lights she saw equipment, screens, a table, and some chairs.
Clearing back, she scanned a small bathroom, a refreshment center.
“It’s clear. We move on.”
“Thirty seconds more.”
“Breach teams, first go. We’ll be fifteen feet ahead.”
Slow and steady, she thought as they moved through the dark, stayed in the shadows, thirty feet, then forty-five.
Roarke took a moment in the next timed gap, shut off their recorders.
“What the—”
“I have to say it. My Christ, what a pair we’d have been.”
The absolute delight in his voice tickled her soft spots.
“You move like smoke, smoke with nerves of steel and unshakable focus. We’d have romped the globe, you and I, plucking every precious thing we wanted. What a pity we didn’t meet in some lovely alternate world where you weren’t a cop.”
Though amused, she gave him a dour stare. “I’m a cop in all of them.”
“You’re likely right. And still.” He sighed, reengaged their recorders. “And there’s the mark. Moving on.”
Sixty feet, seventy-five, ninety.
“Not a sign—not from any team—of guards.”
“They trust the system.” Roarke shrugged. “As really, under other circumstances, they should.”
By the time they’d crossed more than a football field with their backup team behind them, Eve had the main house in view. “Lights off there, too. Off in every building so far.”
“It’s past one in the morning now, heading toward two. You were right to wait until midnight to start this.”
“We’ve got teams that have reached their targets, others approaching same. Takedown teams, move in. Move into target, and hold.”
When they reached the second gate, Roarke shut down the system, eased it open enough for them to slide through single file.
She could smell buoyant spring on the air from the flowers, and thought of the woman and the two girls working. We’re coming, she thought as she had with Ella. Nearly there.
When they reached the veranda, she realized the humming in her head wasn’t a brewing headache, but anticipation. Like an engine idling fast for a race.
In the silence Roarke worked on the locks. She used hand signals to order the teams behind her to hold.
And used them again to signal she and Roarke entered first—to hold.
He eased both doors open, barely a whisper of sound.
Nothing moved in the grand, wide entranceway.
Ahead stairs curved up, then split into a double staircase.
“We’re in the main target.” She kept her voice low as she moved forward. “Feeney, shut it down. Abernathy, you’re a go. Special Agents, you’re a go. Bust teams, go, go. All teams go. We’re full green.”
Air support flooded the compound with light.
She took the stairs two at a time while teams cleared the main level. At the break, Roarke split off with his team, she with hers.
He to Wilkey, she to the daughter.
She wanted the daughter.
Down the hallway she signaled cops to the left or right to clear other rooms, to take occupants into custody.
When she reached what she believed was Mirium’s door, she found it locked.
“Oh yeah, this is yours, you bitch.” She considered picking the lock. Then, as the first sounds—not alarms, but shouting—came from outside, she stepped back. Getting a running start, she kicked it open.
Lights flashed on in the room beyond a plush little sitting area. When Eve charged in, Mirium was out of bed and reaching into a drawer of her nightstand.
“Pull a weapon out, and I drop you. Please, pull a weapon out.”
“What are you doing? Are you out of your mind?”
Eve recognized the red nightshirt as silk when she spun Mirium around to cuff her.
“Get your hands off me! Get out of my house!”
“Mirium Wilkey, you’re under arrest for the murder of Ariel Byrd, for the abductions of a number of human beings who will be named in this warrant. For the forced imprisonment of human beings, for accessory to rape, and other charges that will be included in your booking.”
“This is persecution for our faith.”
“Faith my ass. Officer Shelby, please read Ms. Wilkey her rights, and see that she is taken to one of the wagons we have waiting.”
“Yes, sir.”
She rushed out, listening to the reports through her earbud.
She spotted Roarke’s team dragging Wilkey out of his room. Behind them, Roarke had his arm around the shoulders of a woman.
“My girls, please. My girls.”
The hat had obscured her face when she’d gardened, but Eve saw enough to recognize her. “You’re safe now. They’re safe now.”
“He keeps them in the other wing, upstairs. The children are locked in at night. They’re Cassie and Robbyn. Please, don’t hurt them.”
“No one’s going to hurt them, or you. Your