"Caroline," Nina whispered into the walkie-talkie.
"Caroline," she said again, risking a little more volume. "Do you see lights?" she asked, then nervously added, "Over."
Julia's mind flashed back to the diagrams spread across the changing table. She recalled the layout of the first floor, remembering that the master bedroom was upstairs—upstairs, above the garage. Ridiculous excuses log jammed in her mind. Oh, yes, officers, we're the community yard-sale committee. . . termite. inspectors . . . sleepwalkers?
"Caroline?" Nina asked again, this time not hiding the panic that they were all beginning to feel. A long, eerie silence followed before Caroline's static-riddled voice came through the walkie-talkie.
"Sorry guys. Nick was wet." ! "Caroline," Nina snapped, "are there lights?"
A terribly long moment passed while, presumably, Caroline checked the window. "You're clear, Alpha team, proceed as planned. Operation is a go."
"Alpha team"? Maybe it wasn't a vacation Caroline needed—maybe it was there a— "Pit bull!" Nina hissed.
Julia spun around to see a big brown dog in a spiked leather collar standing at the top of the concrete stairs. The dog was looking at them as if it didn't know whether they were intruders or circus performers hired for his entertainment. Its front legs were perched on top of a giant bag of dog food. In the glare of the flashlight Julia could just make out the swinging flap of the doggie door.
"Oh, boy," Lance said. He eased toward the now-growling animal. "Hey, boy," he said. "How ya doing there, big guy? You don't need to bark. No. You don't need to bark." Then Julia saw Lance's hand move to his pocket, and moments later he was holding an uncooked hot dog. With a gentle flick, he tossed it onto the concrete landing. But the dog was unsure which piece of meat looked better, the weenie or Lance; it looked between the two of them, sniffing. Then it lowered its head and began to eat.
Julia watched in amazement, but Nina summed it up best: "Holy crap."
Lance didn't stop to marvel at his accomplishment. Instead, he turned to them and whispered, "Let's get out of here, quick. I've only got a few more with me."
"How did you know to bring hot dogs?" Nina asked.
He raised his eyebrows. "Not all crazy people lie."
"Okay," Julia said. "Let's spread out and find that manuscript. It's in a medium-sized brown box."
"You mean like those brown boxes?" Nina said and turned. The beam of her flashlight swept across the garage, illuminating a mountainous pile of boxes, each nearly identical to the one Myrtle had hauled from Caroline's curb.
"What kind of freak is she?" Julia asked, no longer trying to mask her voice.
"The kind who's gonna send us to prison if she finds us," Lance said softly. "Now let's look and get out of here."
With the mountain before them, it was pretty safe to assume that new arrivals were at the top. Plus, upon closer inspection, Julia noticed that not all of the boxes were plain or brown. Some had mailing labels, or black-and-white pictures of TVs and computer monitors, with instructions written in English, Spanish, and Japanese.
"It was plain?" Lance asked.
"Yes. A plain brown box. No writing of any kind. Probably two feet square."
"Like that one?" Nina asked, and sent a beam of light upward to a shelf that must have been fifteen feet above the concrete floor. The three of them stood with their heads craned back so far that they could have seen straight up to Heaven if it hadn't been for Myrtle's bedroom directly above them.
"How in the world did she get it up there?" Julia asked.
"You're sure that's the one?" Lance asked.
There wasn't a doubt in Julia's mind.
Lance steadied a ladder while Julia climbed almost to its highest rung, teetering. Don't look down, don't look down, she chanted to herself. She pried open the four corners of the box and, with a mini-flashlight in her mouth, saw what she hadn't seen in years. She pulled out early drafts of Table for One, old short stories she desperately wanted to stop and read, letters she'd received from Caroline and Nina that had inspired her to keep writing.
"We don't have time for a stroll down memory lane," Nina whispered. "Find the blasted book!"
Julia dug in again, wincing with paper cuts as her hands slid down between the pages, until panic began to set in. "It's not in here. I don't believe it. It's not. . ."
"Are you sure?" Lance asked.
"It's not in here!"
"Get down," Lance said, gesturing to the safety of the floor.
She stared down at him, so calm and safe on the ground beneath her, then she considered hurling herself off the ladder. Better to end the humiliation here.
"Just get down," he soothed. "We'll figure something out."
Julia began the long descent. At the base of the ladder, Nina put her arm around Julia's shoulders to comfort her as Lance asked, "What was it in?"
"That box," she cried, pointing again to the top shelf.
"I mean the manuscript, specifically. It wasn't just loose in there, was it?"
"No," Julia said, remembering. "It was in one of those accordion-type files that expands and has a flap that goes over and a piece of cord that wraps around."
"Okay," Lance said. "You and Nina are going to go home now, and I'm going to go into the house and look for that file." "Nuh-uh," Nina said.
"Three of us will be three times faster," Julia suggested.