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Before actually arriving at her house, Xavier had made a thorough reconnoiter of the surrounding area. Everything was clear. This was exactly what Forge had said it would be: low-level, just one guy.
Knowing how the game was played, he wasn’t surprised they’d put eyes on her. But he hadn’t picked up any prior intel on the move, which meant Felice McGowan was behind the surveillance, not Forge. And it meant she had used people outside the usual network.
That wasn’t good news for any of them. She had taken control from Forge on this; Forge might have balked at the idea and this was nothing more than Felice having her way, but Xavier didn’t like the use of outside people. That signaled a breakdown of trust.
Trust was all they had holding this thing together. It was an armed, guarded, lots-of-safety-nets-in-place kind of trust, but it worked because they all knew each other and the situation was limited to their small group. Outside people … he didn’t know their training, didn’t know how they’d react in a fluid situation, didn’t know how much they knew or what their orders we
re.
He’d rather deal with a skilled professional any day than an amateur. There was no telling what the fuck an amateur would do. They were as likely to open fire at a sudden noise as they were to totally screw the job by going to sleep. Hell, he didn’t even know if this guy was armed, or with what. Though knowing Felice, he’d bet on armed.
He sometimes imagined their group as all of them standing in a circle, aiming at each other’s heads. Forge was undoubtedly the most dangerous and capable of the group, outside himself, and then perhaps only because of his younger age and active training. But whenever he pictured this scenario, his weapon wasn’t trained on Forge; it was on Felice, because she had the most to lose, and that made her the most likely to break the status quo. She would want to protect what she had, and she might decide the only way to do that was to eliminate the rest of them.
Like that idea hadn’t occurred to each and every one of them. He had his own safeguards in place, and Al Forge wouldn’t be Al Forge if he didn’t, also.
One day, which might not come around for years but could happen at any time, Felice was going to be a problem. He might or might not survive, but then again, the same odds applied to her.
In the meantime, he had to continue on the course he’d set for himself five years ago—longer, if he went back to when he’d first agreed to live a double life in preparation for the unthinkable, in case it ever came to pass.
Nothing he could do about that. All he could do was handle the present, which meant he had to get into Lizette’s house—while it was under surveillance.
He smiled in the darkness. He liked a challenge.
Sometimes the gods smiled, because a light rain began falling. Perfect. For someone sitting inside a parked car, that had just cut visibility through the side windows down to nothing more than a blur. It wasn’t just the rain, but the inevitable fogging that would occur. In the same situation, Xavier would have lowered the window and let the interior of the car get wet, because surveillance, not staying dry, was the objective, but the human instinct was to shut out the rain.
Xavier reached the rear of her house and took a quick peek around the corner, keeping his body flat against the wall and rolling his head just enough to get a line of sight on the car across the street.
If the gods sometimes smiled, other times they downright laughed. Abruptly a light was turned on inside the house just up from where the guy was parked. A couple of seconds later, the porch light was turned on, the door opened, and the robe-clad homeowner stepped out with a small dog bouncing around his feet. The little dog immediately dashed into the yard to take care of his business.
Human nature being what it was, the guy in the car had probably lain over in the seat so he wouldn’t be seen; if he hadn’t done that, he had at least slid way down in the seat, and all of his attention would currently be on the pet owner, hoping the guy either didn’t notice his car or didn’t recognize it as not belonging.
Xavier figured he couldn’t have been handed a better opportunity. Silently he slipped around the corner of her house and approached the back door.
He could hear the neighbor saying something to the dog, his tone more querying than angry. Xavier imagined it was something along the lines of Are you finished yet? He didn’t care what was said, because as long as the neighbor stayed on the porch, the guy in the car wasn’t going to be watching anything else.
Xavier spared a quick glance to see that the dog was now happily prancing toward the owner, wagging its tail. He had just a few seconds left before that perfect distraction ended.
The keys, one for the doorknob and one for the deadbolt, were in his hand. He kept them separate, so they wouldn’t clink against each other. Swiftly he unlocked both locks, each one clicking smoothly and almost silently; he put one key in his left pocket, one in his right, then gently turned the knob. He eased inside, closed the door, then stood very still and listened.
He was in the kitchen, with light coming in through the window; there were lights from the oven, the coffeemaker, and the microwave as well, small but effective. He heard the hum of the refrigerator but nothing else, no creaking of the floors or fabric brushing against walls, nothing to indicate that she’d been awakened by his almost completely silent entry. Faintly, from outside, he heard the air-conditioning compressor kick on, and a moment later cool air began blowing from the vents.
That was good. Air conditioning covered a multitude of small sounds.
Beyond the kitchen, the house was dark. That was the way she liked it when she slept—dark, like being in a cave. There were no night-lights for her, no bathroom light left on to illuminate the hallway. The dark worked in his favor.
He made his way through the kitchen, noting that the clocks all displayed the same time: three thirty-two. Lizzy kept her clocks synchronized. He wondered if she realized why, if somewhere in the back of her mind she knew how crucial a minute could be. He himself had an instinctive sense of time, one that he’d learned to adjust according to what time zone he was in, and he could usually nail it to the minute without seeing a clock. For operations he always synchronized with team members, but that was more for their benefit than his. He’d always appreciated Lizzy’s punctuality. She’d been dependable down to the second.
He didn’t have to fumble around, figure out where he was or where she kept things. He was familiar with the layout of the exterior and the interior because he’d seen pictures. Lots of them. Even though he’d never been here, this wasn’t entirely unfamiliar territory.
She was asleep just down the hall. He could almost feel her there, her presence pulling at him, and he had to make a conscious effort to focus on the task at hand.
Lizette knew she was dreaming, because she recognized the dream. It was the all-white house again, except for that one three-dimensional room that held all the colors, as if the colors from the rest of the house had been bled away and put in that one room. But she wasn’t in the colored room, she was in the biggest white one, everything muted and quiet.
He was here, her Mr. X. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, but she knew he was close by. She could sense him as strongly as if he were in the same room, watching her. She spun around, checking every corner, every white wall, every window, but the room was empty except for herself.
Wait a minute, she thought. What was going on? Was this a dream, or reality? It felt real. She’d been here before. But—oh, yeah, that had been a dream too. Her heart began beating faster, because X had been in that other dream, and he was waiting for her in this one.
He’d be in that bedroom where all the color was, the one room in this massive house that seemed more real, more tangible, than all the others. Her body responded, knowing he was near, instantly craving what she’d gotten in the last dream: not just sex, even though it had been powerful and earth-shattering and almost—almost—nothing-else-matters sex. Because something else did matter, something stronger that pulled her to him.
