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Lucien shut the door. “I think he heard us.”
“I knew our badly timed flirting was going to bite us in the ass someday!”
Footsteps. He was definitely coming toward us, and we couldn’t exactly move very far, not quickly, anyway. I thought we could maybe hide under the dining room table, but that wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. If he caught us down there, we would have a hard time defending ourselves.
“I need to think,” Lucien said.
“There’s no time to think,” I said, “We have to act!”
Without waiting to get his approval, I phased through the kitchen door, appearing on the other side of it and catching peanut butter and tuna man entirely off guard. He had taken a bite out of his sandwich and was chewing it when he saw me appear through the door like a ghost. Some of it fell out of his mouth when he opened it to yell at me. By that point, it was too late; I was on top of him, and then through him.
Lucien spilled into the kitchen after me, saw his opening, and took it, grabbing a nearby frying pan and slamming it into the back of our new friend’s head. The guy’s eyes rolled into the back of his skull, the rest of his mouthful fell out, and he slammed into the ground with a heavy thud.
I stared at Lucien, breathless from the excitement. “Nice,” I said.
“We can’t just leave him here, someone will find him,” he looked around the kitchen before settling on a large cupboard near the far door, “Help me shove him in there.”
Between us, we managed to move and unceremoniously stuff the unconscious, sandwich blasphemer into the cupboard. Once he was settled, and the doors firmly shut, Lucien moved past me toward the nearby door. I followed him through it, surprised to find a stairwell instead of a garage. I realized, once we exited into the garage proper, that it was underground—and oh, what a garage it was.
There had to have been ten cars in here, all of them on display as if they were in a showroom. Many of them were sleek, perfectly polished sports cars. I saw a large, curvy range rover, several sedans, and a limousine, each of these cars kept in perfect condition. Everything down here smelled brand new, and not at all what I expected a garage to smell like.
“Wow,” I said, my voice echoing, “Your dad sure likes cars.”
Any composure Lucien had held before this point was now gone. He looked nervous and jumpy, as if expecting an armed retinue to pop out of thin air. He fumbled with the electronic key he pulled from his pocket and the nearby range rover bleeped.
“Couldn’t have stolen a sports car instead?”
“We need something bullet proof.”
“Bullet proof?! Why bullet proof?”
“You’ve met my father.” he replied, as he opened the driver’s seat door and sat down. He had already opened the passenger side door by the time I made it around the hood of the car.
“Have these cars ever been used?” I asked, “This one smells brand new!”
“I don’t know,” Lucien said, as he started the car. “Buckle up, we’re getting out of here in a hurry.”
Lucien put the car into drive and peeled out of the parking space it was in. He turned the wheel one handed, aiming us toward the ramp that seemed to lead up, and presumably outside.
As we sped up the ramp to the driveway and toward the front gates of the mansion, I noticed a small guard post near the main gate. My stomach dropped; nausea welled up inside me.
“Is there a guard in there?” I asked.
Lucien simply nodded to confirm.
Of course, there’d be a guard posted at the main gate that led in and out of the mansion.
That’s what they were for. Mason wasn’t paranoid enough to install an array of technological defenses, but he was clearly happy to have a security team roaming his house in the dead of night.
“He’s seen us,” I said, “He has to have seen the lights.”
“It’s been dealt with,” Lucien said, his eyes fixed on the road. “He hasn’t seen anything.”
As we approached the guard post, Lucien slowed, allowing me a glimpse inside as the large, imposing, wrought-iron gate to the Diaboli mansion creaked open on its own. There was a guard in there, alright, only he wasn’t paying attention to the main gate, or any cameras.
That six-foot bruiser was curled into a ball at the far corner of the little guard post, bawling his eyes out and rocking back and forth. Around him, all the lights flickered, the computer monitors skipped and glitched, and a cacophony of electronic bleeps, alerts, and alarms were going off simultaneously.
“Yikes…” I said, kind of speechless.
