Remi kept trotting up the hill, which was the hardest part of her daily run, when she noticed that, all at once, Zoltán became oddly agitated. He leapt forward and then stopped abruptly at her feet and stared ahead with his amber-and-black German shepherd eyes. Remi stopped and stood beside him, trying to determine what he was staring at. Something ahead on the winding street was worrying him.
Remi was concerned and now even more impatient to get home. She knew enough about Zoltán’s sense of smell, his training, and his predator’s ability to detect the presence of living things hidden from human view to know he was evaluating something he considered unusual and important. She considered putting his leash on. Maybe she had discovered a situation where he was unreliable. She’d heard stories of shepherds going after postal workers because of the smell of dry-cleaning fluid on their uniforms. It could be something like that. Actually, no, it couldn’t. He was exquisitely trained, and using the leash would have seemed to her to show a lack of faith in him.
While she was waiting for him, Zoltán began to move forward again. He didn’t trot, as he had before. His head was low, his nose sniffing the air and his eyes fixed on something Remi couldn’t see. His shoulders flexed as he began to stalk. His whole body went lower now, compact like a compressed spring.
Remi didn’t talk to calm Zoltán or rein him in. He wasn’t investigating now. He was sure there was a threat. She walked along behind him, marveling at his single-minded concentration. He stopped again, and then she heard the sound. She felt it in her body, the nerves in her hands, because she had heard the same sound so many times when she pushed a loaded magazine up between the grips and into the receiver and it clicks into place. She heard the slide being pulled back to allow a round to pop up into the chamber.
Zoltán took four steps at a dead run and leapt into the foliage ahead. He came down halfway into a privet hedge, gripping a man’s arm in his teeth. He shook it until the man lost his grip and the gun clattered on the pavement. Zoltán charged forward, pushing the man backward so he couldn’t retrieve his weapon.
Remi ran forward, kicked the gun off the road into the darkness, and kept going. Now Zoltán was ahead of her again, running toward the house. He didn’t wait for the driveway but instead took the shortcut through the pine woods, and she followed him. He tore ahead of her in the darkness, running silently on the thick layer of needles. Twice as she ran, she saw him veer off, heard him tear into something with a growl, and then heard the scream of a human voice join his snarl. She sprinted to catch up and then she saw a silhouette. It was the shape of a man making a quick dash across the path. Zoltán collided with him, not changing his pace and throwing his big body against the man, shunting him aside onto the ground.
Then Remi and Zoltán were through the woods and running across the lawn, then up the concrete walkway, then up the steps. She heard the men running after her, and they were fast, only a couple of steps behind her now. Zoltán turned, growling, and charged. She heard the sounds of the fighting as she flung the door open and Zoltán ran inside with her. She slammed the door and as she slipped the bolt she let out a scream: “Sam!” There was a thud against the door as someone tried to shoulder it open.
Zoltán barked, and Remi screamed again as she ran deeper into the house. “Sam!”
On the ocean end of the first floor, where the open office space was, Selma called out, “Remi! What’s wrong?”
“Men are here! They chased me and tried to ambush me on the path in the woods.”
Selma ran to Remi, then stopped and stared at Zoltán in horror. Remi looked too and saw that his muzzle was dripping blood. He turned to stare at the door and crouched, his teeth bared.
As they looked, the whole house went black. There was the sound of men running up the steps and then a loud boom as they swung something that sounded like a battering ram against the steel door. The impact set off the battery-operated alarm system, so there was a loud, pulsing tone that kept on as the ram hit again with another boom.
The house’s emergency generator was running now, and a few low-watt lights came on, so they could see. Boom!There was a whining sound as the vibration from the battering ram turned on the motor that lowered the steel shutters on the first floor. Now the whole floor was lit only by those few bulbs, deprived of the moonlight and the glow from the rest of La Jolla’s electric lights.
Then Sam was in the room with them. He went to the metal control box built into the wall, opened it, turned on the monitor for the cameras over the door, and looked for just a second. “Selma, call the police.”
He used the intercom to speak to the men outside. “You, on the porch. Get the battering ram out of here or you’ll regret it.”
Boom!The men seemed to try harder. They stepped back, then forward again and swung the heavy steel cylinder. Boom!Remi could see the door bump inward without giving way.
Sam reached for a covered switch in the control box and flipped it on. In the monitor, Sam and Remi could see the men on the porch react to a hissing sound. When they looked up, they dropped the battering ram, covered their eyes and faces with their hands, and blindly staggered off the porch.
“What’s that?” Remi asked.
“Pepper spray. It’s one of the things I added to the security system.”
“That kind of paid for itself, didn’t it?” she said as she watched men from the woods hurry onto the lawn to pull the injured back to the cover of the pines.
Selma called out, “The phones are dead.”
“Use your cell.”
“They seem to be jamming 850 megahertz.” Selma took another phone out of her desk and they recognized it as one of the ones they’d used in Europe. “Some kind of device. 1900 megahertz too. 2100 and 2500.”
“Then send someone you know an e-mail to call the cops for us.”
“The Wi-Fi is jammed too. I can’t get online. I can’t use the phone line because it’s dead.”
“All right. Of course,” Sam said. He manipulated a toggle on his control board to alter the aim of the surveillance cameras. “Wow. We’re in trouble,” he said. “Look at all the men out there.”
“Are Pete and Wendy home?” asked Remi.
“I’ll go tell them what’s up,” said Selma.
Sam said, “Tell them to open the gun safe and bring us—”
“I’ll do that,” said Remi, already running for the stairs. She took them two and three at a time, but Zoltán seemed to have no trouble staying ahead of her. She reached the second floor and met Pete and Wendy on the way to the third. “Hold it!” she said. “I need you upstairs for a minute.”
Pete and Wendy followed Remi upstairs to the fourth floor. There was the big bedroom suite straight ahead from the staircase and to the left were the two big closets. Between the two was a plain panel on the wall that would have escaped notice unless you knew it was there. Remi pushed a spot on it and it opened like a door. Inside was a narrow corridor that held two gun safes and a third safe that looked as though it had come from a small bank. Remi quickly worked the combinations of the gun safes.
Remi said, “Wendy, get five Glock 19 pistols—one for everybody—and two extra magazines each. Then take as much nine-millimeter ammo as you can carry and go to the first floor. You can leave the two for Pete and me.”
“What’s going on?” asked Wendy.
“Not sure yet. I think it’s the people we thought we left in Europe. Pete, get some long guns and ammo—a couple of short-barreled shotguns and the two semiauto .308s. Lots of ammo.”
Pete and Wendy hurried from the fourth floor to the narrow stairway down to the third floor, their arms piled with weapons and boxes of ammunition. Remi closed the two safes without relocking them and then closed the panel that hid them. She went into the bedroom, not looking at Zoltán but feeling him coming in with her. She said, “ Ül, Zoltán.” He sat. She petted his big head. She backed out and closed the door.