After two days of boring stakeouts,
I finally had a lead. After midnight, I saw the car Mrs. Cavanaugh had described,
and the guys in it. They struck me as typical teens: looking for trouble.
They didn’t know I tailed them to
their hangout, a house for sale just a couple of streets away from the church.
Explains how they go away so quick
and how no one really knew they were here.
The garage door opened up for them,
and they went in.
“Smart,” I said to myself. “No sign
of an alarm system, just a keybox on the door. They go in, reprogram the
opener, and they’ve got a cozy hideout for all of their activities.”
I parked a few houses down, then
approached, doing my best to blend in with suburbia.
“Why would
you have to blend in?” Jessie asked. “You have a house out that way, right?”
“I didn’t
at the time,” I said. “I used to have an apartment in the rougher part of
Meriville. Suburbanites were pretty foreign to me at the time.”
“Oh,” she
said. “I used to think the suburbs were so boring. I wanted to be in the city.”
“I prefer
the excitement of the city, particularly the night life,” Nikki grinned.
It was
slight, but I saw Jessie fidget when Nikki said night life.
Yeah, that probably brings up unpleasant
memories. Move the conversation on.
“Excitement
is overrated,” I said. “Especially when I expected to just deal with teens
playing a prank on the church.”
I pointedly avoided looking at the
hat. It was starting to bother me. Nick had threatened the helper thing before,
but I hadn’t expected it to come with a supernatural uniform, not that he asked
me what I wanted.
“Well, do continue, Matthew.”