Night Game

CHAPTER 2

Four weeks later

Gator shoved the gas hose into the tank of the Jeep and stretched his tired muscles while he waited for the tank to fill. Another long night and, if one considered listening to great blues music all night a failure, he’d had another unsuccessful search. He’d asked more questions and received absolutely no answers in his hunting for Joy Chiasson. No one seemed to know anything. Everyone remembered her beautiful voice, but no one knew any thing about her disappearance. Joy had completely disappeared and not a single person seemed to know anything about it.

As for sighting Iris Johnson, he hadn’t even come close to seeing anyone who looked like her. He must have hit every club within five square miles while hunting for information on Joy’s disappearance and he’d still come up empty on both women. He’d taken personal leave and so had Ian. They’d been in the bayou nearly four weeks and they couldn’t stay there forever. If he didn’t find something on Joy soon, he would have to leave, and his grandmother’s heart would be broken. She was so certain he would solve the mystery of Joy’s disappearance and bring her home safely. He was beginning to believe that wasn’t going to happen.

His restless gaze shifted in a continual sweep of the area. Recon. Always recon. He would never be free of the need to be on his guard. He’d picked the gas pump in the deepest shadow with the easiest exit back onto the street, and he’d done it without conscious thought. With a small sigh, he glanced up at the stars. He loved the night. It was the only time he felt truly comfortable, and tonight he needed a little comfort.

He hadn’t thought all that much about a woman of his own, or a family. He wasn’t the kind of man to settle down, but Lily’s disclosure of genetic enhancement had hit him unexpectedly hard. For some reason he couldn’t get it out of his mind. In the beginning when he realized he could leap up onto a roof with little or no effort, he thought it was cool, an extraordinary side benefit of his psychic experiment. The word virus had never come into his mind, and neither had cancer. He’d never really questioned the physical things he could do and, other than the uses as weapons, he hadn’t discussed the enhanced physical abilities with the GhostWalkers. Maybe none of them really wanted to know, but now it seemed all-important.

He hadn’t signed on for genetic enhancement. Psychic yes. As a child growing up, he had noticed he had some small psychic talent. Animals responded to him. Sometimes he caught impressions of what they were feeling. He had an extraordinary memory and his mind would figure out patterns the moment he saw them. He had exceptional hearing as well. Little things, nothing big, but he knew he could do things others couldn’t. Not wanting to be different, he’d kept it hidden, much like the rest of the GhostWalkers had done.

He’d trained in the military, was gifted with explosives, building bombs fast and efficiently as well as dismantling with equal speed and care. He’d been recruited by special operations, and the moment he’d heard of Dr. Whitney’s psychic experiment and the special psych unit he’d jumped at that as well.

The idea of a unique group of soldiers, able to use psychic skills, to slip in and out of enemy territory using hit-and-run tactics, really appealed to him. He’d seen too many people-good friends-die and he thought it would be a way to stop so many unnecessary deaths.

What did genetic enhancement mean for the GhostWalkers’ already uncertain futures? Would they be able to have families and, if so, would they pass the traits on to their children? What in the world had he been thinking to do such a stupid thing? He groaned aloud. It should have occurred to him that Whitney would use them as human lab rats. Gator hadn’t known of Whitney’s earlier experiments with the little girls when he’d signed on, but still, that was no excuse. He should have been smarter. He might have thrown away his entire future.

Gator leaned against the Jeep and pushed a hand through his thick black hair. Growing up in the bayou had been an experience that taught him different wasn’t always good. His parents had died during a flood, a freak accident, and his grandmother had taken on the task of raising the four boys. Wild, fiercely loyal, and proud, Raoul was the oldest and took care of the others. That responsibility had transferred over into his military life. And now, here he was, looking for a woman who was probably dead and another who didn’t want to be found.

He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and immediately went on alert. A woman slipped out of the shadows. She must have been in the store. More than anything else, it was the way she moved that caught his attention. She flowed in silence, her black, tight-fitting pants molding to her hips and legs. She wore gloves and a leather jacket. Her hair was thick and dead straight, ending just about her shoulders. She glided to her motorcycle, a crotch rocket, a lightning bolt if his guess was correct, built for nothing but speed and handling.

Like the woman. The thought came unbidden, but lodged somewhere in the vicinity of his groin.

