brother officers in L. A. and I don't want to stop a stray bullet by mistake.'
'Not to mention all the dead bodies you left in Florida.'
'There's a story that goes with that, Sheriff. Extenuating circumstances.'
'If you're smart, Scully, you'll tell me where you are now. Otherwise, this will go down hard.'
'I want you to call Bud Halley, my old CO in L. A. He's a good cop. Tell him what's going on. Tell him I need to see him and to get his ass up here.'
'Where are you, Scully?'
'Stick by your phone. I'll let you know.' Shane hung up and looked at Alexa.
'Pretty good,' she said, nodding. 'He'll have his flak vest buttoned and be ready to roll.'
They moved off the dock and skirted the water's edge until they got to a wire fence that went ten feet out into the lake and separated the castle's property from its neighbors. Shane climbed out on the fence, U-turned around the end post, then came back toward shore, and dropped off onto the sand inside the grounds.
After a minute Alexa repeated the maneuver, landing on the sand beside him.
They crept away from the shoreline and ran up toward the house, both silently cursing the full moon as they sprinted under its silvery glow. They hurried across the vast expanse of lawn, then hugged the wall, moving around the castle house slowly. They could see a row of ground-level windows throwing streaks of light out across the dew-wet lawn. They moved in that direction. Once they got to the windows, Shane dropped to his stomach and looked through a narrow glass pane into what looked like a huge billiards room.
'Uh-uh,' he whispered, rising again and moving on. Alexa followed quietly in his footsteps.
On the south end of the house, he found the ground-level window he was looking for. When Shane glanced inside, he saw that it opened into a basement laundry room. He took out the.38 S amp;W and tapped loudly on the window with the gun butt.
'Whatta you doing?' Alexa hissed. 'Why don't we just ring the fucking doorbell?'
'If somebody's down here, I'd rather find out now. Better to be outside than trapped down there in the basement. I'm gonna break the glass. If we get a ringer, get small.'
She nodded, then watched as he slammed the gun butt hard into the pane, breaking it. The sound of tinkling shards hitting the cement floor froze them. They lay prone on the grass for several long minutes, waiting.
Nothing.
Shane reached through the glass, unhooked the latch, and swung the window open. They slipped into the laundry room and dropped onto the basement floor. Once inside, they could hear the faint sounds of opera music playing upstairs.
'Okay, let's work our way through this place, starting with this side, then moving east,' he whispered.
She nodded, and they opened the laundry-room door and found themselves in a narrow, concrete-walled corridor with a vaulted ceiling. The corridor had no carpet, windows, or wall decorations. They crept along the tile floor, trying to keep their shoes from echoing on the polished surface. They checked doors as they went, mostly storage rooms and a basement bathroom. Then they were back at the poolroom Shane had seen from outside. The room was medieval in design, with old lances and shields on the walls. Two full, man-sized suits of armor on stands stood guarding a pair of double doors.
Movie posters hung on every wall, each one featuring a well-known Logan Hunter film. A red felt pool table loomed like a mahogany crypt in the center of the huge rectangular room.
They slipped out of the poolroom through a side door, still heading east. Shane and Alexa found themselves transiting through a part of the basement that was beginning to resemble a dungeon bars and studded steel doors, ornate metal hinges with brass church locks. At the end of the center hall was a wooden door with a small, eight- by-ten-inch barred window set at eye level. Shane looked through the bars into an even narrower, underlit hallway. The door was locked. He reached in his pocket for his picks.
'What would we ever do without those?' she quipped.
It was a simple two-tumbler lock, designed more for looks than function. He got it open quickly. The door creaked ominously as he pushed it wide.
They crept down the three-foot-wide stone-block hallway. The first door on the right was unlocked, so he pushed it open and found that he was standing in a replica of a medieval torture chamber, replete with fourteenth- century stretching racks, wall restraints, and steel wall hooks holding every imaginable kind of leather apparel.
'This kink is into S amp;M,' Alexa said.
Shane felt a chill go through him and prayed that Chooch and Longboard had not been subjected to a dose of that madness.
He passed through the dungeon toward a door on the far side of the room, opened it slowly, and found a hallway that ran farther underground. It stretched for about forty or fifty feet on a gentle slope. At the end of the corridor was another large wooden door with metal trim and steel studs.
'Hold my back,' he said, then ran down the concrete tunnel. When he got to the end, he tried the door. It was unlocked.
He pushed it open and found himself looking at Chooch and Longboard. They were blindfolded, gagged, and handcuffed to pipes in a small room that contained three giant water heaters. Shane ripped the blindfold off Chooch, then pulled the wadding out of his mouth. 'You okay?'
'Shane,' the boy said; tears started flowing from his eyes. 'I knew you'd come…'
'Shhhh…' Shane said. As Brian umphz d behind his gag, Shane checked Chooch's handcuffs before quickly turning and removing Brian Kelly's blindfold and fishing the gag out of his mouth.
'Shit, am I glad to see you,' Longboard said weakly.
'You guys okay?'
'I guess,' Longboard said. 'Frickin' scared, but okay.'
'Stay quiet. I'll be right back. Gotta get a key for those cuffs. They look like standard LAPD issue.'
Shane sprinted back up the ramp to the dungeon room, where Alexa was guarding the hallway.
'They're down there. They look all right. I need your cuff key.'
She reached to her belt, pulled it off, and handed it to him.
Shane hurried back to the heater room and unhooked both sets of cuffs.
'How many guys are here? How many guns?' Shane whispered.
'There's about four guys who are packing,' Brian said.
'Shane, that movie producer is here,' Chooch said. 'He owns the place.'
'That kink didn't put you on any of those tables up there, did he?' Shane asked.
'No. They just cuffed us to those pipes,' Brian said. 'Seems like we been here almost two days.'
'Okay, listen up. We're on our way out. There's a woman with me. She's an LAPD sergeant. Once we're out of this dungeon, I'll go first, she'll bring up the rear. Stay close. Don't make any noise. What I want to do here is just disappear. I don't wanna fight our way out.' Shane's words echoed softly against the walls of the stone room.
He led Brian and Chooch up the corridor, rejoining Alexa. Silently they retraced their footsteps out of the dungeon and back into the connecting hallway. Shane paused by the door, looking into the billiards room. It was still deserted, so he pushed the door open and they headed out across the tile floor, past the suits of armor, and back to the laundry room at the far end of the house.
They slipped inside; then Shane locked the door and turned to Alexa. 'You're first. Once you're out there, scout both sides. We need a good exit line.'
'Got it,' she said.
He put his hands around her slender waist and lifted her up to the open window. She grabbed the ledge and shimmied out. She was amazingly light, which surprised him. Her intellectual weight had become so huge, it didn't seem possible that her physical weight was only 115 pounds.
Next he lifted Chooch. Once the boy was out of the window, Shane turned to Longboard and cupped his hands. 'Hop aboard. You're outta here.'
Longboard stepped in, and Shane boosted him out the window. Then Shane grabbed the ledge and pulled himself up and out onto the wet grass.
The cold, moist lake air filled his nostrils as he regained his feet and looked at all of them.
'Somebody just pulled in. They're in a truck in the drive. There're people in the big front room now. They'll see us moving across the grass,' Alexa said. 'Our best bet outta here is that speedboat. We need keys, but if they
