Chapter 5 - The Footsteps on the Stairs
My blood ran cold.
"They're in the house," I whispered, my hand instinctively dropping to my side as if I had a weapon to defend us with.
Grandma didn't panic. She snapped the metal lockbox shut, shoved the leather ledger and the letters back into the hidden floor recess, and jammed the pine floorboard down with a sharp kick of her heel.
"The fire escape," she whispered, pointing toward a small, dust-covered window at the far gable end of the attic.
"Grandma, that window hasn't been opened in twenty years," I hissed, grabbing her arm. "The latch is probably rusted shut."
"Then break it," she replied, her eyes flashing with absolute steel.
Downstairs, the heavy footsteps reached the second-floor landing. A floorboard creaked loudly right outside the pull-down attic door.
"Check the upstairs," a deep, unfamiliar voice ranted from the hallway below. "If they're here, they're looking for the paper trail. Mr. Mercer wants every box in that attic turned upside down."
Mr. Mercer.
My father hadn't just hired a private investigator; he had sent professional muscle to clean up his mess.
I sprinted across the attic floor, ignoring the towering stacks of storage bins, and reached the gable window. A thick layer of grime coated the glass, and the brass latch was sealed shut with decades of paint and oxidation. I wrapped my hand in my heavy winter scarf, pulled back my fist, and smashed it directly into the center of the pane.
The glass shattered inward with a sharp, crystalline crash that echoed through the entire house.
"Hey! What was that?!" a voice shouted from the second-floor hallway.
The pull-down attic ladder began to shake violently as heavy boots started climbing toward us.
I kicked the remaining shards of glass out of the frame, clearing the jagged edges, and shoved the window outward on its rusted hinges. A blast of cold, wet night air rushed in, carrying the smell of wet asphalt and rain. Outside, a steep iron fire escape ladder descended into the dark shadows of the side yard.
"Go!" I urged, grabbing Grandma by the waist and boosting her up toward the open window frame.
Despite her age, she scrambled through the opening with surprising agility, her church coat catching briefly on a protruding nail before ripping free. She slipped out onto the narrow iron landing just as the attic door burst fully open at the other end of the room.
A tall man in a dark trench coat stepped into the yellow light of the bulb, his hand sliding inside his jacket to reveal the black outline of a shoulder holster.
He locked eyes with me across the dusty expanse of the attic.
"End of the line, kid," the man snarled, taking a step forward.
I didn't hesitate. I vaulted backward through the broken window frame, tumbling headfirst onto the wet metal platform of the fire escape just as a heavy object slammed into the wood where I had been standing a second before.
Rain lashed against my face as I scrambled to my feet, grabbing Grandma’s hand.
"Run!" I shouted.
We raced down the slick, rusted stairs of the fire escape, the metal groaning beneath our weight. Halfway down, the man in the trench coat appeared at the window above us, leaning out into the rain with a cell phone pressed to his ear.
"They're escaping down the back alley!" he yelled to someone below.
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As my feet hit the muddy sod of the backyard, the beam of a high-intensity flashlight suddenly cut through the darkness from the corner of the garage, blinding us with a harsh wall of white light.
A second man stepped out from the shadows of the fence line, blocking our only path to the getaway car.
