In the end, he found himself upstairs in the second-floor sitting room pacing around. From that vantage point, it was no problem to hear the vestibule door, and yet it wasn’t like he was waiting out in the open—
The double doors of Wrath’s study were pushed wide, and John Matthew emerged—from the king’s sanctum.
Immediately, Blay strode across the sitting room, ready to see if maybe the guy had heard anything—but he stopped as he got a gander at John’s expression.
Deep in thought. Like he’d received personal news of the disturbing variety.
Blay hung back as his buddy went off in the opposite direction, going down the hall of statues, no doubt to disappear into his room.
Looked like things were afoot in other people’s lives, too.
Great.
With a soft curse, Blay left his friend be and resumed his own useless walking…and waiting.
Far to the south, in the town of West Point, Sola was prepared to enter Ricardo Benloise’s house on the second floor, through the window at the end of the main hallway. It had been months since she had been inside, but she was banking on the fact that the security contact she had carefully manipulated was still her friend.
There were two keys to successfully breaking into any house, building, hotel or facility: planning and speed.
She had both.
Hanging from the wire she’d thrown onto the roof, she reached into the inside pocket of her parka, pulled out a device, and held it to the right corner of the double-hung window. Initiating the signal, she waited, staring at the tiny red light that glowed on the screen facing her. If for some reason it didn’t change, she was going to have to enter through one of the dormers that faced the side yard—which was going to be a pain in the ass—
The light went green without a sound, and she smiled as she got out more tools.
Taking a suction cup, she pushed it into the center of the pane immediately below the latch, and then made a little do-si-do around the thing with her glass cutter. A quick push inward, and the space to fit her arm was created.
After letting the glass circle fall gently to the Oriental runner inside, she snaked her hand up and around, freed the brass-on-brass contraption that kept the window locked, and slid the sash up.
Warm air rushed to greet her, as if the house were happy to have her back.
Before going in, she looked down. Glanced toward the drive. Leaned outward to see what she could of the back gardens.
It felt like somebody was watching her…not so much when she’d been driving into town, but as soon as she’d parked her car and gotten on her skis. There was no one around, however—not that she’d been able to see, at any rate—and whereas awareness was mission critical in this line of work, paranoia was a dangerous waste of time.
So she needed to cut this shit.
Getting back in the game, she reached up with her gloved hands and pulled her ass and legs over and through the window. At the same time, she loosened the tension on the wire so there was slack to let her body transition into the house. She landed without a sound, thanks not only to the rug that ran down the long corridor, but to her soft-soled shoes.
Silence was another important criterion when it came to doing a job successfully.
She stopped where she was for a brief moment. No sounds in the house—but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She was fairly certain that Benloise’s alarm was silent, and very clear that the signal didn’t go to the local or even state police: He liked to handle things privately. And God knew, with the kind of muscle he employed, there was plenty of force to go around.
Fortunately, however, she was good at her job, and Benloise and his goons wouldn’t be home until just before the sun came up—he lived the life of a vampire, after all.
For some reason, the v-word made her think of that man who’d shown up by her car and then disappeared like magic.
Craziness. And the only time in recent memory that someone had given her pause. In fact, after getting confronted like that, she was actually considering not going back to that glass house on the river—although there was a fucked-up rationale for that. It wasn’t that she was worried that she’d get physically hurt. God knew she was perfectly competent at defending herself.
It was the attraction.
More dangerous than any gun, knife, or fist, as far as she was concerned.
With lithe strides, Sola jogged down the carpet, bouncing on the balls of her feet, heading for the master bedroom that looked out over the rear garden. The house smelled exactly as she remembered it, old wood and furniture polish, and she knew enough to stick to the left edge of the runner. No squeaking that way.
When she got to the master suite, the heavy wooden door was closed, and she took out her lock pick before even trying the handle. Benloise was pathological about two things: cleanliness and security. Her impression, though, was that the latter was more critical at the gallery in downtown Caldwell than here at his home. After all, Benloise didn’t keep anything under this roof other than art that was insured to the penny, and himself during the day—when he had plenty of bodyguards and guns with him.
In fact, that was probably why he was a night owl downtown. It meant the gallery was never unattended—he was present after-hours, and his legitimate business staff was there during the day.
As a cat burglar, she certainly preferred to get into places that were empty.
On that note, she worked the locking mechanism on the door, sprang it free, and slipped inside. As she took a deep breath, the air was tinged with tobacco smoke and Benloise’s spicy cologne.
The combination made her think of black-and-white Clark Gable movies for some reason.
With the drapes drawn and no lights on, it was pitch-black, but she’d taken photographs of the room’s layout back when she’d come for that party, and Benloise was not the type of man to move things around. Hell, every time a new exhibit was installed at the gallery, she could practically feel the squirming under his skin.
Fear of change was a weakness, her grandmother always said.
Sure made things easier for her.
Slowing down now, she walked forward ten paces into what was the middle of the room. The bed would be on the left against the long wall, as would the archway into the bath and the doors to the walk-in closet. In front of her were the long windows that overlooked the gardens. Over to the right, there would be a bureau, a desk, some sitting chairs, and the fireplace that was never used because Benloise hated the smell of woodsmoke.
The security alarm panel was located between the entryway to the bath and the ornate headboard of the bed, beside a lamp that rose about three feet from a side table.
Sola pivoted in place. Walked forward four steps. Felt for the foot of the bed—found it.
Sidestep, one, two, three. Forward down the flank of the king-size mattress. Sidestep one to clear the table and the lamp.
Sola reached out her left hand….
And there was the security panel, right where it needed to be.
Flipping the cover off, she used a penlight that she kept between her teeth to illuminate the circuitry. Taking out another device from her backpack, she hooked wires up to wires, intercepted the signals, and with the help of a miniature laptop and a program that a friend of hers had developed, created a closed loop within the alarm system such that, as long as the router was in place, the motion detectors she was about to set off wouldn’t register.
As far as the motherboard was concerned, nothing was going to be amiss.
Leaving the laptop hanging by its connection, she walked out of the room, hit the hall, and took the stairwell down to the first floor.
The place was decorated to within an inch of its life, perpetually ready for a magazine shoot—although, of course, Benloise protected his privacy far too carefully to ever have his digs photographed for public consumption. On fleet feet, she passed through the front receiving hall, the parlor to the left, and went into his study.