Eliza inwardly smiled. Being softhearted, the old woman hadn’t been able to resist renting to Julie Simmons, a slender blond woman in her early thirties, a single woman who was supposedly four months pregnant and only needed to stay for a week or two before her place in Dallas was ready to move into.
The apartment provided the perfect base of operations, a spot to store her equipment, stake out Reese’s house and both targets, and prepare. Now the time had come to utilize the information she had compiled.
Eliza moved silently through the darkness. A thick layer of clouds obscured a fingernail moon, giving her the cover she needed. Dressed completely in black, her blond wig gone, her short black hair stuffed under a black knit cap, face covered in greasepaint, she was tall enough to pass for the man her clients believed her to be.
Athletic and strong, her muscles honed from hours spent in the gym, she was former military, her army training invaluable for the far more lucrative career she had chosen. She figured in a year or two, she could live the life of luxury she had always wanted.
Eliza settled herself, focused on the task ahead. The money was better than good, the biggest job she’d ever undertaken. Her task was simply to eliminate Reese and Jones, exactly what Eliza planned to do.
She had waited long enough, prepared for every possibility. It wouldn’t be easy, not with guards circling the property every fifteen minutes. Not with a bodyguard sleeping in the studio apartment at one end of the house while her targets slept in the other. But the way she had worked it out, it was doable.
Black canvas satchel in hand, she crossed a wide stretch of manicured lawn, careful to stay in the shadows of the trees scattered around the four-acre property, headed for the stream that meandered through it, and slipped down the bank.
Keeping low, each step placed soundlessly, she moved along the edge of the water with the stealth she’d been taught by the former special ops soldier she had trained with before she’d gone pro.
When the stream reached the point closest to the house, she checked her wristwatch and crouched below the bank, out of sight. A white circle of light appeared, approaching through the darkness, the guard right on time.
Eliza pressed against the bank, folding into herself, herblack clothes making her nearly invisible. The light swept closer, ran up and down both sides of the stream, then the guard moved on.
Eliza gave herself a couple of minutes to be sure the man was completely out of sight, then opened her satchel, pulled out her smartphone, and aimed it toward the house. The software she had downloaded disarmed the digital alarm system in less than three seconds, though red lights would continue to blink inside and out, giving the false impression the system was still armed.
The outside entrance to the studio at the far end of the house was her destination. She needed to dispose of the bodyguard; then she could take care of Reese and the woman.
She smiled. She could almost smell the papery scent of money, touch the stacks of bills in her hand. She could almost feel the sun shining down as she lay on the beach in Cancún, sipping a salty margarita. It wouldn’t be long now.
Eliza checked her weapon, a Walther PPQ, the silencer already in place. She smiled as she stuck it back in the bag and quietly moved forward.
* * *
Beau awoke slowly, his brain stirring to life in the darkened room lit only by the light of the moon outside. As he lay in his bedroom, next to Cassidy, he listened, straining to locate the sound that had roused him from a deep, dreamless sleep.
A soft click, a quiet glide of movement somewhere in the house had him rolling silently out of bed and dragging on his jeans. He opened the drawer in the nightstand beside the bed and lifted out his Glock. He didn’t need to check to be sure it was loaded. Not since he’d found out someone was trying to kill them.
Beau started for the door, heard the mattress shift as Cassidy slid out of bed. He turned to see her slipping on herrobe, knew the moment she saw the gun in his hand she would be arming herself.
It was probably nothing, just the house settling, or the wind blowing. Nothing to worry about. From the corner of his eye, he saw Cassidy come up behind him, her gun aimed at the ceiling, same as his. He pointed a finger at himself then down the hall toward the living room, pointed at her then down the hall in the opposite direction.
No way to know exactly where the sound had come from. No way to know if someone was actually inside the house. Or if there was more than one person.
They moved off in opposite directions. If it had been any other woman, he would have told her to stay in the bedroom, lock the door and keep safe, but this was Cassidy. He trusted her to know what she was doing. It occurred to him he trusted her as he hadn’t trusted a woman in a very long time.
He paused at the end of the hall, listening for movement in the kitchen or living room. On the opposite side of the house, the studio apartment had its own kitchen and living area. No reason for Frank to come into the main part of the house at this hour of the night.
He heard the sound again, a kind of glide, almost indistinguishable and yet there was a rhythm to it, a progression that said the sound was moving forward, definitely heading for this end of the house.
The hairs on the back of his neck went up. Someone was inside and it wasn’t Frank Marino. His gaze shot to the alarm on the wall next to the door leading out to the swimming pool. A tiny red light indicated the system was armed.
A soft glide, the faint shift of air. How had the intruder gotten inside the house undetected?
Beau flattened himself against the wall, his gun in a double-handed grip, legs braced slightly apart. He stood stock-still, letting the intruder get closer. Clearly the manwas heading for the hallway leading to the bedrooms at the other end of the house.
Beau waited. Waited. If this was the assassin, he would be deadly. He sorted through his options, the most dangerous rising to the surface. He needed to take the man alive, needed to find out if it was Vaughn who was paying him, or if it was someone else. But if he made a mistake, it could get him killed, maybe get both of them killed.
His fingers tightened around the pistol grip. He was a good shot, better than good. He brought the gun up into position, aimed it toward the dark shape moving through the shadows. The pool lights lit the room with an eerie blue glow, but it wasn’t enough to see. For an instant, the clouds parted, and a shaft of moonlight slid into the living room. A lean figure stepped into Beau’s line of fire.
“Stop right where you are!”
The man darted and fired. At the same time Beau pulled off two quick rounds, ducking to the right, dodging the dull thump of the silenced bullets hitting the wall where he had just been standing. He heard the sound of running feet, heard the double tap of Cassidy’s pistol, a shot striking the intruder in the knee and sending him crashing to the floor. The man’s big black semiauto landed with a clatter and slid across the polished hardwood floor out of reach.
