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“This additional security is so unnecessary.”
“Better to be safe, ma’am.”
“I need to pick up some things from the house. I shouldn’t be long.”
By now, Griff was back at the car, sliding into the passenger seat. She bent down and addressed him. “You don’t have to go inside with me,” she said, following the script he’d given her. “In fact, I’d rather you didn’t. I’ll be perfectly safe inside my own home.”
“I’m supposed to stay with you, ma’am. Rodarte’s orders,” he said, making sure the other cop heard it.
She huffed as though vexed and looked back at the officer. “Could you move your car please, before the gate closes?”
Quickly he returned to his squad car, started it, and rolled it forward far enough to clear the gate. Laura drove through.
Griff didn’t start breathing again until the gate closed automatically behind them. But if that officer was any kind of sharp, he’d be checking with Rodarte to see if Laura’s visit to her home had been approved. Or he would soon be receiving a call from the hotel telling him that Mrs. Speakman had been abducted. Griff hoped to be in and out before either happened.
“Go in through the front door, where he can see us.”
She followed the driveway and parked directly in front of the house. Griff got out and approached the mansion’s grand entrance, looked around, played the role of bodyguard in case they were being observed. Laura used her key and opened the front door. The alarm sta
rted beeping. She made no move toward the keypad.
Griff said, “The house on Windsor Street would become a tourist attraction.”
She understood the warning and punched in the code that silenced the alarm.
“Lights?”
She touched a switch that seemed to turn on every light in the house. “Fancy,” he said, impressed.
“Now what?”
“Now we go to the garage. Specifically, to Manuelo Ruiz’s apartment above the garage.”
She looked at him with incredulity. “Is that what this is about?”
“That’s what this is about. How do you get to the garage?”
Looking like she wanted to argue, she turned instead and walked stiffly across the foyer. He followed, relieved that she was leading him in the direction opposite the library.
The kitchen was three times larger than the house Griff had grown up in.
On the far side of it was a door. Laura walked toward it. “Wait,” he said. “That goes outside?”
“Through the mudroom, then outside.”
“Is the exterior door visible from the front gate?”
“No.”
Griff went around her, opened the door, and saw a utility area that deserved a more glamorous name than mudroom. He opened the exterior door and looked out. There were no longer policemen patrolling the estate grounds. They’d been pulled off when Rodarte had moved Laura to the hotel yesterday evening. Griff had been watching, and he knew.
Nevertheless, he felt exposed as he and Laura crossed the motor court between the house and the detached garage. Laura indicated a door at the side of the building. “Manuelo’s apartment is through that door and up the stairs, but you won’t find him there.”
“I don’t expect to.”
There was a keypad on the wall adjacent to the door. “Another freaking code?” Griff motioned to it impatiently, and Laura punched in a sequence of numbers. The door opened with a metallic click. They slipped inside. Griff pulled the door closed behind them and heard the lock engage.
“No lights,” he said, sensing that she was groping the wall for the switch plate. “You came to pick up stuff from the house, not the garage. The lights stay off.”
