“Nonsense,” Emerson said. “You distract me all the time.”
“Good heavens,” Myra said. “We’re never gonna get out of here. Get out of my way. I’ll distract him.”
Myra let herself out and marched up to the guard.
“Hey,” Myra said. “What are you doing here in Mr. Knight’s garage?”
“Halt,” the guard said, shouldering his rifle. “Who goes there?”
“Honey, you’ve been watching too much television,” Myra said. “No one talks like that. I’m the Knights’ housekeeper and I’m looking for their armadillo. The whole family is batty. They got a pet armadillo. Can you imagine?”
“I haven’t seen it,” the guard said. “You need to go back to the house.”
“You remind me of my son. He has curly hair just like you. At least I think so. I don’t see all that good with the cataracts. And I got a big speck of something in my one eye.” Myra circled around the guard and pulled her eyelid up. “Do you see anything in there?”
“No, ma’am,” the guard said, turning toward Myra, keeping her in his sights. “You need to go to the house.”
“Well, it’s killing me,” Myra said. “There’s something sticking in my eye! Owww! OWWW! WOWWW!”
In an instant Emerson was out of the closet and at the guard’s back. Emerson put his hand to the guard’s neck and the guard collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Riley followed after Emerson. “Omigod,” she said. “You killed him.”
“Not nearly,” Emerson said. “There are ninety-six thodu varmam points in the human body. Some points can actually reduce the number of days in a person’s life. Some points just rearrange the sara and kalai ottam. The ancient Siddhars used urakka kaalam for anesthetic purposes to induce sleep when performing surgery. That’s what I did. He’ll be fine in an hour or so.”
Emerson crossed to a ’72 Jarama 400 GT Lamborghini. A four-seat beauty, all sky blue and sleek Italian perfection. “I believe this will do,” he said to Riley. “You drive.”
“You expect me to drive out of here?”
“Yes.”
“The place is crawling with armed men.”
“Most likely,” Emerson said. “So you should drive very fast.”
Riley pushed a stray strand of hair off her face. “Great. Give me the keys.”
“The keys,” Emerson said. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have any. They’re kept in a key closet in the kitchen.”
“So hot-wire it,” Myra said.
Emerson and Riley went blank-faced.
“Lordy,” Myra said. “They don’t teach you kids any skills these days.”
She stepped over to the tool bench on the back wall, selected a small screwdriver, and used it to remove the panel covering the car’s steering column. She disconnected the red wires from the ignition cylinder and used the screwdriver’s tip to strip the ends from the wires, then twisted them together and dashboard lights came on.
“That’s stage one,” she said. “Here comes the tricky part. The starter.” She isolated the brown wire from the tangle of cables, disconnected it, and carefully stripped the insulation off with the screwdriver.
“Get ready to rev the engine,” Myra said. She took the brown wire, touched it to the exposed red wires, and it sparked. Riley hit the gas and the engine turned over.
Everyone jumped in, and Riley took off through the open garage door. A fleet of black SUVs clogged the driveway and blocked the exit.
“Go right,” Emerson said.