From the woods, Mirho focused on the house through a set of night binoculars.
He had no idea if this Hilary Jeanine Cantor was the woman Rollie was with at Kelty’s crash site.
Or even if she was, if she was the one had taken the satchel of cash. She did fit the description: the right age, the right area where she lived, the Acura SUV. And not a bad looker either, he confirmed through the yellowy lens as he followed her and her son into the house.
He certainly seemed a little shrimpy to be playing basketball.
Until he could be sure, it wouldn’t have been wise to wait for her inside. Not like Rollie.
Not with the kid. The kid made it all messy. And would draw a lot of attention to something he wanted at all costs to keep quiet. All he could do was to get her attention. Which he was now sure he was about to get pretty good.
Three, two, one …
Through the lens, he followed her from window to window. The lights went on; he saw her son run ahead. He heard barking, the dog flipping out. If she was smart, seeing the fence up, she probably already knew.
Then she appeared. It hadn’t been hard to get inside. The kind of slide lock on the glass doors leading to the deck he could’ve opened while getting a blow job. She made it all the easier by not activating the alarm. Most people didn’t, he found.
Mirho watched the lights go on in her office. There ya go, doll … A sight of her through the shades, over her desk, looking through the disrupted files.
He enjoyed the anxiety and worry she would be feeling. And the fact that she had no idea what was actually happening yet. It gave him a tingling sense of control.
Then he saw the lights go on upstairs. She was heading to the bedroom. She’d be distraught, confused. Angry at herself for not activating the alarm. All that fine jewelry, it had to be gone, right? She was probably on the verge of tears …
He couldn’t see in, but by now he knew she had seen what he had left for her.
Bingo.
If it was her, he knew, her mind would be going a mile a minute and she’d be going crazy with panic. Trying to figure out what to do next. How she was going to get out of this.
That, or else she’d be thinking she was simply the luckiest burglarized person in the world.
Mirho waited.
He checked his watch. It would sure make things a lot easier if she would do something stupid. Like retrieving that satchel. Maybe even getting in the car and leaving with it, taking it somewhere else. That was what an amateur did. Panic. And she wasn’t exactly accustomed to this. That was how you could catch them.
Panicking.
But that didn’t happen.
Twenty minutes later he was still keeping his eyes trained. She didn’t leave.
An hour.
Maybe she didn’t have it here. Maybe it was in a safety deposit box somewhere. Or maybe she’d already gotten rid of it—found someone who would take on the risk of the cash in exchange for something she could more easily deposit. They were out there.
Or maybe she wasn’t even the one. Maybe he was out two grand. Maybe she didn’t even have it.
Though he was pretty sure she had already told him she did.
He took out the GPS device he would affix to her car.
Not by anything she’d done. Other than why else would she not have given Rollie her real name?
But more by what she hadn’t done.
First there was the sticker on the back of her car.
“I couldn’t read it because I never got that close,” Rollie had said, hanging there. “But it began with the letter M.”
Mirho squinted on it through the scope. Milton Farms.
And the other thing … that made it kind of certain. She hadn’t done the one thing a person would do if they had nothing to hide. If their home was broken into.
She hadn’t called the cops.