ahead.”
“Black Escalade parked there?”
She paused before replying, recognizing the vehicle.
“Is that Joseph’s?”
“Don’t worry, we’re leaving him here. He won’t be following without his keys.”
“Where is he now?” she asked. Rusty didn’t like the sound of that question.
“Cuffed to the wheel. Hopefully still unconscious.”
“I don’t see anyone in there. The driver’s door is open.”
Rusty silently cursed himself for not incapacitating Abellard more fully, even if that meant a lethal blow. But as he berated his own timidity, he still couldn’t imagine himself taking the man’s life in cold blood.
“Let’s move fast,” he said. “We need to get to the end of the driveway, and it’s a decent walk.”
“There’s another car here,” Monday said. “A silver Lincoln.”
“What?” Rusty groaned, feeling his stomach drop like he was being pulled back into Barataria Bay all over again.
“It’s parked in front of Joseph’s.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What’s the matter?”
Goddamnit, Monday. Why didn’t you keep your fucking post?
“Whose car is that, Rusty?”
He hesitated, unsure how Marceline would respond to learning the identity of his partner in this rescue operation.
“Your friend, Nurse Reed. She helped me track you down. Couldn’t have done it without her.”
“Monday?” Marceline asked, her incredulity clear as a bell. She grabbed Rusty’s arm, not softly. “You got Monday mixed up in this?”
Rusty turned away from her, moving toward the door he couldn’t see except in the dimmest of outlines. He threw himself against it, ready to kick it down, and the door yawned open.
Marceline reached out to grab him.
“Wait! How are you going to—”
Gunfire exploded from within the house, killing the question before she could finish asking it.