Staying On Top(44)
I hated it.
If the day ever came when I was setting up a home, either for myself or—though I didn’t believe it would come to be—a family, it would be the complete opposite. Cozy. Smaller. Maybe old and drafty—different from the houses in the area, but the same, too.
“Maybe park here,” I suggested. We were still a couple hundred yards from the house’s driveway, and there were trees on the left side of the road that could hide our approach.
There shouldn’t be anyone here. As far as I knew, my father hadn’t used this house in years. He’d never brought me here on an impromptu visit, and even though Belgrade had surprised me with its beauty and sophistication, it wasn’t my father’s kind of place. He’d probably bought the house here because of the country’s nonextradition status with plans to spend no time here unless it became necessary.
As far as I knew, with the exception of my mother’s unexpected passing, nothing bad ever happened to my father. Not even close calls. All the millions of dollars he’d conned, all of the Interpol and FBI files opened and maintained, hadn’t led to a single arrest. He’d never spent a minute behind bars or in an interrogation room. I had my doubts that he ever would.
Sam parked the car on the soft earth, then took the keys out of the ignition and peered up ahead. “Doesn’t look like anyone is here.”
The place did have a deserted air about it. There were no other cars in the driveway, but there wouldn’t be even if Dad were here. “Well, he’s good at making it look like that. We’re here. Let’s go check it out.”
We got out of the car and trekked up the road. Halfway there he took my hand and, again, I didn’t stop him. For a hundred yards I pretended the two of us were lovers on fall break, enjoying Belgrade, visiting Sam’s friend from the tennis world, maybe going to visit my dad—who in this pretend version of life was normal and loving. The kind of dad who wanted to meet the guy his daughter was interested in, who might even puff out his chest in an attempt to intimidate the young man into good behavior.
The vision collapsed as we snuck around the back of the house to the garage door. They always had keypads and they always had the same code—my parents’ wedding anniversary.
I punched it in and waited for the door to rise. We entered the house, which bore an eerie similarity to the one we’d explored in Jesenice. The windows let in too much sun, making us squint in the high-ceilinged living room. Everything was white—the walls, the hard-looking furniture, the tiled floors. Like Marija’s bathroom only bigger, more cavernous, and it left me with a strangely exposed feeling that planted a seed of worry.
“I don’t think he’s here, but let’s take a look around. Quickly.”
Sam shot me a look. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling. You don’t?”
“Not really,” he answered after a quick self-assessment. “I mean, it’s not like I feel great about anything that’s happened since I got ripped off, though, so my meter is a bit off.”
“Let’s just hurry, okay? I’ll take the front of the house, you take the back.”
He nodded and we split up. I hustled through the kitchen, dining room, den, office, laundry room, and parlor before heading back to the living room. Sam strode back in a few minutes later, a piece of paper clutched between his fingers.
“What’s that?” I asked at the same moment the strange peal of European police sirens split open the peaceful morning air.
We both froze, our eyes locked on each other, and listened. They were definitely moving closer.
My eyes swept the room automatically, doing the thing my father had taught me to do first in every single home I entered. Conning was best done in public, or on the person’s porch or on a walk around their property—inside there were too many potential land mines. Hidden cameras; microphones; people that could be tucked away in other rooms, too far to see but close enough to hear. It had seemed like paranoia ten years ago, but with the kind of technology the average person owned these days it had become more and more likely.
Blinking red lights inside the vents caught my eye. I put a finger to my lips and turned, moving through the rooms I’d already checked. There were blinking red lights in those vents, too.
I didn’t know if my father had seen us, heard us, or if we had done nothing but trip an alarm system, but now wasn’t the time to sit around and figure it out.
Chapter 11
Sam
I’d followed Blair’s eyes to the vents. The blinking red lights were innocuous to me, but they seemed to mean something to her—nothing good. They had to be cameras, or some kind of alarm. The sirens grew louder, inched closer, and the muscles in my legs tightened, aching to move.