Page 78 of Ballistic

“He’s not bad. Seen him win a few rounds, but the asshole’s pretty cocky. Likes to talk a lot of shit. Frank hates when he shows up.”

“I need to get out of this car. My adrenaline is so pumped, I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

Gaze on Kenny again, I waited to see if he’d move, get up for a drink, or stumble along to bed. He hadn’t so much as lifted his head since falling into that chair, which told me he might’ve already passed out. “All right. We’ll see if there’s a back entrance. That window is wide open for any bastard to peek in.”

I nabbed the gun from the glovebox and checked the mag. Not that I’d need it, necessarily. The asshole was drunk enough, I could knock him out with one sloppy smack across the face, which made the whole thing somewhat unappealing. He wouldn’t even know why the hell he’d taken a hit, let alone comprehend what’d come next.

Exiting the car, Nicoleta followed after me, as I shadowed the side of the house toward the back. Through the window of the backdoor, some kind of wall obstructed the entrance, like a shelving unit. For kicks, I turned the knob, which clicked open and hit the enormous object, rattling something on the other side of the door. I didn’t bother to push, for fear of knocking it over with the kind of clatter that could wake the asshole from his drunken stupor. Instead, I backed myself away from the house and searched for another way in.

Having explored abandoned buildings most of my life, I’d come to know there was always more than one point of entry. Even the most secure structures typically had a weakness—one spot that made it penetrable.

Something hit my foot as I blindly backed myself into the yard, and I glanced down to see a small naked baby doll lying half buried in the mud. The right side of its face was bent in, with white hair matted in dirt and tangled in knots. The yard held no other toys, so perhaps it’d been discarded, or tossed.

Ignoring it, I gave a quick scan of the house’s exterior.

The second floor bedroom window sat cracked, a sheer white curtain fluttering against the opening. Below it, the roof of the back porch, encased in brick walls, slanted downward, meaning I’d need to climb onto the porch roof to gain access to the window.

Taking a few steps back, I bent my knees, then pushed up onto the balls of my feet and darted forward. In three long strides up the side of the brick wall, I braced my palms against the top of the roof, hoisting myself onto its surface.

Hell, three years of parkour and a decade of dumb stunts hadn’t been for nothing, after all.

I reached over the edge for Nicoleta, and without any instruction, she gripped my arm, scuttled up the wall, and onto the roof beside me. The two of us ducked down and peered into the dark room through the window. A bed sat off against the wall, empty and unkempt, while the door at the opposite side of the room had been closed.

After widening the crack, I slid through the window first, setting my foot against torn-up carpeting, and pushed through, careful not to set too much weight onto the floor in case it creaked. With light steps, I entered the room and made my way toward the closed door.

Ear set to its panel, I stopped to listen for any footsteps, or a sign that someone else might’ve been inside the house.

Nicoleta came up from behind, setting her hand to the doorknob. “Let’s go,” she whispered, “I need to get this over with.”

I couldn’t blame her. Had I not spent half my life hunting pedophiles and thieves, I might’ve been just as antsy. But I couldn’t get that doll out of the back of my head, either. Might’ve been discarded trash. Or maybe it belonged to someone inside the house.

“Easy,” I warned. “Don’t be too hasty.”

“If you saw that video, you’d be hasty, too.”

I took a moment to let that sink in, to remember why we were there in the first place, and with a nod, I let her turn the knob.

We slipped through a narrow gap in the door and padded down the hallway, toward where the sounds of snoring echoed up through the house.

At a creeping sensation crawling up my spine, like shadows trailing our steps, I turned around.

A little boy, maybe three years old, stood in the middle of the hallway behind us. In nothing but Superman underwear, he reminded me of an orphan kid, with dirt shadowing his neck and knees, random cuts and scrapes typical of a young boy, and sandy brown hair overgrown in disarray.

“Aw you hewe to huwt my daddy?” He rubbed his eyes, as though he’d just gotten out of bed, but either half asleep, or at ease with two strangers in his house.

“Where’s your mommy?”

“I dunno. Her doesn’t live wif us anymore.” His eyes shifted to the bannister and back, as though wary of us.

I knelt down to one knee, keeping my distance so as not to scare him. “It’s just you and your daddy?”

“And Lala. My sistew.” He scratched at his nose, one hand clutching the band of his underwear. “You not gonna punch my daddy, wight?”

“Has someone hurt him in front of you before?”

“Him got beat up by some guys. Dey stealed ow money.”

A quick glance back at Nicoleta showed her staring over the balcony, completely disinterested in our conversation. “What’s your name, little man?”