"Thanks."
He closed the door, and over the music I heard the sound of him trudging away. It seemed like forever that he was gone, but after some time, he returned and opened the door.
"The coast is clear," he said. "There was a suspicious car parked up the road near the street, but when I walked toward it, whoever was in it drove off pretty quick. Still, let's not think we're safe yet – complacency is dangerous. We'll get you inside nice and quick, around the back of the house. You ready?"
"I am," I replied.
"Let's go."
He opened the door, and I climbed out quickly and hurried behind him as he jogged around to the back of the house. We opened the place up, and as soon as we got inside, I felt a wave of relief washing over me.
"Whew, it feels good to finally be able to relax a little," I remarked.
"Sure does. Well anyway, I'm gonna have a drink. Ev told me there were beers in the fridge. You want one?"
"No thanks. I'll just make myself a coffee."
We sat and relaxed for a while with our drinks, talking
and getting to know each other. Jimmy seemed like a really nice guy. He was single, as it turned out, and I couldn't help but start thinking about which of my friends I might be able to set him up with. After an hour, though, the phone rang. I went over to answer it.
"Hello?" I said.
"Hi, could I speak to Mr. James please?"
"He's not in right now. Who's calling, please?"
"This is Nurse Iverson from the hospital. I tried to reach Mr. James on his cell phone as he requested this afternoon before he left, but I'm not getting an answer. Is this Vivienne? We were supposed to let him know when Jane woke up. He had called in with this number as the secondary contact number. She's awake now and would really like to see him."
"I understand. I'll get hold of him right away to let him know," I replied.
"Thank you. Have a good day."
I got out my cell phone right away and dialed Everett, waiting impatiently for him to answer the phone.
Chapter Eighteen
Everett
After a quick trip to the hospital to check on Jane, I returned to meet Ben again.
"Is everything sorted out?" Ben asked as I hung up the call with Vivienne since I missed her at the hospital.
"Yeah. Come on, let's get over to the Stevens' place and see what we can find out."
"Yeah. I hope this kid is gonna cough up the info we need," Ben expressed with a frown as he started to drive. "He's a bad egg, this one. This is his last chance, actually – we'll expel him for this. It should have been done a long time ago, actually. He's a real delinquent. Got a list of offenses about a mile long, starting all the way from when he was in third grade."
"Sounds like a real piece of work."
"He is. And his parents, they aren't exactly model citizens either, to be honest."
"So you don't think they're going to be very helpful, huh?"
"It's not likely, Ev, not likely at all. But like I said, his place is closer, so we may as well give it a shot, even though I'm not clinging to any kinda hope that they'll help."
"We'll see, Ben, we'll see."
Ten minutes later, we pulled up outside the Stevens’ residence. It was in a fairly rough neighborhood, and the house itself looked pretty shabby. A rusty car without wheels was propped up on bricks in the driveway, and various broken items were strewn across the lawn, with the only neat object in the place being a Harley Davidson bike parked in the garage, and even that had plenty of rust and dents on it. We got out of the car and walked up to the house. The paint was peeling, and the door was cracked and grubby, and dozens of beer cans littered the porch, along with several ashtrays full of cigarette butts.