When neither dog so much as lifts its head from the ground, I walk up to the door and take off my glasses. I, push back my hat so they can see my face through the peephole. I don’t care if they recognize me. These folk will die if they resist. If they cooperate, they will live.
I want them to cooperate. Be like their useless dogs. Not a care in the world. Zero guarding skills.
A middle-aged man wearing dark jeans and a checkered shirt opens the door. Pastel-green eyes widen and stare at the barrel of my gun.
“Evening, Mr. Richardson,” I say, chipper as fuck because those pastel-green eyes tell me I successfully broke the international witness protection tracking system. Once I dug in there, I paid seventeen million to one of their moles, who gave me Ekatia’s, actually Renne’s, address.
The man lifts his hands. “Take whatever you want.”
“Thanks. I will.” I step into the house.
At first, the man refuses to move, so our bodies touch, and his protruding belly slides against my middle.
“You don’t want to do this with me,” I tell him.
“I do because my wife is in the house.”
This is a good husband. Instantly, I respect him. “If you cooperate, you will both live.”
“Don’t hurt my wife.”
“My dad wouldn’t have said that. Right off the bat, you’ve scored points. Let’s keep up the score. Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll let you both live.”
“Roy, who’s at the door?” a woman asks from somewhere inside the house. She’s not in the living room or the kitchen, which I can see from here. She must be in the back and not upstairs, where the bedrooms are. Where Renne’s room is.
“Who are you?” the man asks.
A woman in her fifties with gray and brown hair, carrying a laundry basket, stops at the end of the hallway when she sees us. She drops the basket and lifts her hands. “Don’t hurt him. Take whatever you want.”
Now I’m getting offended. “Do I look like I need to rob random couples for a living?” I lift my gun, showing off the golden handle. “This is a custom-made piece that costs more than your house.” I pull out the other gun, and she gasps. “I own two of them. Guys, please, use your heads and sit your asses down over in the kitchen. Let’s talk.”
The man walks to the wooden kitchen table, and the woman follows him. “What’s this about?”
The couple sit down.
I sniff. “What are you baking?”
“Banana bread.”
“Huh. Coincidence. My sister-in-law, well, soon-to-be sister-in-law, baked us banana bread the other day. Your granddaughter loved it.” I sit across from them.
“You must have the wrong house. We don’t have a granddaughter.”
“I think you know you do.”
Their expressions change from fear for their lives to stern determination. The tightening of the jaw and the hard gaze give me whiplash. They’ll protect Renne with their lives. I might have to shoot them after all. How unfortunate that would be.
I need to try harder. I tuck the guns into the holsters, place my palms flat on the table, and splay my fingers.
“We know nothing about our daughter or where she is, and even if we did,” the father says while he takes his wife’s hand, which is shaking, “we wouldn’t tell you. Do your worst.”
“You can’t handle my worst.”
“What Roy means,” the wife says, “is that we don’t know where Renne is.”
“Oh, but I do.”
Blood drains from their cheeks. “We don’t know anything about the case the police are building. We’re kept in the dark for her and our safety.”