Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3), Brett Battles [best books to read in your 20s TXT] 📗

have to work on that, but I like the idea. How long are we talking?”

“Four weeks?”

“How about we check in with each other in three?”

“Sure. Three will work.”

When Jar and I are back inside the cab of the truck, I ask, “The recording?”

“Corrupted,” she says.

“Nice work.”

As I suspected, that text she pretended to receive was actually cover for her to hack into Mygatt’s phone and destroy the audio file of our conversation. Mygatt will be annoyed when he finds out but glitches happen, and as far as he knows, he’ll be having a follow-up conversation with us soon enough. Hopefully that will be enough to keep him from getting too mad.

We will not be having that follow-up, however.

Chapter Eleven

The biggest item on my to-do list is to install those bugs inside the Prices’ place, but over the next few days, the house is always occupied.

Not by Chuckie, of course. He goes to work around seven every morning and doesn’t come home until seven in the evening, when, in the grand tradition of the 1950s, he expects dinner to be on the table and everyone seated and waiting for him. We know this from conversations we’ve picked up via the bug. It’s limited in how much it can detect but at least it’s working.

Kate and Sawyer are the ones who haven’t left. Evan is home most of the time, too, though he did go out once on Wednesday to the grocery store, on his bicycle.

I’ve been hoping he’d sneak out of the house again. Though that would mean I’d be going inside while the rest of the family is home, I can work with that. Evan’s escape route has remained unused, however.

But today is Friday, and I can’t help thinking that Evan, like any true teenager, will see sneaking out of the house at the start of the weekend as a birthright.

We are monitoring the Prices from our duplex. Chuckie’s running a little late tonight and doesn’t arrive home until 7:42 p.m.

This does not change the routine for the rest of his family. Like on the previous nights, Kate has apparently been watching for him from the window. Before he’s even pulled into the garage, she yells out, “Dinnertime! Hurry up! Hurry up!”

Jar and I hear the boys coming downstairs, followed by the now familiar sound of dining room chairs scraping on the floor as they sit.

When Chuckie enters the house, Kate greets him with the same, “Welcome home, honey. How was your day?” she says every night. If he responds, our bug doesn’t pick it up.

The next five minutes are dotted with the occasional sounds of movements but little else. Finally, after the creaking of another chair, Kate says grace, and the sound of silverware clinking signals that the family has started to eat.

I don’t know about you but when I was growing up, our dinner table was always filled with conversation. My parents are talkers, and they believe in making sure everyone is involved in the discussion. When I was young, my dad especially liked coming up with hypothetical situations and asking my brother and me things like, “Pretend you’re out hiking and you find an ancient city. What does it look like?” and “If you could invent something that hasn’t been invented yet, what would it be and how would it work?” and “What if a spaceship landed in your backyard and you were the first person on Earth to meet beings from a different planet? How would you communicate with them? What would you talk about?” Sometimes we pretended we didn’t want to play along, but secretly I really enjoyed it and I’m sure my brother did, too.

My point is, meals were—and still are—noisy affairs at my house. The opposite seems to be true for the Prices, albeit this is based on a small sample size.

I don’t know how they stand it. It feels unnatural. Oppressive, even. The worst part: no one’s allowed to leave until Chuckie finishes eating.

I know we’ve already established that he’s not a good man, but I feel it bears repeating.

This guy is a supreme asshole.

The sound of eating finally tapers off. Unsurprisingly, it’s Chuckie who speaks first. Every night since we’ve been listening, it’s gone this way. On Tuesday, he said, “The steak was a little well done.” On Wednesday, “Go finish your homework.” And yesterday, “I’ve got work to do. No one bother me.”

Tonight, it’s “Barry called. He wanted to make sure we’re bringing your potato salad tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Kate says. “What’s happening tomorrow?”

A long pause before Chuckie says, “The barbecue.” The tone is very are-you-an-idiot.

“They’re still having it?”

“Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they?”

“No reason,” she says quickly, a forced lightness to her tone. “I just hadn’t heard anything, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s on, and we’re going.”

“Great.”

A chair pushes back from the table.

“I’ll be in my office,” he says.

Chuckie walks out of the room, and a few seconds later we hear the faint sound of a door closing. The den, I’m guessing.

“All right, let’s get this cleaned up,” Kate says.

I sit back. If the pattern remains unchanged, very little else will be said in the house for the rest of the evening.

“They should not be going to a party,” Jar says.

“No, they shouldn’t.”

Though the pandemic hasn’t hit this area hard yet, there have been a few cases, so it won’t be long before it spreads as widely as it has elsewhere. Unfortunately, following CDC recommendations to limit social gatherings doesn’t appear to be high on a lot of people’s priority lists around here.

Their bad choice is our good fortune, though. “If they’re all going to be gone, it’ll be the perfect time to get inside,” I say.

Jar frowns. “Not perfect. It will be daylight.”

She means the neighbors problem, but I have an idea for how to deal with that.

After I tell her what it is, Jar thinks about it for a few seconds and says, “That might work, but it is still risky.”

“I’m open to other ideas.”

At the moment,