“Sir,” the driver said as they pulled into a tree-lined neighborhood. “Apparently, there’s someone else who has entered the house. There’s the sound of things breaking. Do I order them to move in?”
William jerked around to face forward, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “No,” William said after a moment. “We’ll find out ourselves. How much longer?”
“Five minutes at most, sir.”
“Better make it three.”
Chapter Ten
The car careened around a corner, and the three of them bailed out onto the sidewalk before it had even come to a full stop.
“Sir!” the driver called, and waved a cell phone in the air. William ran back to the car while Luke and Dani exchanged glances and waited to see what he would do. This had become his show.
But William only shoved the phone back at the driver and yelled, “Whoever’s in there, they have reinforcements on the way.”
Luke grabbed his father’s arm and pointed at the house behind him. It was a split level, built of red brick with white trim. A long porch ran along the front of the house, though much of it was concealed by heavy pine trees. “What about us?”
“Our reinforcements are right behind theirs!” William argued, turning his back on his son, on the house, on everything, apparently to focus on waiting until help arrived.
“They’ll get it before we do!” Luke argued, then realized he was speaking to his father’s back and turned, throwing his hands up in the air in a look of absolute disgust intermingled with frustration, not helped by his father’s stolid refusal to be moved.
“You will hold position!” William said, shooting them both a look over his shoulder. “Until the police arrive.”
Luke and Dani both turned at the sound of a crash from somewhere inside the house. He took a step forward but William called him to heel again, this time swearing and ordering him to stay put, or he’d call the FBI himself to make sure he stayed where he was put.
Of course, Luke took the bait and started in on a diatribe that sounded all too familiar after the argument in the car. Dani looked at Luke and William, and realized that with the two of them so damn distracted absolutely anything could happen, and broke every bit of intelligence training she’d ever had. She bolted to the door. It took the men almost a full minute before they figured out what she was up to, and by then she’d reached the porch. She ignored the shouts of her name and burst through the door of the house, reaching for a weapon that, in the excitement, she’d forgotten she no longer carried.
Well, shit. If that didn’t must make things lovely.
What’s more, she found the intruder immediately.
Someone in a black shirt and pants was searching frantically in the dining room, tearing apart the china cabinet, the cupboards, and everything else in the place. Linens were strewn across the floor, and two statues that might have once been birds were lying on the floor, broken.
The fact that the intruder was still searching meant neither of the two statues was the correct one.
Dani couldn’t see if the rest of the house was similarly vandalized, but she crouched down and silently slid closer to the figure, stopping behind a lounge chair with an ottoman in the living room. From there she had a clear view into the dining room, thanking her lucky stars that the house was open concept and there weren’t really walls between the various rooms so much as suggestions of walls, three pillars on each side of an opening about six feet wide in this case. Unfortunately, while it gave her that clear view, it also didn’t give her much in the way of choices for cover.
And she had no weapon. As she should have remembered before throwing herself into the room. It was a wonder she hadn’t been heard coming through the door.
On the other hand, the sudden cascade of fine china to the floor, adding to previous debris, might have explained some of why she’d gone unnoticed. She flinched as shards of china scattered like buckshot, some of it hitting the cushions of the chair in front of her.
I’m glad I ditched the shorts, she thought as she crawled to a better position, careful of where she put her hands, and wary of the debris on the floor. Behind the couch offered a little more cover, but not as good a view.
She shifted in the nick of time. A car screeched to a stop outside the window behind the shadowy figure, and Dani saw that the intruder was a woman with short blond hair and a severe expression. She also wore shoes with high heels, the most useless thing a person could wear in a moment like this. That put Dani in a better position to fight, though, as she didn’t have to balance while she fought. Which, of course, she was going to have to do. There was no way she was going to be able to look for that dratted bird so long as this insane woman was in the way. She watched as the woman turned inside the house and shifted over to the window. Careful. Her movements fluid. Practiced. She lifted the corner of the curtain only enough to see clearer, keeping well to the side, out of the range of weapons.
A pro.
Pro or not, she was going down.
When the woman turned back to the china cabinet, Dani was ready. She kicked a footstool squarely into the woman’s path, tripping her, sending her down onto the shards of what had been someone else’s company best. She caught herself on gloved hands, launching herself back up, on her feet instantly, alert and wary, as Dani rose to face her, wishing like crazy that she had a gun of some sort. A glass-strewn floor in a combat situation smacked a little too much of Die Hard for her tastes.
The woman seemed to be having the same thoughts, eyes flickering to the floor as she moved real slow. Sideways, hands out in a ready position, moving over to the carpeted area of the living room, moving not quite toward Dani, but further out of the range of glass.
She’d give her that. Dani wasn’t masochistic enough to want to play in the glass either.
They faced each other, assessing, analyzing while the sounds of sirens and yelling filtered through the windows. Whoever this was, she was familiar and even comfortable with fighting in heels, meaning the edge Dani was counting on wasn’t there. Also, thin heels could poke holes in people. Very uncomfortable holes. And somehow, in this slow circle, Dani was the one with her back to the sea of glass, meaning if she went down it was going to hurt, and hurt bad. Dammit.