foot gap to the back of a leather sofa. Never touching the floor, she slid over the sofa back and twisted to land lightly on its cushioned surface.
“I’m in,” she murmured.
The laser grid in here was visible to the naked eye, which made her job of sliding, climbing, leaping and squeezing past it easy. She reached the bookcase beside the door. She commenced pressing, pulling and shifting books in the shelf until she found the dummy book that actually was a switch. It tilted outward from the shelf, and to the right of the library door, a small panel slid open to reveal a numeric keypad.
She described it quickly over her radios. A new voice came up on frequency and didn’t identify himself. He did, however, identify the model of alarm system pad she’d described. She spent the next ten minutes following his detailed instructions on how to open the box and disable the alarm.
“Okay, Cobra, give the doorknob a try. If we’ve done it right, you should be able to open the door and get no alarm siren.”
She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. From this moment forward, she’d be on her own inside the house. She turned the cool brass knob slowly. Cracked the door open an inch. Silence. She’d done it.
In point of fact, they expected any bad guys to jump her as she left the house. She ought to be able to proceed from here unhindered. Nonetheless, she eased forward cautiously. It was a short trip down the hall to her right, across the foyer and left into the expansive living room where her target-a magnificent Van der Meer painting- hung.
She eased down the carpeted hall, her passage utterly silent, and frowned. Something didn’t feel right. It was nothing she could put her finger on, but an uneasy intuition stole over her. Maybe it was the fact that she was committing a major felony that bugged her.
For no reason she could explain, she paused at the edge of the three-story-high foyer and examined it suspiciously. A huge chandelier dripped with crystal. An ornate table in the middle of the space held a giant Limoges porcelain vase she couldn’t wrap her arms around. It was empty at the moment, but would no doubt hold a large floral display when the house was occupied.
The floor was a marble so glossy it glistened like glass in the scant light. Her senses kicked over to another level altogether, her military and martial arts training blending until she was vibrating with awareness at a level so minute her teammates wouldn’t believe her if she tried to explain it. And that was probably why she noticed the infinitesimal flicker of movement in a dark shadow under the far leg of the table. She pulled out her sniper scope, a palm-sized telescope she usually used to measure distance to targets. She zoomed it in on the spot where she’d seen the movement.
She frowned. It was a gnat. Lying on its side, one wing beating sporadically in an attempt to free itself. How was the bug trapped? It ought to be able to use its legs to right itself. It was probably just a dying bug and happened to have ended up in that pose. Except…
She sniffed the air experimentally. The faintest odor of something familiar-lightly sweet with a musty undertone-just barely registered. She knew that scent. But where from? She sniffed again, letting its essence flow over her and through her. Summers in Korea. Hidoshi’s snug little barn, where the pigs and sheep spent their nights. The paper fly strips that spiraled down from the ceiling, mustard yellow and sticky…and smelling exactly like this.
Flypaper? What did that have to do with this opulent home? Alarm bells went off in her head. Something was not right here. She knelt down to get a better look at that gnat. Now that she thought about it, the gnat was acting just like one of the myriad flies that used to bumble onto Hidoshi’s flypaper and then buzz frantically until they died.
The floor. It smelled more strongly of the flypaper glue. From this angle, it looked like a thick layer of polyurethane had been freshly spread over the marble, drying to that glossy sheen. There wasn’t a single nick on that satin-smooth surface. What floor had absolutely no nicks or scuffs?
She reached out tentatively to touch the floor and started as it gave way, viscous beneath her touch. She withdrew her hand, and her fingertips stuck to the gooey surface hard enough that she had to yank her hand back, leaving a little skin behind.
That was a powerful epoxy of some kind. The entire floor was coated with glue! Had she stepped in it, she doubted she’d have been able to walk across the floor without sacrificing her shoes, and then her socks, to the glue. Who in their right mind lived in a house like this and poured glue all over their foyer?
A trap.
This was a
Adrenaline surged through her veins, screaming its warning at her. She froze, only her gaze roving quickly in all directions. She saw no cameras. No microphones. No other surveillance equipment. Her gut said she wasn’t missing anything. The threat she sensed was more human than machine.
Holy sh-
Was she alone in here or not?
Was this why the H.O.T. Watch had seen no hostiles outside? Were they already inside? Was their ambush about to be turned on them? She eased her hand down to her belt and pressed the transmit button three times fast, three times slow, and three times fast, sending out a clicked S.O.S.
Jeff’s response was immediate in her ear. “Are you injured?”
Two clicks for no.
“Are you in danger?”
One click for yes.
“Are you under attack?”
How was she to answer that? She wasn’t yet, but if there were hostiles in here, she very well could be soon. Did she want the Medusas to come roaring in here with guns blazing, or sneak in and possibly catch whoever else was in the house?
She gave two clicks for no.
“That was a long pause before you answered. Are you about to come under attack?” Jeff asked quickly.
An quick, emphatic single click.
“Do you request backup?”
Again, a single click.
Jeff gave the Medusas a flurry of orders to move in and enter the house through various doors and windows. Jennifer Blackfoot came up on frequency and ordered Bravo 51 to stand by to hit the house with all it had, jamming all electrical function of any kind within the mansion.
And then Jennifer said, “We’ll have a Predator drone on sight in two minutes. It’s equipped with structure- penetrating radar. Stand by for insertion, Medusas.”
Jeff acknowledged her.
Kat hunkered down in the hallway, thinking fast. She couldn’t stay here. She was completely exposed and had no cover if this turned into a shoot-out. She glanced around for options. With nothing but the glue-filled foyer before her and an empty hallway behind her, she didn’t have much to work with. And then she looked up. Time to use her secret weapon and go vertical. She eased back into a shadow and quickly pulled out her climbing claws, donning them over her shoes and on her hands.
She climbed the hallway wall first, and then eased around the corner into the foyer nearly ten feet up. As soon as she entered the open space, she worked her way higher, crawling up the wall, spiderlike, until she was well above the sight lines of anyone looking from the adjoining rooms into the foyer. She headed for a shadow and awkwardly resumed her game of twenty questions with Jeff.
She laboriously tapped out the Morse code to spell, “Trap. Foyer.”
He replied immediately. “Should we avoid the foyer?”
She clicked an affirmative, and he amended Karen’s point of entry to the dining-room window instead of the front door.
Kat double-tapped a negative to that. If Karen came into the dining room, she’d have to cross the foyer to get to anywhere but the kitchen.
Jeff understood immediately. “Will it work if Python comes in through the living room?”
Isabella was already scheduled to come in the living room window. That would put two Medusas in there simultaneously. Kat’s best guess was that would be where the hostiles would be hiding. They’d surround the
