Page 48 of Buried Too Deep

She backed off that topic, too, choosing one that she thought he’d be open to. “Do you have extra time in your schedule? I have a number of repairs that I can’t do on my own and I’ve put off way too long. I’d like to hire you, if you’re interested.”

A smile tilted his mouth as they reached the staircase. He rubbed one of his big hands over the banister with reverence. “Work on this old beauty? Hell, yeah. Tell me where and when you want me to start.”

She started up the stairs, looking over her shoulder. He was still at the base of the stairs, admiring the hand-carved banister. She couldn’t blame him. It was one of the nicer details of the house. “How about tomorrow?”

He thought about it, then nodded as he began to follow her up. “I’ll talk to Burke. See what he has for me to do at the office. I do night security there, but I have a few waking hours in the daytime.”

Excellent. This way he’d be here while she was at work, in case the assholes came back. If he couldn’t be her bodyguard, at least he could guard the house.

He stopped abruptly. “Maybe not tomorrow. My friends are still here in town.”

“Oh right. Stone and Delores.” She was disappointed that he wouldn’t be here while she was gone, but the new alarm would have to be enough. “Well, figure out your schedule and let me know.”

“I will.”

They climbed the rest of the way up in silence, the voices of the others growing louder as they reached the attic door. Cora knocked, then stuck her head inside. “It’s just us. Don’t shoot or anything.”

Someone snorted.

“You’re safe,” Antoine said. “Come on in. There’s room for a marching band up here.”

Cora entered the attic. It was a large room with windows and window seats and everything. No ladder to a crawl space for this house.

“I loved this room as a kid,” she said. “I’d come up here and read for hours.”

Molly was standing in front of a wall of Tetris-packed boxes, fists on her hips. “Then you becoming a librarian makes sense. I don’t even know where to start. There’s so much stuff.”

Cora gently nudged her out of the way, aware of Phin shadowing her, much like SodaPop shadowed him. “This row of boxes in the front are ones I packed. They’re John Robert’s things,” she said, feeling the sting of sorrow. But a hand stroked her hair lightly. Phin, giving her comfort. It helped. “These boxes are all labeled. The ones in the next row are boxes John Robert packed. He always said he’d label the boxes ‘later,’ but he ran out of time. I wrote ‘JR’ on those boxes, so you can ignore those, too. My grandmother’s things are in the next row, and I packed those, so they’re labeled, too. Same with the row behind that. Those were my mother’s things.” And seeing the boxes, all lined up so tidily, made her grieve all over again. She cleared her throat. “Anything behind these boxes that isn’t labeled was packed by my mother. Those will be my father’s things, but they’re probably mixed with other things.” She sighed. “This is going to take a while.”

Standing on her tiptoes, she began tugging at a box on the top row, unsurprised when Phin took the box from her hands and gently put it aside.

“I’ll move them, you just tell me which pile they go in,” he said.

She smiled up at him. “Thank you, Phin. That’s a John Robert box. It can go in that corner over there for now.”

Phin did as she directed and as a group, they began sorting six generations of Winslow stuff.

7

Mid-City, New Orleans, Louisiana

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 9:00 P.M.

ALAN BLINKED HARD AS HE parked his van on the curb two houses up from Medford Hughes’s home. His head ached from the bright headlights. He took off his special macular glasses and massaged his temples, hating the glasses and hating the pain.

He’d survive a headache, though.

He wouldn’t survive if Medford went to the police.

Medford hadn’t done so yet, at least Alan didn’t think so. Medford was a coward, evidenced by the fact that, at this very moment, the man was putting a suitcase into the trunk of his car.

Medford was going to run.

Alan couldn’t let him do that.

Dread sat heavy in his belly as he slid Sage’s ski mask over his face and pulled up the hood on the jacket he’d borrowed from Sage’s closet. He then pulled on a new pair of disposable gloves and carefully tugged the gloves Medford had discarded over top of them. It would be hard to bend his fingers, but he’d have to manage.

Grabbing Sage’s special bag with the two laptops, he forced himself out of the van. Medford had gone back inside his house, leaving his trunk open and his car unlocked. He probably thought he was safe, parked in his own garage.

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