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Ace followed, his senses on high alert, sure the voices they’d heard belonged to the returning owner of the mansion. He closed the door softly behind him.
Once inside Athanasios’ study, Jasmine hurried toward long curtains hanging on a wall. She drew them back to expose French doors and reached for the door handle.
“Wait,” Ace whispered. “What if the doors are connected to a security system?”
“We don’t have much time,” Jasmine said, “and really no other choice.”
Ace nodded and braced himself, ready to run.
Jasmine twisted the lock, turned the handle, hesitated another moment, then jerked the door open.
A screeching alarm sounded, echoing off the shelves of books and the ceiling. Shouts sounded from down the hall.
Jasmine shoved the door wide and ran out into a garden.
Ace followed close behind her.
The path twisted and turned through rose bushes, manicured shrubs and other flowering plants and vines. When the path curved back toward the house, Ace stopped and looked around for a way out. When he didn’t see an obvious exit, he plowed through a small gap in the hedges, emerging onto a lawn.
Jasmine pushed through behind him. She paused only long enough to slip the high heels off her feet.
They ran toward what appeared to be a garage.
A black SUV stood outside the building, possibly the vehicle that had delivered Athanasios to his home.
If they could steal the SUV, they might be able to crash through the gate. Ace started that way.
He hadn’t gone three yards before Jasmine caught up with him, grabbed his arm and pointed to the side of that building.
Armed men came running out a door, possibly living quarters or barracks for the Greek crime boss’s army of thugs. Each man carried a rifle or submachine gun as they raced for the house.
Ace and Jasmine changed directions, heading downhill, moving from shadow to shadow across the carefully maintained landscape toward the wall and the gate.
As the wall came into view, Ace slowed to a stop in the shadow of a low-hanging olive tree and stared up at the wall topped with concertina wire.
Jasmine leaned close and whispered. “If they didn’t take things out of my satchel, there should be a pair of wire cutters in one of the pockets.”
“Wire cutters would take too long to get through concertina wire. There has to be a way to open the gate from this side.” He edged along the wall toward the gate, where he searched for a mechanism that would trigger the gate to open.
The deep-throated sound of large dogs barking sounded from the direction of the house up the hill.
Ace’s stomach clenched. “Fuck.” Getting caught was one thing. Being ripped apart by attack dogs was not an option. They had to find a way out before the dogs reached them.
The rumble of what sounded like a truck engine approached the gate from the other side.
As it neared, the engine revved and sounded as though it was speeding up rather than slowing to stop. The truck was coming toward them fast.
Machine-gun fire pierced the air.
Ace grabbed Jasmine up in his arms and leaped backward, away from the gate, seconds before a huge truck slammed through the metal gate, knocking it flat to the ground.
More gunfire sounded.
The driver’s door swung open, and the familiar face of poker player Jon Anders leaned out and yelled, “Get in!”
When Ace hesitated, Jon said, “Hank sent me.”
More machine-gun fire sent Ace, with Jasmine still in his arms, running around to the other side of the truck.
