kind of guilt.”
Andrea’s eyes were empty. “Not this kind.”
Scaling the old lady’s fence was no problem. There was no dog in the backyard and no indication of a security system protecting the property.
Dylan tracked down the junction box on the rear wall of the house. The phone cable, dropping down from a utility pole in the alley, was heavy and tough to cut, which was why normally he would pry open the box to work on the wiring inside. In this case he didn’t have to. A pair of red and green telco wires extended out of the bottom of the box and snaked through the siding on the wall. Sloppy, leaving them exposed like that. Some phone company drone had been in a hurry when he did the installation.
Dylan unsheathed his knife and sliced the wires. Now the house had no phone service, unless the woman had a cell phone.
He pointed at Bran, wordlessly instructing him to take up a position in the yard where he could cover their avenue of escape. One thing Dylan had learned was to always keep your exit lane open.
Bran crouched beside a leafy eucalyptus and signaled that he was ready. Dylan led Tupelo to the back door. It was locked. Not a spring latch, either. Goddamned pain-in-the-ass dead bolt. But there was a glass pane in the door, which would make things easier.
“Wish I’d brought a glass cutter and some tape,” Dylan whispered through his mask.
“Fuck that,” Tupelo said, and with the butt of his H amp; K he cracked the pane into a starburst pattern.
The impact made no more noise than the snap of a twig. Still, Dylan was pissed.
“I tell you to do that?” he breathed. “You wait for my goddamned order.”
Tupelo looked away, his eyes twitching in the ski mask’s slits. “Just wanna get it done,” he mumbled.
Dylan inspected the damage. The glass was holding together, but one stiff breeze would blow it apart. Again he wished he had some sticky tape. Could have taped over the fragments and pulled them away without a sound. As it was, he would have to push in the panel and hope the old lady wasn’t listening.
“You haven’t told me,” Abby said, “how Reynolds fits into all this.”
“No, I haven’t, have I?” Andrea hesitated, then made a flick of the wrist, as if dismissing some unheard counsel of caution. “I suppose I can tell you. I-”
“Wait.” Abby held up a hand.
From the rear of the house there was a tinkle of breaking glass.
The shards fell away with a touch of Dylan’s gloved hand. They hit the floor with a soft metallic clatter like the jingling of bells. He stuck his arm through the hole and groped for the dead-bolt release. In a second the door was unlocked. He pushed it open and was dismayed to hear the low, prolonged squeal of unoiled hinges.
The old lady might have heard that, even if she’d missed the noise of the falling glass. They would have to move fast before she hightailed it out the front door.
He entered the rear hall, leading Tupelo, their sneakers treading soundlessly on the bare wooden floor.
Abby glanced at Andrea and saw the woman’s eyes widen in fear.
“What’s back there?” Abby whispered.
“Door to the backyard. There’s a glass pane in the door.”
Down the rear hallway came a long screeee of hinges. The door, opening.
A bad time to be unarmed. Abby’s purse, with the gun in it, was in the living room.
But there was another gun-Andrea’s. Abby pulled open the kitchen drawer and grabbed the revolver inside.
“This thing still loaded?” she whispered.
Andrea nodded.
The gun in her hand made Abby feel a little better, but not much. Getting into a shootout at close quarters wasn’t her idea of a good time. Too many things could go wrong. And as long as she and Andrea were stuck in the kitchen, the intruder had the advantage. He could corner them and finish them off from the doorway.
Andrea had frozen. But there was no time for fear. In a tactical situation, the first thirty seconds were the most critical.
Abby grabbed Andrea by the shoulder and hustled her into the living room. The front door beckoned, but it was too far away, and besides, there might be someone else waiting outside, hoping to pick them off if they tried to flee.
And her purse-it, too, was out of reach.
She pivoted toward a side hallway and took it at a run, Andrea following. There were two doors in the hall. One was shut. Before Abby could try it, Andrea gasped, “Closet.”
The other door was ajar. Abby pushed it open and led Andrea into what was obviously the master bedroom, lit by a lamp on the night table, with a closet, a bathroom, and two curtained windows that must face the backyard.
She pulled Andrea behind the bed, kneeling with her, then yanked the lamp’s power cord out of the wall socket. Now the only illumination was the trickle of daylight through the curtains and the glow of a nightlight in the bathroom.
There was a phone on the night table. Abby grabbed it. No dial tone. The phone line had been cut. That meant whoever had entered the house wasn’t just some junkie or random thrill seeker. Not your standard home invader, either. If it had been, the intruder would be shouting orders and stomping through the house, hoping to establish control through intimidation.
This enemy was craftier, stealthier. No teenager, but someone older, more experienced, better organized. A professional assassin with notches in his gun.
Still, the odds had improved. The bed provided concealment, and her angle of view through the doorway provided decent coverage of the hall. She could fire from her improvised sniper’s blind, take out the intruder while he approached.
“Who is it?” Andrea whispered. Abby shushed her.
Through the open door, she saw a shadow pass over the wall of the hallway as the intruder crept into the living room. Then more bad news-a second shadow.
Two enemies. Maybe the odds hadn’t improved so much, after all.
For a few seconds at least, they would be busy in the living room. Abby thought there might be a chance to get Andrea out through the bedroom window. She risked getting to her feet to pull aside the curtains but quickly shut them again. A third man was outside, in the backyard, toting a handgun with an unnaturally extended barrel that could be a silencer.
Not good.
She resumed kneeling behind the bed. There was no way around it-she was going to have to do some shooting. She flipped open the revolver’s cylinder. Fully loaded, six rounds. That wasn’t much against three armed men. She would have to be opportunistic about taking her shots. Her best bet was to take out the first man who came down the hall. If she did, the other two might run.
Sudden darkness in the living room. The intruders had turned off the lights. The most logical reason was that they intended to make a move into the hall and didn’t want to be backlit. Abby had expected as much. It made her job a little harder, but she could see well enough. And she knew where to look. She had the edge.
Footsteps in the hall. They were coming.
Dylan worked his way down the hall, Tupelo behind him. He was pretty sure the bitch had taken cover in the room at the far end. A sweep of the other side of the house had turned up nothing, and she hadn’t had time to get out through either the front door or the door to the carport.
It ought to be easy to bag her. But something was funny. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but she wasn’t behaving the way a frightened woman should. She wasn’t screaming or trying to climb out the window or barricading the door. It was like she was waiting for him, luring him in.
There was a chance she was armed. Maybe she kept a gun in that room. She might be hoping to get the drop