As she leaned over the bike a car swept into the gas station, headlights catching her momentarily in the glare. She kept her head down, fiddling with something he couldn’t see on the other side of the motorcycle, her jacket and shirt riding up, exposing her narrow waist, lower, the sweep of her hip-the tattoo there.

Raoul’s breath caught in his throat. It was an arc of flames, which rode just above the bone of her hip and emerged from either side of her low-riding pants. His heart accelerated. Could it be that simple? Could he have spent nights visiting club after club on the off chance that she might be singing in one, only to spot her at a gas station? How bizarre would that be? He almost didn’t believe it, but something in the way she moved, a stealth, an ease, a predatory silence gave him the impression of a GhostWalker. And the way she had emerged from the shadows…

Raoul raked his fingers through his hair in agitation. He was letting his imagination get away from him. Women had all sorts of tattoos. Just because she had a crescent of flames over her hip didn’t mean a thing. He was really losing it, but he couldn’t take his eyes from her. Her pants had compartments built into them everywhere, perfect for tools. So, okay, that was a style some people wore, but they fit so perfectly, as if the tight- fitting cargo pants had been specially made, just for her.

She straightened slowly and pulled on goggles and a helmet. She turned, a small, casual movement that was barely discernable in the shadow she was in, but he felt the sweep of her gaze and he stopped the gas from flowing, taking great interest in putting the nozzle back on the pump. He felt her probing gaze. The back of his neck itched. He held his breath until she started the motorcycle.

His turn was every bit as casual as hers had been. As she moved forward, light from the streetlamp spilled momentarily across her face. Strands of wine-red hair peeked out from beneath the helmet. Raoul let his breath out slowly. He was certain he was looking at Iris “Flame” Johnson.

The taillight of the motorcycle galvanized him into action. He slapped on the gas cap before throwing himself into the driver’s seat. The motorcycle had already made a turn, but he noted the street.

He kept a good distance from her, running a couple of streets parallel to her at times to keep her from catching a glimpse of the Jeep. He ran without headlights, relying on sound and sonar to keep from an accident. It was obvious he had the advantage of knowing the terrain. She knew where she was going, but didn’t know the alleyways and shortcuts he did. If she slowed down at all, he turned onto a side street immediately. He followed her through the business district and through the residential areas until they were in the very high-end estates, many with high fences and electrical gates.

The woman parked her motorcycle deep in the shadows of a park, the bushes and trees concealing her from his vision. He nearly missed her. There was nothing, no whisper of movement, no barking of dogs, not a single footstep. Gator didn’t spot her, but he felt her. He allowed his GhostWalker instincts to take over, trusting his highly developed senses to guide him when he had absolutely nothing but a gut feeling to go on.

He moved in silence past the first brick-walled estate with its wrought-iron front gate. Two large mastiffs stood near the fence staring down the street. He whispered to them without conscious thought, calming them so they wouldn’t alert anyone to his presence. He’d taken two steps before it sunk in that she must have done the same. The dogs were obviously on guard, yet neither had raised an alarm and both whined softly, looking eagerly in the direction she had taken.

He knew where in the shadows to look for a GhostWalker, but even with that knowledge, it took several long minutes of trying to pierce the darkness to spot her. She moved with stealth, flitting from shadow to shadow, bush to tree, avoiding the spill of light pouring from the overhead lamps. She stayed small, arms and hands in close to the body, clothes tight to avoid the whisper of sound. She wore a skullcap to keep any hair from being left behind at the scene. She knew what she was doing as she surveyed the tall wall surrounding the estate.

As she moved along the base of the north-facing wall, a dog roared a challenge. She froze, turning her head toward the sound. Abruptly the barking turned to a soft, eager whine. Raoul smiled. Definitely a GhostWalker. He stayed back, careful not to stare at her, not wanting her instincts to detect his presence. He found himself utterly fascinated by her.

The woman stared up at the wall, glanced left and right and moved back a few feet. To be safe he sank low, his movements slow so he wouldn’t draw her gaze. His breath exploded out of his lungs as she leapt over the wall. There was no doubt left in his mind. She had to be a GhostWalker. Dr. Whitney had used genetic enhancement on her. It was impossible to clear the height of the wall with a straight-up jump. His physical capabilities were enhanced and he hadn’t been positive he could take the wall, yet she had gone over it with ease.

