"Sir, we just opened the doors, locked and loaded. And all we found was you," the man in the all-black task force suit reported with a frown. Two others were with him. There was no way anyone could have exited the room without their attention and intervention. He turned to look back into the room with a chilling feeling, "Could you check the room, please, gentlemen?"
"Sweep the place!" the captain of the security unit barked and the three of them shot in different directions while Purdue remained in his spot. He could not fathom the effortless flight of the burglar. Surely there was ample reason for him to host a break-in, but he had never met a prowler who could elude his security team. Now they were running around like cockroaches on fire, while he waited for their expertise to render his home safe again. In the meantime he had locked down the rest of the mansion, which would notify the wing guards.
With a sudden whoosh the shape bolted down from above the iron doors and made for the dark adjacent room and a side window, which was ajar.
"Here! Here!" Purdue cried to his men, as the shape leapt onto the windowsill. A clicking of hungry automatic weapons stopped the prowler in the window.
"Don't move! Put your hands on your head!" shouted the tall security superior with a roar of authority. Slowly the shape lifted its arms in the frame of the window.
"Get the lights on," the security guard ordered, and Purdue walked to the light switch of the small room where they had cornered the burglar. The sound of a metal canister hitting the floor froze Purdue's blood. He was no soldier, but he knew the sound of a grenade.
"Take cover!" the men shouted, the captain heading straight for Purdue to shove him with great force to safety. From the high window the intruder swiftly slipped along the stone ledge to the north side of Wrichtishousis, where the wild cold wind whipped angrily in the night rain.
Inside the dark room the men awaited the explosion, but nothing happened. Reluctantly the superior raised his head to check the location of the grenade. It was lying a few meters from them, motionless. Could it be delayed? A dud? He could not ascertain the potency of the strange-looking canister, but he was not about to lie around all night waiting for it to do something. Finally he crept closer to the metal thing and shoved it with his foot, pinching his eyes in a stupid expression of anticipatory trauma, but nothing happened.
"I believe you've been had, gentlemen," Purdue's voice cut through the silence of the darkness.
"Alpha 2, come in," he heard the superior call on the wire. A crackling static was the only answer he got and he repeated his call. After a long delay, a distant and obscured voice answered, "Alpha 2 here."
"We have an intruder. Check the perimeter."
"Roger."
"You seem awfully calm, captain," Purdue said, with casual condescension.
"Yes, Mr. Purdue, I am. Just because he got out of the residence does not mean he runs faster than my dogs," the captain said smoothly, almost completely disguising his annoyance at Purdue's manner. He had been employed by Mr. Purdue for several weeks now, and only his employer's generous remuneration kept the captain leashed from his natural instinct to lash out.
"Alpha-Actual, come in," the crackling voice came over the radio, and the captain answered eagerly, his eyes darting from side to side as he listened intently. Purdue had taken one of his men and inspected the contents of the white room to determine if anything specific, if at all, was missing. "Sir, we have visual of someone on the north-face ledge. Proceed with caution. We are bringing the dogs. Over," the voice echoed through the radio, as the captain immediately started moving briskly to the noted location, motioning to his other men to follow.
"Roger that, Alpha 2. Proceed. Over and out."
Purdue checked everything on his tables; his data disks were there and his desk drawers still locked. Nothing was amiss, which was more disturbing than finding his safes raided or his work disturbed. What the hell was the intruder looking for?
Outside the dogs went wild, barking like bloodhounds on a hunt as the black figure negotiated its way over the breaks between ledges. Regrettably the ancient architecture of the house made it easy to mount and climb with all its ornate protrusions and decorative niches, and they watched the spider-like moves of the trapped burglar from two stories down.
"Shall we shoot?" asked one of the security guards.
"No, hold fire. We don't know what he wants. If we kill him, we will not know who sent him," the captain said plainly. Then he stepped closer to where the intruder was crouched and shouted upward, "Looks like you have run out of ledge there, lad!"
Obviously desperate not to be apprehended, the intruder gave him a quick look, and then tested the footing of the wet stone.
"My God, is he going to jump?" Purdue cried from his vantage point, behind the safety of the window. He watched the burglar look right, up, left and then jump. It was an impressive leap, found unfortunately short of sufficient reach, and with a blunt thump the burglar's body scraped the loose masonry and plummeted to the bushes below. Immediately the hounds were on the fallen prowler, and the guards quickly gathered, guns at the ready.
"Don't do anything! Wait, I want to see who had the balls to break into my house," Purdue called to them.
Two of the powerfully built guards pulled the culprit from the thick brush. They noticed that the intruder was a lot smaller now. One of the men pulled the hoodie off to reveal a woman's dainty face. Her large, brown eyes were filled with an expression of pain as she whimpered in their grasp.
"What have we here?" Purdue sneered, intrigued beyond measure at the interesting revelation.
"Keep the dogs away!" she cried. "Please."
Purdue gestured for them to remove the dogs. Her hair was black as coal, taken into a ponytail that reached to the small of her back. He noticed a big scar at the left corner of her mouth.
"You are afraid of dogs but not guns?"
"I have selective fear. Besides, your boys can't shoot for shit," she snapped in a faint accent of Latin in her impeccably English tone.
"Is that so?" Purdue smirked in amusement. "And what makes you worthy of judging? What were you doing in my house? You were nowhere near the safe, you know, and it would be impossible for such a small-fry criminal to crack anyway."
"Oh, don't flatter yourself, old boy. You don't have anything I want," she said, "besides food."
They grew silent. Purdue stepped away from her in mock surprise, but truthfully, he was taken aback by the absurd excuse. Then they burst out laughing.
"Bring her inside. Her right arm needs medical attention," he ordered.
In Purdue's large west-wing living room a hearty fire was toasting the immediate vicinity. The woman was given a towel to dry her hair and face while one of Purdue's men splinted and wrapped her sprained wrist.
"Let us start with your name," Purdue said, as he poured himself a whisky, refusing her any.
"Calisto," she mumbled. Now that she sat in the light, her beauty was evident. He guessed her at about thirty-seven years old, hardened by life. Next to the large security men she was dwarfed, but there was no mistake that, on her own, she was by no means tiny. Calisto was physically staunch and tough, although the femininity of her ponytail and her face contradicted her body's threatening frame.
"What were you doing in my house?" he reiterated his question.
"I was looking for food! Don't you pay attention?" she barked, winding at the pain in her arm.
"I'm not buying your bullshit, dearest," Purdue said calmly, as he drank his liquor, grunting as it burned in his throat.
"Listen, pal, if I wanted to steal shit from you I would have stolen it, wouldn't I?" she clenched her jaw. "Have you checked your fridge?"