Chapter 176 Dummy
Liam carried the duffle bag over his back as he climbed up the side of a quiet, rundown house. His hands gripped the old drainage pipe, boots moving silently along the wall like he’d done this a thousand times. The building was a few blocks away from Sam’s. High enough. Dark enough. Isolated. Perfect.
He reached the rooftop and crouched down. The night was still. Just wind brushing past his ear. He set the duffle bag down beside him, unzipped it with a single, fluid motion, and pulled out a compact binocular. With practiced precision, he raised it to his eyes and zoomed in on the glowing window across the street—Sam’s room.
There he was. Sam.
Curled under a thick blanket, soft blue light from his night lamp casting faint shadows over his bed. He looked asleep. Calm. Liam watched his chest, expecting a rise and fall. Nothing. A second passed. Still nothing.
Liam narrowed his eyes.
Before jumping to conclusions, he scanned the street below.
That’s when he noticed the cars. Way too many of them. And not the kind the locals drove. This neighborhood was cheap, poor. The people here were barely scraping by—old pickups, rusted sedans, missing hubcaps. But tonight, he counted seven new cars. All parked strategically along the block. Different models, different colors—but the placement was too careful.
He zoomed in with the binoculars again. A man sitting inside one of them. Another one in the back seat of the car across the street. They weren’t civilians.
Police.
Plain clothes, but the body language was there. Trained. Still. Watching. Waiting.
Liam smirked. "So they knew I was coming."