The Kent house was the only residence within miles. Still, he was taking no chances.
Though he had never been on the property before, he knew the estate intimately, could visualize every detail of its layout. The house, five thousand square feet on a fenced acre, was a Mediterranean ranch, facing south, with a detached garage to the west.
A paved path between the garage and the house led through the spacious, parklike backyard to a rear gate, then down to a lakeside dock a quarter-mile below. The path and gate were wide enough to accommodate a car, should the Kents wish to tow one of their sport boats into town for service.
Rich people. The wife was, anyway. She’d inherited her money, and hubby had married it.
Now they had all this, while Cain had spent half his life in one prison or another, busted for conning or stealing only a fraction of what the Kents had obtained with no effort at all.
Life was a bitch.
But tonight, for once, Cain meant to make that bitch put out for him.
The front yard was landscaped in rosebushes and jacaranda trees. Cain crept past tangled drifts of roses, avoiding the clutches of their thorns.
As he neared the windows, he seal-walked on his elbows, dragging his lower body. He remembered crawling this way in an alley in San Bernardino to surprise a careless man lying in ambush for him, a man who died in a gurgle of froth.
It was a hard world, kill or be killed, and Cain had learned hardness and made hardness part of him, and he had survived.
Five yards from the front of the house, he ditched the duffel bag behind a bush, then withdrew a folded pair of Tasco binoculars from his side pocket and lifted his head.
The front windows, open to admit the night air, looked in on the spacious living room and attached dining area. Only three people sat at the dining table: the daughter and two dinner guests. Charles and Barbara Kent were out of the room, perhaps busying themselves with coffee and dessert.
Cain wondered what dinner had been like. Better than prison food, he guessed. And the beds in this house-more comfortable than the bunks in a twelve-by-twelve cell.
He took out his ProCom transceiver and activated channel three.
“Mr. and Mrs. Kent are off the scope. Who’s acquired them”
There was no risk in using names over the air. Under ideal conditions the transceiver’s maximum range was only four miles. Though the Kents’ nearest neighbors and the occasional passing car would be within reach of the signal, the odds of anyone other than Cain and his associates monitoring this particular frequency were infinitesimally small.
“I’ve got them.” That was Gage. “They’re in the kitchen.”
Cain tipped the binoculars again. At the rear of the dining area he could see the kitchen doorway, but the kitchen itself, in the back of the house, was cut off from view.
“Keep watching,” he said. “Let me know when the room is clear.”
“Right…. There’s one more thing.”
Cain waited, knowing from Gage’s tentativeness that the news wasn’t good.
“I, uh, I might’ve been spotted.”
Cain held his voice steady. “How”
“Kitchen window. I think the wife got a look at me. She turned on a light.”
“God damn it.”
Never should have let the kid tag along. A goddamned sixteen-year-old, zits on his face, a whining baby—
Calm. Stay calm.
“Can she see you now” Cain breathed.
“I’m hunkered down behind the gazebo.”
“Stay there.” Under the mask, a single droplet of sweat, like a cold fingertip, traced a meandering course from Cain’s hairline to his chin. “And pray you didn’t fuck this up.”
7
An arc of espresso splashed on the kitchen island. “The police” Charles said in a stage whisper.
“I saw someone in the yard.” Barbara switched on the phone.
He grasped the handset. “Wait a minute.”
From the dining area Judy Danforth’s laugh rose in response to one of Philip’s witticisms.
The thought flickered in Barbara’s mind that the Danforths had been married fourteen years, nearly as long as she and Charles.
When was the last time Charles had made her laugh
She pushed the question away. “Someone’s out there. I’m calling for a patrol car.”
“Nobody’s in our yard, for God’s sake.”
His hands were shaking slightly. He had been tense all day. The party, long-planned, was important to him, as he’d never tired of pointing out. Philip Danforth was rumored to be looking for partners in a new investment scheme likely to prove as profitable as his previous ventures. Charles wanted desperately to be in on it.
Now he must be worried about how it would look if a squad car showed up at the front gate just as the Danforths were finishing dessert.
Admittedly, it would put a rather unpleasant spin on an otherwise faultless evening. Later, the visit by the police would be what Philip Danforth remembered, not the filet mignon brushed with creamy Barnaise, not the baby carrots in sweet butter, not Ally in her white dress with her white smile.
Barbara understood all that, but still, facts were facts, and she was her daddy’s level-headed child.
“I saw something,” she said evenly.
Charles seized on the last word like a terrier snatching a bone. “Someone, you said a moment ago. Now it’s something. What did you see, exactly”
“I think it was a prowler.”
“You think.”
“I can’t be sure, but there was movement by the gazebo.”
“Movement.”
“Yes, movement, damn it.” He was pushing her buttons, as he did so well.
Charles released a little snort of disbelief, a haughty aristocratic sound typical of him. He glanced out the window at the floodlit yard. “Well, no boogeyman’s out there now.”
“He’s hiding.”
“Or maybe he never existed.”
“I saw him.”
“The system’s armed. Nobody can penetrate the perimeter.”
She hated it when he talked that way, in pseudo-military jargon, as if he were a CIA intelligence officer fresh from the Peruvian jungle and not an overpaid defense attorney, his manicured nails innocent of dirt.
Still, she hesitated, wondering if he had a point.
“I thought,” she said slowly, “you turned off the system to open the gate when the Danforths arrived.”
“I did. But I reset it afterward. Look.”
He gestured toward the kitchen doorway. Barbara peeked out, looking past the dining area, across the spacious living, to the foyer. A wall of shelves hid the front door from her view, but the alarm-system keypad was visible, mounted alongside the intercom box and the remote front-gate control.
The foyer was dimly lit, and in the shadows a red diode glowed faintly beside the controller’s alphanumeric display.
“Satisfied” Charles added with his smirking smile.
A reply was unnecessary. In triumph he darkened the yard light and left the kitchen, toting a tray of demitasses.
Barbara wondered how she ever could have found that smile attractive, even manly. It was his good looks that had done it, she supposed-the high, patrician forehead and sculpted jaw. At twenty-six she had been young enough to assume that the outer man must reflect the man within.
Well, she was forty-three now.
Alone, she thought about the alarm system. It secured only the fence and the front and rear gates-the perimeter, as Charles liked to call it. She had rejected the idea of additional zones covering the house itself. Living in a fortress was not her style. She liked open windows and doors, moving currents of air, the fresh breeze off the lake.
Now she wondered if a fortress wouldn’t have been a better idea.