Second Shot

A pair of beady eyes stared at me from across the room. Hannibal, Ella’s sinister giant teddy bear. On impulse, I lifted him off his chair and slid him under the quilt on the bed. From the doorway, in the half-light, he would just about pass for me. If you happened to think I was a rotund dwarf with both ears on the top of my head and a severe facial hair problem.

I was already well aware that the doors in the Lucases’ house operated on well-oiled hinges. Even so, I opened the door from my room onto the landing with extreme caution, gripping the knob hard so it didn’t rattle. The moonlight reflected harshly off the snow outside and sliced through the gloomy proximity of the trees, plenty strong enough to cast exaggerated shadows from the nearest window frame.

I took half a dozen noiseless steps across the landing, ducked and peered down through the spindles towards the living and dining area. For a moment I saw nothing untoward. Then a creepily elongated shadow flitted across the polished wooden floor below, a momentary blip at the corner of my field of vision that quickly disappeared.

When we’d arrived at the Lucases’ house I’d automatically checked out their security alarm system and been surprised to note it was an older type, not particularly sophisticated and lacking any additional triggers other than door and window sensors. Even I could have bypassed it, and I was far from an expert. Sean would have been in there in seconds.

I edged back from the stairwell and paused to steady my breath. We had at least one intruder, who might or might not be armed. All Lucas’s guns, as far as I knew, were in the strong rooms in the basement and I dismissed them without any real consideration. Even if I knew where he kept his keys, getting to a weapon would mean leaving the bad guys with uncontended access to my principals, and that was a nonstarter. Especially without knowing their objective here.

I wondered briefly if Lucas had a safe in the den, but even as the thought formed I somehow knew that robbery wasn’t the motive for this incursion. And if they weren’t here for financial gain, there weren’t many palatable alternatives. I didn’t have the manpower-not to mention the firepower-for a counteroffensive. That left stealth, and guile.

I glanced along the landing to the door to Simone and Ella’s room. Sense told me to attempt an evac, but I couldn’t risk going in and startling them. Ella had a tendency to get very loud when she was frightened and the last thing I wanted was to tip off the men below that we were on to them, or push them into extreme action. After all, I still didn’t know what their intentions were. Criminal, almost certainly, but if they didn’t pose a real and immediate threat to my principals, it wasn’t my fight. What I needed was a hiding place where I could keep out of sight, but be close enough to intercept anyone who tried to get to Simone and her daughter.

I crawled farther back from the stairwell. Halfway along the landing was a walk-in storage cupboard with a louvered door. It was largely filled with shelves containing spare bedding, but there was still enough room for me to squeeze in at the front as well and get the door shut, although I had to hold it closed.

Then I simply had to wait, like a spider, for them to come to me.

It didn’t take long. There were two of them, dressed in dark clothing and moving with smooth efficiency. All I could see through the downwards-facing slats of the door was their legs to midthigh. They both put their feet down with an almost excessive care, keeping their knees soft. Professionals. Taking either of them by surprise was going to be damned difficult, but taking both of them was going to be well-nigh impossible.

They halted, seemingly right outside the cupboard doorway, as though they could hear my breathing, the rush of my blood. Then one pair of feet continued on towards Simone’s room. The other turned back, heading for the door to my own room, and the one to the master suite.

Divide and conquer. There wasn’t going to be a better chance than this.

I closed my eyes briefly, released a little spurt of anger, feeling the tingle as the flame of it took hold and began to burn. I reminded myself that these people had made the choice to step inside my circle in the dust. They’d crossed the line and whatever happened to them now was because their own actions had brought them to this point.