Felicia was next to go.
“I can’t reach,” she said, one foot in our hands. “I have to climb on your shoulders. Hold still.”
Felicia managed to get onto Rosa’s shoulders, I got my hand under her ass and gave her a shove, and she went over the wall and landed on the other side with a thud.
Rosa and I looked at Beans. He was alert, watching us, watching the wall.
“I swear, he’s waiting to go over,” Rosa said.
“We need one of those bucket trucks the phone company uses.”
“If we can get Felicia over the wall, we can get him over the wall,” Rosa said.
We stood him up on his hind legs with his two front paws against the wall, and we got our hands under his big dog butt.
“Heave,” Rosa said.
We both gave a grunt and got Beans about three feet off the ground.
“Christ,” Rosa said, “it’s like lifting a hundred-and-fifty-pound sandbag.”
“Here, doggie,” Felicia whispered from the other side of the wall. “Nice Beansy.”
“Come to Aunt Sue,” Suzanne cooed. “Come on. You
can do it. Come to Aunt Suzy Woozy!”
“On the count of three,” Rosa said. “One, two, three!”
We took a deep breath and hefted Beans up another foot and a half. Somehow he got a back paw on Rosa’s chest and pushed himself high enough to get his two front feet dug into the top of the wall. I got my head under his rear end, and when I stood straight he went over. There was a gasp and a thud and then there was silence.
“Is Beans okay?” I whispered.
“Yeah, he’s fine,” Suzanne said. “He landed on Felicia. It might take her a minute to catch her breath.”
Rosa went up next, with a lot more blind determination than grace. She straddled the wall, turned onto her stomach, we locked hands and everyone pulled me over.
We were all plastered against the wall. A swath of grass lay between us and the house. Maybe thirty feet deep. When we ran across the grass, we’d be exposed to view.
“There’s no way around it,” Suzanne said. “We have to make a run for it. When we get to the house, we’ll be hidden again, and we can creep along and try to find a way in.”
We got halfway across the grass, and all the outdoor lights flashed on.
“We tripped the motion sensors,” Suzanne said. “Don’t anyone panic.”
“They gonna let the Dobermans out next,” Felicia said, running onto a patio. “I’m not waiting for that. I’m going in where it’s safe.”
She whacked a patio door with her gun butt, the glass shattered, she reached inside and opened the door, and the alarm system went off.
We all rushed into the house, Beans included. We fumbled our way through the house in the dark, guns drawn, going room by room. No reason to go slowly or quietly. The alarm was whining. The phone was ringing. No one was answering the phone. Undoubtedly the security company calling. Their next call would be to the police.
We crept into the kitchen, Beans gave an excited woof, and ran forward. Hard to hear much over the alarm, but there was the sound of something heavy crashing to the floor in front of us. Rosa flipped a switch, the kitchen came up like daylight, and we all gaped at Hooker. He was tied to a kitchen chair that Beans had tipped over. Beans was on top of him, giving him slurpeys, and Hooker was looking stunned.
I ran to Hooker and counted his fingers. Ten! Yahoo!
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I just got the wind knocked out of me when Beans hit the chair.”