Gator hurried across the street and waited in the darkness, “feeling” with his mind. She was leery, probably sensing him, but unable to determine just what was tripping her alarms. He waited patiently, frozen in place. He was highly trained, and there were times he’d been locked into position for hours waiting for a target. He could outwait her if necessary. Whatever she was up to had to be time sensitive. The longer she was inside the estate walls, the more danger she was in. Hit, scatter, and run. Even as a child it would have been drilled into her.

The moment he sensed she was on the move, he cleared the fence in the exact same spot she had. He hadn’t cased the place so it was the only safe spot to go over when he was landing blind on the other side. He landed in a crouch, just in the shadows of the hedges on the other side, automatically calming the guard dog with his mind. He took a cautious look around.

The rolling lawns were well manicured, and flowers and plants were grouped in a small area complete with fountains and statues, giving the appearance of a small private park. The house was enormous, two stories with numerous balconies and lots of brick and fancy, scrolled wrought iron. The house even boasted a jutting tower.

“Flame, what are you up to?” He whispered the words to himself, thinking of her as Flame rather than Iris. It didn’t look like a rendezvous with a wealthy businessman. He ignored the out of character possessive feeling that churned in his gut as his gaze pierced the night to find her.

He caught a glimpse of her near the thick vines growing up the side of the house. She moved with stealth, knees bent, carefully placing each foot as she skirted the huge windows. She turned her head suddenly and looked right at him.

Someone was following her and he was damned good at it. Flame hadn’t spotted him, but her heightened awareness told her she wasn’t alone. And that meant he was a professional. She waited, flattened against the wall, her breath slow and even, her body perfectly still. He was there, close, somewhere inside the estate walls. And the dog hadn’t given a warning.

Her heart lurched. She had cased the area many times and if anyone went near the brick wall, the dog roared a challenge. It was always on the alert, well-trained and eager to ferret out any intruder. She should leave, wait for another night, but she had run out of time. She had to pull off the job tonight in order to meet the deadline. Who else could control a dog that ferocious? She was keeping it from giving away her presence with little effort, but if someone else was also manipulating the dog, that meant they could take control of it.

She swore under her breath. Whitney had found her. It had to be that. She knew she couldn’t run forever. The story in the newspaper about a sanitarium out in the bayou burning to the ground had drawn her. It was exactly the type of situation she knew better than to pursue. If Peter Whitney or some covert branch of the government he was connected to was looking for her, they would know she wouldn’t be able to resist hunting information. The moment she realized the trail led back to the Whitney estate, she should have gotten out. She’d gotten involved with some of the locals, the way she always did, and she’d stayed much too long.

Had they sent an assassin? The fire in the sanitarium had been a hit, plain and simple. The Whitney Trust had wanted to cover up the fact that genetic and psychic experiments had been done on babies. Damn Whitney and his government contacts. It wasn’t all that hard to create accidents and make people disappear, especially girls who were considered unbalanced or different.

Anger smoldered and that was bad. The ground shifted slightly, a minor seismic anomaly. Flame took a deep breath and let it out slowly to calm herself That wouldn’t help matters. The dog whined off to her left, sensing the small shift beneath the ground. She quieted the animal with a touch of her mind as she weighed her chances. They would send someone well trained after her, someone with at least equal the skills they would assume she possessed. Chances were better than good that they would underestimate her. And chances were better than good Whitney would want her alive.

She’d hacked into Whitney’s secret files and destroyed what she’d found on her training and had even managed to destroy some of the files on the other girls after first copying them. Whitney had an impressive empire and his contacts within the government ran deep. There was no doubt in her mind he would eventually send an assassination squad to get rid of the evidence if he couldn’t bring her in-and she wasn’t going back alive. The fire in the sanitarium was proof she was right. She’d read about Whitney’s death, a murder with no body and she doubted the truth of it. He was a monster, pure and simple, and he would do anything to cover up his crimes.

Flame tapped her finger against her thigh while she worked out her next move. She could play cat and mouse with the hunter, but she couldn’t afford one screwup. Using every sense she had, she once again attempted to locate the shadow. Absolute stillness came back to her. Not even a scent. She wanted to doubt the shrieking alarm bells in her head, but she knew, knew, someone was on to her. Then it hit her-the dog. She reached for the animal, trying to connect enough to get the impression of where the other intruder was. The dog would know and if she could get it out of the animal’s mind, she’d be in a much better position.

