“Maybe he knows just how securely it’s monitored.”
Big Country had created a custom program for Mama’s House, utilizing code that recognized heat signatures, motion patterns, and weight distribution, to identify just about every species of land animal in northern California. He had a canopy of sensors imbedded in the trees from the mountain top on down to the lower perimeter beginning at the highway.
Through Gambit—the computer system he created for the Brood—they could track movement on the mountain and be alerted to any unauthorized or suspicious activity. They were their own emergency broadcast system, and with the sensors and camera’s they could easily track the intruder’s location and direction.
“If he knows about our security—” Cizan began.
“He knows too damn much,” Big Country muttered, heading back up the mountain at a more sedate and contemplative pace.
Mama and Terry joined them outside when they came to a stop, watching silently as Big Country and Cizan unloaded their tarp-enshrouded burden.
“The saint?” Mama asked, walking with them toward the small building to the left of the bar.
“Cloak, cowl, cross, stench of unsatisfied misery.” He nodded once. “Appears that way.”
Mama unlocked the metal door to the holding cell. It was about 400 square feet, with six beds in the main room, each bed with a manacle that attached to the concrete wall. The place was created for any poor bastard visiting Mama’s House, unwilling to go gently into the night.
Tonight, it would be the resting place for saints.
Carrying the body into the locker-room-style shower area adjoining the main room, they rolled out the tarp, dumping the saint on the polished concrete floor. Knowing where Big Country’s personal boundaries lay, Terry and Cizan unrobed the saint and held him under a spray of water, eventually having to wash him because the man never roused to consciousness. Once dried, they placed him in bed and Mama covered him before ushering everyone outside the building and locking it.
“He’ll hold for the night,” Mama said, reaching up to pull Big Country down so she could plant a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for staying, Lucas. Go home and take care of your lady business; we won’t talk to him until the morning.”
“Since I ain’t one for looking a gift horse in the mouth, I’m gon’ take my leave and bid y’all a hastyau revoir.”
By the time he made it to his truck and turned the ignition Zeus crested the plateau, looking none the worse for wear. Guiding his truck toward Devil’s Descent, Big Country leaned halfway out the window, grinning at Zeus as he tipped an imaginary cowboy hat, and was on his way.
He was finally getting off the mountain to indulge in some Class A-felony stalker-type shit.Yes Lord, before the night was through he’d make a certain Ms. Stormy Redmond agree that orgasming beneath him over and over until she could no longer feel her legs was the most prudent decision she would ever make in this life.
Chapter 5
After scrubbing off whatever contamination the pissy saint exposed him to, Big Country slid on a pair of blue cotton boxers and headed to the kitchen. Pulling a couple of beers from the fridge, he walked through the living room where he had done a Mama-style deep cleaning over the weekend, removing any physical trace of the blonde he’d brought there. He couldn’t recall anything about the woman other than she was pretty; his mind had effectively done its own deep cleaning, erasing everything except an embarrassing regret for bringing her home in the first place.
Entering a code into the panel along the back wall of the living-room, he stepped into his war room, his beach house home office which housed a bank of computers and monitors. Placing the beers on the L-shaped wall-facing desk, he fired up his system and moved through the gauntlet of security measures he’d put in place. After completing a system check, he leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the five-by-eight still photo of a dancing Stormy placed on the wall behind one of the monitors.
“And just why’re you making it so hard to getyouout the picture, beautiful?”
She smiled at him from the photo, her lips, her eyes, her body preserved in a state of seduction.
He grunted, rubbing a hand over his chest to ease the sudden tightness. Maybe it was time for a checkup. Between his squirrelly gut, the constriction in his chest, his inability to sleep more than two hours a night for the past two weeks, his inability to settle his mind…and to top it off, he had had a full-blown episode Friday night after managing that condition for years.
Reaching for his keyboard and settling it on his lap, he reluctantly accepted that he might well have some kind of undiagnosed disease, one that destroyed his coping mechanisms and made him do stupid shit.
Stupid shit like accessing the video feed from Red’s Boutique to spy on a woman who had the gall to desire his best friend over him,him, a man who was told he knew he was made for lovin’ on since he was old enough to pee straight. Taking another swig from his beer, he swallowed down the bitter bile at the back of his throat and used two of his four monitors to bring up the video from the four cameras within the boutique, plus the one he’d planted in Stormy’s office. He began his viewing pleasure at the moment she’d walked into the building this morning.
“My god, woman, there ought to be a damn law against hiding the glory of your body inside clothes. Wish I had some popcorn,” he muttered, too engrossed to actually get up and get it. Emptying his first bottle of beer and reaching for the other, he laughed at all the action that went down between them in that office.
He felt a deep soul-abiding satisfaction at seeing her unravel when she was in her office alone. He’d gotten under all that lovely sienna-red skin all right, and she didn’t like it one bit. “That’s good fo’ ya,” he taunted as she fled the office. At least he wasn’t the only one being tormented.
The audio had been off-line, and he’d left it that way thinking it was taking things too far to listen in on what was said but now, he was real curious to know what made her tear up when she was downstairs talking to her partner and whoever else they called on the phone. He wondered if he should go back and—
“What the ever-loving fuck.” He sat up abruptly, nearly dropping the keyboard to the floor. It was what’s-her-name, the bad decision, the blonde from the other night. What the fuck was she doing there? No, it didn’t matter; whatever it was bode ill for him, and he didn’t need Lynx’s fucking feelings or Cizan’s mystical eye to know that shit.
He watched Stormy walk the woman around while her friend hid out in the other room, listening to what was said on the other side of the heavy red curtain. He zoomed in on the blonde. Something about her made the beer burn like acid in his gut.
He sighed when the blonde left the store with bags in both hands. Maybe it was a coincidence but since he didn’t believe in coincidences, he hacked into the store’s purchasing information while simultaneously fast-forwarding the feed until Stormy and her partner started cutting it up with three matronly women.
His phone rang.
