Will went left, jogging for the main entrance in theportico beneath the exposed wooden beams. The familiar surge ofadrenaline lent him speed, feet pounding the hard-packed earth,pebbles skittering as he ran, ears attuned to the night sounds.
He reached the heavy front door without incident andspared a quick look over his shoulder. There was no sign of Taylor.He would be in position by now — or nearly.
Will wiped his forehead with his arm — the moist airwas surprisingly warm — and knocked on the door.
He waited.
Will’s official knock was not easy to ignore, butthere was no response from within.
He rapped again, and a dog began to bark inside thehouse.
Will swore under his breath. He could get a lotlouder and a lot more vehement, but he and Taylor had discussedthis, and their idea was to attract as little attention as possiblesince they were, in a manner of speaking, out of theirjurisdiction.
Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, heturned to spot Taylor sprinting across the flat top of thegarage.
Now what the hell was that about? Taylor wassupposed to be watching the back entrance, not playing one-manassault team. No way was he going inside without Will to back himup. Will took a couple of steps in brief retreat and sized up thefront door. Kicking any door down was nowhere as easy as moviesmade it look, and this was a massive and rustic structure. But asfar as Will was concerned, that door was kindling. He launchedhimself at it.
Light flared behind the downstairs windows. Willstumbled to a halt as the front door opened a crack and twosuspicious black eyes peered out at him. One eye — a bleary,red-rimmed eye — was human. The other was canine and belonged tosome breed of shepherd with a black rectangular muzzle and a lot ofsharp white teeth.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” growled thehuman.
The dog was less articulate but more convincing.
Will kept his voice low. The last thing he wanted todo was spook Ramirez’s houseguest. “Special Agent William Brandt.I’m with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.” He held his badge upso there could be no mistake. “You better hear what I have tosay.”
The dog made another lunge through the openingbetween door and frame. Will took a hasty step back. “Hang on tothat mutt if you don’t want me to shoot it.”
“He’s not a mutt. He’s a purebred Anatolianshepherd.”
It didn’t really seem like the time or place forsemantics. Will opened his mouth to make himself heard over thesnarling dog, but the sound of a shotgun blast from overhead rippedthrough the night.
A woman started screaming.
The shotgun wasn’t Taylor’s. Taylor and Will werecarrying their roscoes and wearing underarmor, but that was theextent of their regulation equipment. Which meant Taylor was underfire.
Will grabbed the edge of the door. Ramirez, if itwas Ramirez, let go of the dog, which lunged through the doorway,nails scrabbling on brick as it tried to get to Will.
“Shit!” Will twisted left, then right, like abullfighter dodging a set of razor-sharp horns. He flung himselfforward, bursting through the entrance in the opposite direction ofthe charging dog, almost simultaneously slamming the door behindhim. His heart drummed in his chest as he slumped back against theuneven wooden surface. Shit, shit, shit. Their plan, such asit was, was already crumbling away like sandstone.
The snarling dog threw itself against the door. Itsounded like a bear clawing the timbers.
Will had other, more immediate concerns. There wasanother blast from overhead. The shotgun’s second barrel —definitely not Taylor’s .357 SIG. Taylor was not firing back. Therewere plenty of reasons for that and none of them meant Taylor wasin trouble, but Will still had to fight that instinctive andall-consuming rush of fear.
Ramirez had already fled the tile entryway and wasrunning barefoot for the wooden staircase. His feet slapped thetiles, the tiny, desperate sound carrying oddly down the hallway.Will tore after the man and managed to tackle him three stairs up.Ramirez fell back, and they tumbled down the steps to the tilefloor below.
Will’s forehead grazed the edge of one step; hiselbow and knee connected sharply with the floor. A goddamneddisaster was what this was. He grunted and wrestled his wayon top of Ramirez, who was short but muscular, compact and pumpedup on adrenaline and possibly other things.
Ramirez flailed with arms and legs. He jabbed atWill’s throat with a move unapproved by the WWF. Will blocked andgrabbed Ramirez’s hand, bending it back in a maneuver also frownedon by most wrestling associations. He followed it up with a knee inthe groin that would have ended the fight then and there if it hadconnected as intended.
It didn’t.
Ramirez screeched and began kicking with renewedenergy — if not accuracy.
Upstairs the woman was still screaming, which Willdistractedly registered as a positive sign. If she was screaming,chances were Taylor was still a threat to her, and that meant hewas likely unhurt. In fact, over Ramirez’s gasps and curses, Willcould just make out Taylor’s muffled tones.
Will got his handcuffs out and half dragged, halfwrangled Ramirez over onto his front side. Straddling his quarryawkwardly, he snapped the cuffs around thick tattooed wrists.
Ramirez yelled. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I tried to tell you. You’re harboring a fugitive,asshole.”
“You’re no cop!”
“If you don’t stop resisting arrest, you’ll find outhow much of a cop I am.”
Ramirez tried to rear up and throw Will off. “I’llfucking kill you if you hurt her.”
“Nobody’s going to get hurt if you shut up andsettle down.” Will checked the cuffs and jumped up from Ramirez,avoiding one of his wilder kicks.
“You’re dead. You’re a dead man!”
Ramirez’s curses and the barking of the Anatolianshepherd outside followed Will as he took the stairs two at a time.His footsteps pounded on wood, the staircase shaking beneathhim.
He reached the second story and scanned the unlithallway. At the end of it, light pooled from an open bedroom door.The woman had stopped screaming. The sudden absence