The moment she touched the dog she knew it was completely under the control of the other intruder. Her heart accelerated abruptly and she had to breathe deeply to counteract the sudden flood of adrenaline. “Rat bastard,” she whispered to herself. “You only think you have the edge.”

She slid farther into the darkness behind the hedges and vines crawling up the side of the massive house. She knew exactly where the safe was and how to get to it. She was fast and strong and could be in and out in minutes. Whitney’s hunter had no idea what she was doing or where she would go in. She went up the side of the house, clinging like a spider, moving with stealth and speed to gain the second-story balcony. She went up and over the wrought-iron railing, dropping into a crouch and remaining still while she listened.

Flame glanced at her watch. The guard would be patrolling on this side of the house. She’d timed his movements several times and the idiot always took the same route. He was as reliable as a Swiss clock. She stayed very still waiting until he had gone around the corner before unzipping her pack and pulling out her crossbow and hook. This balcony was the only real access to the tower roof and the skylight above the office where Saunders kept his safe. Smug jerk that he was, he thought he had it covered with his narrow staircase, the only exit in and out with two guards situated in the house at the bottom of the stairs. The tower had no balcony and no other access, only sheer walls and wrought-iron stakes below should one fall in an attempt at climbing it.

“Amateur,” she sniffed. Saunders was as dirty and as greedy as they came. She had no compunction whatsoever about proving him an amateur in the area of crime.

The angle to reach the roof was tricky, and there was only one small target she could hook, but she was sure of her aim and took the shot without hesitation. She controlled the sound, keeping the noise of metal grinding on the roof from reverberating through the night. Crouching, she waited for a reaction, hoping the darkness would cover the line pulled taut from balcony to roof. Saunders had some very good guards, but he also had a few lazy ones. She didn’t imagine that he would have many intruders and the guards had to be bored. Still, Saunders had the reputation of being as mean as a cottonmouth. He’d probably put a few dead bodies in the swamp over the years. She didn’t plan on being one of them.

The guards wouldn’t hear the hook, but she had to believe there was a possibility that the man hunting her might if Whitney had sent him. The smart thing for him to do would be to kill her while she was breaking into Saunders’s tower, but it would be nearly impossible for him to collect her body and Whitney would definitely want it. Flame weighed the odds. More than likely, her stalker was sure of himself, certain he could take her when she came out, but much more likely, he was sent to bring her back. Whitney wouldn’t want his multimillion-dollar experiment axed if he could still find a way to use her.

She shrugged, shouldered her pack and hooked her legs around the line, sliding hand over hand out above the grounds toward the tower. She couldn’t help the little twinge of fear rushing through her at the expectation of a bullet, but she held on to the fact that she was worth more alive than dead to Whitney.

Whitney was a man who liked answers and his adopted daughter was very much like him. Flame had hacked into Lily’s computer a couple of times and had I recognized the quick mind and the same driving love of science. Traitor. That was how Flame saw Lily. There had been so much favoritism on Whitney’s part, Lily had what he wanted, become his willing puppet, his accomplice, his doting daughter so he could continue his experiments.

What did Lily think happened to the rest of them? Did believe the bullshit stories in the computers? How could she when Dahlia had been locked in a sanitarium and a hit squad had destroyed everything she held dear? Lily would pay for that too. Flame would find a way. The Whitney money was an easy and obvious target, but Lily had too much, and hitting a few accounts here or there wasn’t going to make much difference.

As Flame began her hand-over-hand climb to the roof, she focused on finding the man stalking her. She was positive he was the same man she’d noticed at the gas station. He had been putting gas in the Jeep, but he had been back in the shadows, almost impossible to see, and something about him had had her warning radar shrieking. Several times on the way to Saunders’s estate, she’d had the eerie feeling she was being followed, but there was no sound and no headlights. He had to be one of Whitney’s experiments. She knew she wasn’t wrong.

She gained the roof without incident and stored her supplies in the pack just to the left of the skylight. Now, the biggest danger was that the hunter might follow her to the tower roof as well. She rigged the line to slip if he attempt to use it. He had to think she was going down the same way she’d come up. Flame made her way to the skylight, gliding with care so her footsteps couldn’t possibly betray her presence to anyone inside.

