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Julius sighed, but he inclined his head at the same time. “I can understand. This is your life and your family we’re talking about, and I’ve already made it clear that we’re not your keepers. You’ve proven yourself more than capable by any measure.”
“Thank you.”
When he lifted his gaze to meet mine again, a tingle of heat raced through me. I’d earned his trust, but suddenly I wanted more than that. I wanted to peel back the layers of who he was and get at the beating heart beneath that fueled his commanding presence.
I reined in the impulse, but not before I thought I saw a matching spark of interest flash in his eyes—and vanish.
He sucked the last of the syrup off his fork in a gesture that made my panties dampen in an instant and stood up. “Finish your breakfast, and I’ll take you through the tunnels again. But once you’re out there, you’ll be on your own.”
“Until I get back,” I said, the corner of my lips quirking upward.
The slow smile I was appreciating more every time I saw it curved his own mouth. “Yes, until you get back.”
* * *
I did three circuits as I approached the mansion, first a few blocks away and then getting increasingly closer as I confirmed there were no watching eyes—living or digital—pointed my way. I’d put on a thin hoodie with the hood raised over the wig I’d bought earlier, sunglasses hiding my eyes.
But it seemed that precaution wasn’t totally necessary. The mansion was in a sprawling residential neighborhood, and there wasn’t a whole lot of activity in the middle of the day. It’d have been easy to spot any suspicious signs.
There were a few cameras mounted around the property’s walls, but I simply steered clear of them and scrambled over the same way I’d scrambled out a few weeks ago. On the ground in the yard, I stalked across the lawn even more cautiously. There was a new camera mounted over the front door, one that the average person wouldn’t have been able to pick out it was so well-disguised, and another at the back.
That was fine. Noelle wouldn’t have done her job right if I hadn’t learned how to get in by plenty of means that didn’t require doors.
I jimmied a ground floor window open, eased aside the curtain, and peered through the room to check for surveillance or human presence on the inside. The sitting room was totally empty other than the posh furniture. Looking at it gave me an unsettling feeling of déjà vu.
Hadn’t I walked through this room on my first prowl through the mansion after I’d left my section of it on the night of the massacre? Hadn’t there been a bloody body sprawled across that armchair?
If so, all trace of both the body and the blood had been washed away. You’d never have imagined anything even as violent as a papercut had happened in this room.
I slipped inside and took a quick inventory of the space. It held nothing but the furniture, the drawer on the side table and the surface of the coffee table totally bare. At the doorway, I peeked into the hall.
Ah ha. Someone had mounted another discreet camera at the far end, pointed down the length of the hallway. I pulled back, leapt out through the window, and moved to another farther down.
The dining room I climbed into next I’d definitely seen before—complete with bloody bodies slumped across the table. As with the first room, all evidence of them had been wiped clean. Could that even be the exact same table? I had to think the blood would have stained the pale wood beyond repair.
Who the hell had done this—and why had they bothered with this careful reconstruction? It was obvious the police had never been through. There was no caution tape or chalk markings of bodies. It was as if the household’s inhabitants had been utterly wiped from existence… except for me, of course.
My stomach knotted. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved that the crew’s job here had allowed my escape and freedom or horrified by the callous aftermath. I had no idea who any of these people had been. Sure, they’d all been criminals, but Anna hadn’t been all bad. There’d been at least a little real kindness in her treatment of me.
Of course, while treating me that way she’d also enabled me to kill who knew how many innocents. Their blood was on her hands too.
The thing was, whoever had ordered their deaths clearly hadn’t had good intentions either. They wanted me for their own purposes, which I hardly thought were good, especially with how cagey they were being with the crew about what they were “missing.” They sure as hell hadn’t ordered the massacre for my benefit but for some gain of their own.
My jaw working with suppressed tension, I stalked around that room and then the next and the next. With the last, I was able to cross the hall on my belly, below the view of the camera, to reach the staircase and investigate the second floor.
I found no books on the shelves, no papers on any desk, no paraphernalia of any kind in the drawers and closets. The clothes still dangling from their hangers told only the story of people who’d had a lot of money. They were designer label but nothing particularly distinctive.
Once I’d returned downstairs, I crawled beneath the level of the camera into the first room on the opposite side of the ground floor. After determining that it held nothing useful and ducking out its window, I hit my first real problem.
The grand living room, the place where I’d encountered by far the most bodies, had windows that appeared to be jammed shut. No matter what I did or what tools I put to use from the kit Julius had lent me, I couldn’t get either of them to budge. Had someone gone out of their way to more tightly secure them?
Did that mean there was something worth finding on the other side?
I clambered back into a room I’d already investigated and studied the camera from a doorway. I couldn’t get to the living room without coming into view of it. I also wasn’t going to be able to make it to the side hall that led to my old rooms as long as I was avoiding it either—there were no windows into that part of the mansion.
I’d just have to take a gamble and bust my butt finishing my inspection.
Blaze had offered me a slim paintball gun specifically in case I needed it for this purpose. I aimed it at the camera’s lens and fired.
