Reese didn’t breathe until Mati took off down the hallway. He noted with relief that she was barefoot, instead of wearing her usual towering high heels.
He looked at Hodges, who cocked his head and mouthed,my love?
Reese pinned his eyes back to the tablet as Mati slipped into the master bedroom and closed the door. The stockier man popped into the hallway a second later.
“We need to distract them,” he muttered to Hodges.
Rupert ran out of his office with his tablet. “The police are on their way.”
Unfortunately, that still meant they were at least a half-hour out.
Hodges took the tablet from Rupert and handed his to Reese. Reese gripped it with both hands and watched Mati’s pursuer step into the back bedroom. The one Mati hadjustfled. Reese cursed the fact he didn’t have cameras in the bedrooms. So what if it would be creepy as hell? It would beworth it.
When the man didn’t reappear, Reese guessed he was doing a thorough search. For Mati or for something else, Reese didn’t know.
“Mati, very soon I’m going to ask you to run down the front stairs and into my office.”
“What?” she asked breathlessly. “Why?”
Reese looked at the group of men surrounding him. Two knew. The others didn’t, but it wasn’t like Reese’s eccentricities would be news to them.
He sighed. He’d begun to believe it had all been for nothing. That he had been needlessly on guard and overly cautious for all these years.
Guess not.
“I have a panic room. A safe room. In the bookcase wall.”
“What?”
“Just…trust me. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get you into that room, and you’re going to lock yourself in, and you’re not going to come out until I get there, okay? I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
“Okay. I do. I trust you,” she said firmly.
He swallowed hard. “Thank you.”
His stomach lurched when the man stepped out of the back bedroom and into the one across the hall, one room closer to Mati.
Reese pressed the phone to his shoulder. “Wereallyneed a distraction.”
He ignored the varying looks of alarm and sympathy on everyone’s faces. They would feed his panic.
“What about the intercom?” Mati asked.
Reese brought the phone back to his ear. “What?”
“You said a distraction, right? The old intercom system still works. If I say something into this box here, I can make it sound like someone is out front or in the kitchen, right?”
Hodges loaded the house’s automation system onto Rupert’s tablet.
“That’s a good idea,” Reese said. “But I don’t want you to say a word, Mati. We can do that from here.”
“You can?”
He felt guilty for not having shown her how much Hodges had tricked out the house, but he shoved that aside. It was an oversight he would correct—if she was willing to stay with him after this. If he should even ask her to.
He shoved aside that thought, too, as it made him nauseous.
He looked at Alexei. “When Hodges hits this button,” he said, gesturing at Hodges’ screen, “can you shout something like,what the hell are you doing in my house?”
