The 9th Judgment

The room was about fifteen feet square, with deeply sloped ceilings and a dormer facing the street. Sarah panned her light over the antique furnishings and cabbage-rose wallpaper, then hit the dresser with her beam. She was ready to go through the drawers when she saw a dark figure with a light. "Jeez! Who?" she squealed, then realized that it was her own reflection in the mirror.

Sarah, get a grip.

She flicked her beam back around the room and picked up a dull gold gleam on top of the vanity. She moved closer and saw a mass of jewelry, just tons of it, lying on the warm cherrywood surface.

Sarah was already swimming in adrenaline, but the mound of gold topped up her tank. She opened her duffel and, using the side of her shaking hand, slid the jewelry into her bag. A few pieces, a ring and an earring, escaped and fell to the floor. Sarah snatched them up before they stopped rolling. She glanced at her watch.

She'd made a first-class score in just over three minutes. A record, her personal best-and now it was time to go.

Sarah crossed to the window and let herself down over the side of the house, once again using the air conditioner as a foothold. Feeling almost giddy, she threaded her way between the hedge and the house until she reached the dimly lit street.

She'd pulled it off.

She was outta there.

Sarah ripped off her headlamp and dropped it into her tool bag as she turned right on the sidewalk, heading for the next street-then she pulled up short. She'd patted herself on the back too fast. Sirens shrilled, and Sarah saw a cruiser take the corner and head straight for her.

How she'd been found out, or even if the police were coming for her, was irrelevant. Sarah was holding several hundred thousand dollars in jewels and a bagful of burglar's tools.

She couldn't get caught.

Taking off at a run, reversing her direction, Sarah cut through the backyard of the house to the west of Mrs. King's. Mentally marking the spot, she ditched the bag of jewels into a basement window well and kept running. She skirted what looked to be the makings of a backyard shed and dropped her tools into a bag of construction trash.

Still at a run, Sarah whipped off her hat and gloves and tossed them under a hedge. She heard the siren stop only yards away, and someone shouted, "Stop! This is the police."

Without her light, Sarah couldn't see where to run, so she dropped to her haunches and froze against the rough stucco wall of a house. Flashlight beams swept the yard, but the lights didn't touch her. Radios crackled and cops called out to one another, guessing at which way she had gone, and for those interminable minutes, Sarah hugged the stucco wall, fighting the urge to run.

When the voices faded, Sarah broke diagonally across a yard full of kiddie toys to a metal gate, which she opened. The gate latch clanked. A big dog barked behind a door. Security lights blazed.

Sarah skirted the reach of the lights, running through shadows into another yard, where she tripped over a garden cart, falling hard enough for her right shoe to fly off her foot. She felt for the shoe in the dark but couldn't find it.

A woman's shrill voice called out, "Artie, I think someone's out there!"

Sarah vaulted over a fence, then took off again, ripping off her black sweater as she ran. She pulled the hem of her neon-green T-shirt out of her pants as she came out of the shadows onto a street she didn't know.

Feeling nauseous and desperate, Sarah stripped off her other shoe and her socks and left them in a trash can at the edge of a driveway, then headed north at a steady pace in the general direction of her car.

That was when she realized, too late, that her keys were in her tool bag and she'd locked her wallet in the glove box.

She was shoeless and miles from home without a dime.

What now?

Chapter 81

THE BRIGHT WINDOWS at Whole Foods were in sight when Sarah heard a car slowly coming up behind her on the dark street. The vehicle crawled, keeping pace with her, its headlights elongating her silhouette on the pavement.

Was it the cops?

Half out of her mind with fear, Sarah fought her compulsion to turn toward the car. Panic would show on her face. And if it was the cops and they stopped to question her-she was cooked.

Who was it? Who was trailing her?

A horn blared and then tires squealed as the vehicle behind her peeled out and flew past, an old silver SUV with a jerk hollering out the window, "Sweet ass, baby!" Sarah lowered her head as whoops of laughter receded.

Her red Saturn was where she had left it. She could see, by peering through Whole Foods' front windows, that the store was nearly empty.

A sandy-haired boy was closing down the last open register. He looked up when Sarah approached. She said, "I locked myself out of my car. Could I borrow your phone?"

"There's a pay phone outside," he said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. Then his expression changed.

"Ms. Wells. I'm Mark Ogrodnick. I was in your class about five years ago."