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“Fine.”
“Roarke.” She grabbed at him as he reached for the door. “There’s procedure for something like this, and reasons for that procedure. Call it in.”
His home, he thought. Their home. His woman, and the fact that she was a cop didn’t mean a damn at the moment. “And won’t you feel foolish, Lieutenant, if it’s a mechanical malfunction?”
“Nothing of yours ever malfunctions,” she muttered and made him smile despite the circumstances.
“Why, thank you.” He opened the door, and there was Summerset.
“It appears someone is on the grounds.”
“Where’s the breech?”
“Section fifteen, southwest quadrant.”
“Run a full video scan, employ full house security when we’re out. Eve and I will check the grounds.” Absently, he ran a hand down her back. “A good thing I live with a cop.”
She looked down at the gun in his hand. Attempting to disarm him would likely prove unsuccessful. And it would take too much time. “We’re going to talk about this,” she said between her teeth. “I mean it.”
“Of course you do.”
They went side by side down the stairs, through the now silent house. “They haven’t gotten in,” he said as he paused by a door leading onto a wide patio. “The alarm for a breech of the house is different. But they’re over the wall.”
“Which means they could be anywhere.”
The moon was waxing toward full, but the clouds were thick and shadowed its light. Eve scanned the dark, the sheltering trees, the huge ornamental bushes. All provided excellent cover for observation. Or ambush. She heard nothing but the air teasing leaves going brittle with age.
“We’ll have to separate. For Christ’s sake don’t use that weapon unless your life’s threatened. Most B and E men aren’t armed.”
And most B and E men, they both knew, didn’t attempt to ply their trade on a man like Roarke. “Be careful,” he said quietly and slipped like smoke into the shadows.
He was good, Eve assured herself. She could trust him to handle himself and the situation. Using the dim and shifting moonlight as a guide, she headed west, then began to circle.
The quiet was almost eerie. She could barely hear her own footsteps on the thick grass. Behind her, the house stood in darkness, a formidable structure of old stone and glass, guarded, she thought, by a skinny snob of a butler.
Her lips curled. She’d love to see an unsuspecting burglar come up against Summerset.
When she reached the wall, she scanned for any breech. It was eight feet high, three feet thick, and wired to deliver a discouraging electric shock to anything over twenty pounds. Security cameras and lights were set every twelve feet. She whispered out an oath when she noted the narrow beams were blinking red rather than green.
Disengaged. Son of a bitch. Weapon drawn and ready, she circled to the south.
Roarke did his own circuit in silence, using the trees. He’d bought this property eight years before, had had it remodeled and rehabbed to his specifications. He’d supervised the design and implementation of the security system personally. It was in a very real sense his first home, the place he’d chosen to settle after too many years of wandering. Beneath the icy control, as he slipped from shadow to shadow, was a bubbling, grinding fury that his home had been invaded.
The night was cool, clear, quiet as a tomb. He wondered if he was up against a very ballsy thief. It could be as simple as that. Or it could be something, someone much more dangerous. A pro hired by a business competitor. An enemy—and he hadn’t fought his way to where he was without making them. Particularly since many of his interests had been on the dark side of the law.
Or the target could be Eve. She, too, had made enemies. Dangerous enemies. He glanced over his shoulder, hesitated. Then told himself not to second-guess his wife. He knew of no one better equipped to take care of herself.
But it was that hesitation, that instinctive need to protect that turned his luck. As he paused in the shadows, he caught the faint sound of movement. Roarke took a firmer grip on the gun, stepped back, stepped to the side. And waited.
The figure was moving slowly, in a crouch. As the distance between them melted away, Roarke could hear the puff of nervous breathing. Though he couldn’t make out features, he judged male, perhaps five-ten, and on the lean side. He could see no weapon, and thinking of the difficulty Eve might have explaining why her husband had held off an intruder with a banned handgun, tucked the Glock into the back of his slacks.
He braced, looking forward to a little hand-to-hand, then lunged when the figure slunk by. Roarke had an arm around a throat, a fist clenched and raised in anticipation of quiet, perhaps petty revenge, when he realized it wasn’t a man, but a boy.
“Hey, you son of a bitch, let go. I’ll kill you.”
A very rude and very frightened boy, Roarke decided. The struggle was short and all one-sided. It took seconds only for Roarke to pin the boy against the trunk of a tree. “How the hell did you get inside?” Roarke demanded.
The kid’s breath was coming in whistles, and his face was pale as a ghost. Roarke could hear the audible click in his throat as he swallowed. “You’re Roarke.” He stopped struggling and tried to smirk. “You’ve got pretty good security.”
