Read The Fixer for Free Online

Nothing—just some old pencils. A sharp pencil could be used as a weapon, but you had to get close up, if it came to it, and that he preferred not to do.
    He spotted a bronze bust on the desktop behind the computer. A bust of someone his father idolized, probably Henry David Thoreau. Or was it Ralph Waldo Emerson? He grabbed it, cold in his hands, and substantial, and shushed over to the study door. There he stood and waited for another sound. Thought about switching the overhead light on, then decided not to.
    He heard another sound. The high school kids from Rindge and Latin? But they wouldn’t be sneaking around. When they broke in, they did it because they were sure no one was home. Thus, no reason to be quiet. They’d be noisy. Drunk and noisy. Boisterous.
    These were careful, furtive footsteps. He stood back from the door and off to one side. If anyone opened the study door, he’d have the jump on them. Slam them with the bronze bust.
    He waited, breathing slowly, quietly. Another creaking sound, this one no closer than the last. He listened, heart pounding, and tried to locate the sound, decided it was coming from upstairs. He could hear the steady creaking overhead now, a sound more interior and muted, the sound of old cracked floorboards compressing, protesting underfoot.
    Whoever was in the house—because there
was
someone—was climbing the stairs to the third floor.
    He breathed steadily, listening. The sound grew more distant.
    The intruder was upstairs.
    He turned the doorknob and pulled the door open slowly, steadily, bracing for a squeaky hinge, prepared to stop if need be. He got the door halfway open, just far enough to sidle out, not wanting to risk opening it any farther and causing a telltale squeak.
    When he was in the hall, he went still and just listened for thirty seconds, which seemed an eternity. He wanted to make sure the sound was indeed coming from upstairs, not the second floor. His chest was tight and his breath was short.
    And the sound was coming from the landing upstairs, the small steady squeak of a heavy tread crossing the wooden floor, moving steadily yet carefully.
    He knew which steps creaked and which did not. His bedroom, and Wendy’s, had been on the third floor, and he had gone up and down this staircase innumerable times. He’d sneaked upstairs late at night, occasionally drunk or stoned, in high school. He knew how to climb the stairs noiselessly, and he could walk it blindfolded.
    It wasn’t Jeff—he wouldn’t be sneaking around the house, or at least not now that he knew Rick was staying here. Or would he?
    What if it was Jeff?
    He’d seen the money but said nothing about it, not yet. Maybe he was back to see if there was any more secreted in the house. But then Rick realized: That was farfetched. The money had been behind a closet wall. If there was more to be found, it would be walled up somewhere, behind plasterboard, and reachable only by doing some destruction. No way would Jeff be skulking around the house at two in the morning.
    Then who was it?
    Rick had a fleeting, paranoid thought. Someone had seen him, despite his precautions, with all that cash. But who? Had he been followed home from the storage unit? But who could have seen him there? Just the kid with the big holes in his earlobes who was barely paying attention.
    Maybe someone in the neighborhood had seen him carrying the plastic bags of banknotes out to the trunk of his car. He no longer knew most of the neighbors here. It wouldn’t be impossible that someone had been watching, someone brazen and criminally inclined enough to break into the house. Maybe someone had got hold of a front-door key. Maybe someone had broken in before and had figured out how to do it quickly and quietly. A high school kid, maybe.
    The more he thought, the more anxious he felt.
    If he was going to do anything, it was time to move. Now.
    Clutching the bronze bust, he started up the stairs, staying to the front of the first