Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [46]
I could see my condo, and see my bedroom windows. Without blinking, I watched those windows, wondering how well my tracks had been covered and how long I had before my safe house was outted, gutted, and sifted for evidence of … crimes?
But what crimes? I was a professional criminal, yes—but Uncle Sam’s sudden interest in me did not, hypothetically, have anything to do with any of my previous felonies. They were looking for me because I was looking for Ian’s past. I was running because they were chasing me. I was smack in the middle of all these causal relationships that made precious little sense, but might mean the difference between my continued freedom and a fate like Ian’s.
Or worse.
I didn’t want to think about that. The prospect of spending eternity blind, or deaf, or hideously scarred, or mentally impaired … none of it made me want to do anything but run screaming into the night.
My windows were blank and black. No matter how hard I strained I couldn’t see any hint of anything moving within, and I was patient enough to wait a full five minutes before scooting past the crows and praying they wouldn’t fly off, alerting the whole world to my position.
They didn’t. The crows and seagulls in Seattle are as unflappable as the kind they carve on totem poles. They live in the middle of a city, surrounded by people. We don’t impress them.
I quietly thanked them for their apathy and bounced over onto my own roof. I skidded to a halt and held my breath, hoping and praying that no one had seen me or heard me, and that I hadn’t kicked anything important that would need repairing.
Nothing in the world moved, and the neighborhood stayed quiet.
I was alone on the roof, except for the ruffling, mumbled protests of sleeping pigeons who were every bit as unimpressed by my presence as the crows had been in the tree. I held up a finger and said, “Shh!” as if it meant a damn to them.
But surely if armed men in commando uniforms had stormed the condo, even such blasé birds as these would’ve scattered, wouldn’t they? I told myself it was a good sign and that I may as well let myself down into my place, just one last time—long enough to cover my tracks.
For a moment I considered firebombing the condo behind me, but that would mean even more civic scrutiny, and I’d learned the hard way over the years that fire destroys pretty much everything, but not always everything. No, I’d be better off doing a hasty Houdini than trying to scorch the earth in my wake. And anyway, my neighbors were perfectly nice, and some of them owned pets.
The thought of cooking anyone’s dogs, cats, birds, or aquariums bothered me more than the thought of torching those animals’ owners. Call me strange if you want, but I’ve been known to feed animals, and I’ve likewise been known to kill and eat people. So I guess the math isn’t that tough after all.
In the bottom depths of my bag I keep an assortment of useful tools that I can’t take through an airport screening, including a glass cutter. I leaned down over the edge of my (luckily, top-floor) condo, and dragged my little tool along my bedroom window in a small circle, popped the resulting bit of glass inside, and reached around to unlatch it from within.
Still, I didn’t hear a sound.
Good.
I let myself in, moving about in full-on sneak mode—not turning on any lights, but letting my undead eyes do the grunt work on the shadows. Everything looked exactly as I’d left it, down to the unmade bed with the covers straggling about on the floor. Room to room I wandered, collecting small