of lights going on in the mansion or the pounding feet of security guards either.
While he waited a minute longer, he assessed the place. Back of the house was grand, all red bricks and white trim and sprawling terraces with second-floor porches. Garden was a pip, too. God... The annual upkeep on a monster spread like this was probably more than average folks made in a decade.
Time to close in. He moved across the lawn toward the house in a crouch, running in a cramped shuffle with his gun up in front. When he got in tight with the bricks, he was elated. The window he was next to was fitted with tracks that ran down its long sides, and on the top of the thing there was a discreetly disguised boxy transom.
Steel retractable shutters. And there was a set on every window and door, it looked like.
In the Northeast, where you didn't have to worry about tropical storms and hurricanes, there was only one kind of homeowner who threw those puppies over every slice of glass: the kind who needed to be protected from the sun.
Vampires lived here.
The shutters were up because it was night, and O looked inside the house. It was dark, which wasn't encouraging, but he was going in anyway.
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The question was how to do the breaking and entering. It went without saying that the place was alarmed up the ass and wired for sound. And he was willing to bet that anyone who ran electric current around the top of their fence wasn't going to ADT it. This was going to be some sophisticated technology.
He decided his best move was cutting the power, so he went hunting for the main electrical line into the mansion. He found the utilities spinal cord around the back of the six-car garage, nestled in an enclave of HVAC shit that included three air-conditioning units, an exhaust blower, and a backup generator. The main power line's thick, metal-encased vein came up through the earth and split, plugging into a series of four meters that were whizzing along.
He put a short-fused load of C4 plastic explosive right at the trunk and then rigged another setup like that at the nerve center of the generator. Stepping behind the garage, he triggered both remotely. Two pops broke out, and the flare of light and the smoke faded quickly.
He waited to see if anyone came running. No one did. On impulse he peered into a couple of the garage bays.
Two were empty; the others had very nice cars in them, so nice he couldn't even tell what kind one of them was.
With the juice cut off, he jogged around and cased the front of the house, skirting behind the boxwood hedge that ran down the facade. A set of French doors was perfect for entry. He put his gloved fist through one pane, shattering the glass, and then sprang the lock. As soon as he stepped inside, he started to reclose the door. It was critical that the contacts for the security alarm were in their proper place if an alternative generator kicked in-Holy... Moses.
Those were lithium-powered electrodes on the doors... which meant the contacts didn't run on a current.
And-shit-he was standing right in the middle of a laser beam. Jesus. This was very high-tech... as in Museum of Fine Arts, the White House, the pope's bedroom high-tech.
The only reason he'd gotten into the house at all was because someone had wanted him to.
He listened. Total silence. A trap?
O stayed frozen, barely breathing, for a little longer and then made sure his gun was good to go before he silently walked through a bunch of rooms that were right out of some glossy magazine. As he went he wanted to slash the paintings on the walls and yank down the chandeliers and break the spindly legs of the fancy tables and chairs. He wanted to burn the drapes. He wanted to shit on the floors. He wanted to ruin it because it was beautiful, and because if his woman had ever lived here, it meant she was way better than he was.
He rounded a corner into some kind of living room and stopped dead.
Up on the wall, in an ornate gilded frame, was a portrait of his wife... and the thing was draped with black silk.
Below the painting, on a marble-topped table, there was a gold chalice turned upside down and a square of white cloth with three rows