“Narrow lane, high wall. No problem us getting in but vehicle access for extraction will take a minute,” he advised.
Heretic added, “Ash and I are on it. Sixty seconds.”
Someone appeared behind me. Arran.
He gave an explanation. “Our women are demanding live updates.”
Something crushed in my chest at the thought of Dixie being included in that number. I gestured to a seat, and Arran popped in an earbud, phone in hand.
I returned my focus to the operation. “Eyes on windows.”
Convict, positioned higher on the hillside, swung his camera towards the main structure. “Dining room’s lit up like Christmas. Either they’re enjoying sharing the easy life or they’ve never heard of curtains.”
Ash snorted, a scrabbling sound following, and branches crossing his camera view. On my tracker map, he was in the north corner of the property, close to the water. “Rich people love to be seen. It’s a disease. No known cure.”
Heretic didn’t bother commenting. The older of the Atherton brothers never did unless it mattered. His feed was steady, approaching the gate, his actions telling me he was measuring height, distance, considering options.
“Head count,” I asked.
Convict’s camera settled on the haze of a brightly lit house, visible amongst the black. “Two confirmed. Man and woman. Late fifties maybe. Wine on the table. He’s cutting something that bled earlier in life. She’s pretending not to hate him.”
Kane gave a low huff. “Romance isn’t dead. It’s just expensive.”
“No third?” I asked.
Kane’s night vision passed over the house in sweeps, picking up Heretic outside the gate and a faint glow of Ash shimmying along a tree branch that closed in on the wall. It was our luck that the place had been forgotten and not maintained. “Negative. No extra bodies, no movement. If the son’s here, he’s invisible or dead.”
Annoyance tightened my jaw. We’d wanted all three. Husband. Wife. Adult son. Two wasn’t a dealbreaker, but it wasn’t the result I wanted to offer Dixie.
Ash spoke. “In position. About to drop.”
“Hold. All ready?” I asked.
Kane and Convict agreed. Heretic took a device up to the gate’s control panel.
“Proceed,” I ordered.
Ash dropped inside the wall, landing almost silently. He sprinted to the garage, pulling a thick cable from his rucksack. He dropped to a crouch and held it up, a counterpoint to Heretic twenty feet away on the other side of the entrance.
“What are they doing?” Arran asked.
“It’s a relay,” I explained. “When you have an electronic gate like this, often the homeowner’s car will have a proximity emitter so when they roll up, there’s no entering a code or waiting around. The brothers are using a relay to extend the reach. It’s a similar method to how keyless cars are stolen.”
An elegant, simple solution.
From one of the microphones came a hushed grind of metal. Then Heretic gave the news I wanted to hear.
“In.”
A low whoop of success came from one of the other men, and all four were moving, inside the compound wall and over the mossy drive, spreading out to circle the property.
Ash spoke with a grin in his voice. “House is sexy. Wants us to come inside.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Kane muttered. “Less poetry, more opening doors.”
Heretic crossed the inner grounds, keeping to the shadows and out of the sensor range of an automatic light that could catch a man if he was sloppy. I took a breath to warn him, but there was no need.
“Side access,” he said at last. “Service door. Old lock. No alarm.”
