and this fog, I need all my men outside, but someone’s gotta be the last line of defense with me, so it looks like you two are it.”
“ You’re staying in the house?” Tucker said.
“ Yes, if Lila gets in, I want to be here to greet her.”
“ What about me?”
“ You’ll be in charge out front.”
“ Alright.” Tucker seemed to swell before Mouledoux’s eyes and it seemed to him that perhaps Mansfield Wayne kept a tighter reign on his son than people realized.
“ I’ll keep watch from the living room window,” Mansfield said, “which covers the right side of the house and Peeps, on second thought, you should come up front with me and take the den on the left side. Fog or no, if those women get past the men out front, we should see them. As far as Lila is concerned, shoot to kill. Wound Eisenhower if you have to, but I want her alive.”
“ Got it.” Peeps seemed to be puffing up like Tucker had only a few seconds ago. What was it with this frail old man that made people turn themselves into lapdogs? Was it the money? Peeps had been a good cop once, now he wasn’t. Mouledoux found it hard to believe he’d been bought for just dollars.
“ You’ll be alone back here, Bobby,” Mansfield said and that reconfirmed everything Mouledoux had been thinking. They didn’t expect a threat from the back and that’s where Manny had wanted him. Old Manny Wayne didn’t trust him and come morning, if he’s successful tonight and gets his hands on Eisenhower and her secret, his fate was going to be the same as Lila Booth’s.
“ Right,” Mouledoux said.
“ Don’t think I have you back here because I don’t trust you,” Manny said, almost as if he’d been reading Mouledoux’s mind, “because I do. Peeps vouched for you and that’s good enough for me.”
“ Okay.” Mouledoux wasn’t believing a word coming out of the old man’s mouth.
“ It’s just that I trust my men more. They’ve been with me a long time.”
“ I understand,” Mouledoux said.
“ Okay, let’s get ready.” Manny turned to go. “Be on your guard, Tucker.”
“ She won’t get by us,” Tucker said and then they were gone.
Mouledoux heard the front door open and close. Tucker was out front now with Manny’s mini army. Any minute now it was going to start.
Izzy clung to the fence for all she was worth. Seconds ago she’d panicked like a schoolgirl face to face with a spider in the sandbox. Lila’s shout brought her out of her panic attack, but only long enough for her to grab onto the fence with her free hand and then, with a superhuman effort, she somehow got toeholds into the chain link.
Then the panic was back. She was frozen with fear, hanging on the fence.
“ Izzy, you can do this,” Lila said. “Open your eyes and look at me.”
She hadn’t realized she’d shut her eyes. She was shutting down. She couldn’t. Not now, not here. She opened her eyes, saw Lila flanked by the dogs.
“ I’m stuck.” She was whimpering and she didn’t like the sound of it.
“ You’re afraid of heights?”
“ Maybe, a little.” She forced a smile.
“ But you made it up the ledge.”
“ It wasn’t easy.”
“ You shoulda said.”
“ I thought I was over it.”
“ You have to come round to this side,” Lila said. “Close your eyes again. Shut out everything. Make your mind a blank and do it by feel.”
“ I’ll try.”
“ You can do it.”
Izzy closed her eyes again, but this time she wasn’t squeezing them shut. She took a deep breath, held it, determined not to exhale till she was on the other side, which was only a couple seconds away, if only she could move.
She felt sweat trickling under her arms, chilling her. But the chill wasn’t from the icy sweat, because the cold night hadn’t been an issue. It was fear, pure and simple. She’d been frozen with it and the chill was as icy cold as an Arctic winter.
Her left hand, the one that had been clinging to the fence while she’d been flaying about during her panic attack, felt like it was on fire, like it had been packed in snow, then shoved into scalding water. It was a useless claw and it was betraying her, because without it, magic blood or no, she was going to die out here, because she couldn’t hold on forever.
“ Listen to me now and put everything else out of your mind.” Lila was speaking in a soothing voice, like a hypnotist. “Move your left hand a couple inches to the left. It’s easy, just a tiny bit, that’s all.” Lila’s voice seemed to wash over her, bathing her in just enough confidence to relax the fingers of her left hand as she defied the impossible and tried to tighten her grip on the fence with her right.
And the fiery pain in her left hand intensified and as if that weren’t enough, her right hand felt like it was on fire now as well and the cold lighting that had been shooting up and down her spine was turning hot. She was racked with sweat, felt it on her hands. They were turning clammy, slippery.
She was locked up, on fire, as if she had a fever and now she was choking back vomit, but despite it all, she moved her hand, not an inch, but all the way to the end of the fence.
Then, without Lila’s guidance, she took her left foot off the fence, moved it to the left, finding another toe hold and now she was spread eagled on the fence.
“ Good, Izzy, you did good,” Lila soothed. “You’re almost there. Now you’ve got to move your right hand, then your right foot.”
Eyes still closed, hands still on fire, feet now too, Izzy started to move her right hand when something grabbed her by the left arm and jerked her off the fence. She was in space, flying, but before she could scream, she hit the ground with a thud, landing hard on her back, breath stolen away with a fast whooshing sound.
She struggled for air, opened her eyes and was racked with stomach spasms as she rolled over, pulled herself up onto her hands and knees, finding herself face to muzzle, staring into the jaws of one of the Rottweilers.
The dog sort of grunted as Izzy turned away from it and vomited, fighting for the breath that had been knocked out of her when Lila had pulled her off the fence, pulling her around to the safe side, where her fall had only been a couple feet instead of a couple hundred.
Heaving finished, she gasped for air, but wasn’t finding any. Lila thumped her on the back, once, twice a third time.
“ Take short breaths.”
“ Yeah,” Izzy gasped out. She felt like she might never get enough air, but in a few seconds she was getting it, in short breaths, like Lila had said. Then she was able to take in more and shortly she was breathing normally.
“ Can you stand?”
“ I think so.”
“ Let me help you up.” Again, Lila took Izzy by the left shoulder, but gently this time, not with the force she’d used when she’d pulled her off the fence.
“ Thanks.” On her feet now, with her breath back, Izzy was surprised that her hands no longer burned. The cold hot fear that had been racking through her was gone. She’d done it, gone out on that fence, faced her fear and had survived. “I’m better now,” she said and somehow she knew she was.
“ So you’re not going to lock up when come face to face with the bad guys?”
“ I’ll be fine.” And she knew she would be. She felt like she could do anything.
“ Good.” Lila pulled the grenade launcher from her back. “So, I can count on you for the rest of this? You’ll have my back?”
“ No, not your back, I’ll be at your side.”
“ Good.” Lila looked into the fog. “The house is that way.” She pointed. “Manny’s men have a small house they work out of about fifty or sixty feet north of the main house. Manny calls it the guard’s quarters, or sometimes