Saunders was hunched over his desk, glass of whiskey in hand. He looked pleased with himself. “Slimy little weasel sitting in your ivory tower thinking no one can get to you, but I’m going to take you down.” Flame sank down beside the skylight and lifted her face to the stars. She had to concentrate on the small things, the things she could do, the people to whom she could bring a little justice, not her past.

She couldn’t think about the rigorous training, the long days and nights locked in a cage like an animal, feeling deprived of all dignity, of company, of anything that mattered. In the end, she had triumphed because she’d learned to be what they’d wanted her to be and she was far better than any of them had ever discovered. She’d escaped. She smiled, thinking of the bogus trust fund in the computer all set up in her name. She’d made it real and the money came in handy on the run. She’d stolen it from the monster, just as she’d stolen the money for the others, and had it locked up in offshore accounts where the bastard couldn’t touch it. If she succeeded in finding the girls they would at least have money to start some kind of a life. Computer skills came in handy.

She should have left New Orleans the moment she realized she wasn’t going to find Dahlia, but she’d heard about a missing girl. Joy Chiasson. For some terrible reason she identified with the girl, was afraid someone like Whitney had her. It made no sense, but she thought she’d poke around a little and just make certain.

Her throat was sore from singing so much in the last couple of weeks. She’d done three sets in a small club just a half-mile from the station where she’d gassed up her motorcycle and her vocal cords were feeling the strain. The idea had been to see if anyone was abnormally interested in her because of her voice, but that idea had been sheer idiocy. Too many people followed her from club to club to know if someone was fixated on her the way they might have fixated on Joy.

Practically everything dirty in New Orleans led back to this place, this man. Kurt Saunders. He sold property and stole it back. He was behind most of the gambling, whores, and drug trafficking. His house was in the most elite part of the Garden District and he rubbed shoulders with politicians and celebrities. Men like Saunders didn’t come down easily, but it was just possible that while she was helping out a friend tonight, she might also stumble across something to do with Joy’s disappearance. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least.

Flame focused back on the stalker. She felt him. Knew he was somewhere close to her, but couldn’t pinpoint his location. He couldn’t have a scope on her; she wasn’t visible from the ground. He had to be the man from the gas station. He hadn’t shown any interest in her at all. She tipped her thigh with her index finger, replaying the small moment over and over in her mind. She hadn’t gotten a good look at him; he’d seemed to blend into the night. What made him memorable to her? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She sighed and rubbed at her temple. She was getting a killer headache, something that often happened when she used psychic talents for long periods of time.

The splash of lights and a sudden flurry of activity at the gate, accompanied by the ferocious barking of the dog, had her crawling across the tower roof to peer over the edge. The guards had arrived, guns in plain sight, as the gate swung open allowing a black town car to sweep onto the circular drive.

Flame narrowed her vision, studying the car. She’d seen it before. A photographic memory helped keep small details filed away until she needed them. She’d seen the car several times on the frontage road out by the houseboat where she was staying. She’d also seen it around several of the clubs where she sang. The car always had the same driver. He stayed out of sight except to open and close the door for his passenger, Emanuel Parsons. Parsons was an older man, whom Flame guessed to be some where in his sixties. He carried a silver-handled cane, but she doubted he really needed it. He seemed to like the distinguished look and the deference everyone gave him.

She made a face as the driver opened the door and Parsons emerged wearing a long coat, his silver hair gleaming in the lights flooding the entryway. It didn’t surprise her in the least that the man knew Saunders. Emanuel Parsons was the head investigator for the DEA and more than likely investigating Saunders for laundering money while playing friends with him. In the clubs he held himself aloof from everyone else, insisting on extra attention. He brought his grown son with him a couple of times, but most of the time he surrounded himself with other businessmen hardly deigning to notice most of the locals. He and his son had sent her a drink twice. And his son had dated Joy Chiasson. That alone put them on her radar screen.

She watched Parsons until he disappeared under the roof of the giant columned porch. With a little sigh she crawled back to the skylight. Why was it that in every town there were men who believed themselves above the law, men who had such a sense of entitlement? She didn’t get it, probably never would get it. Dr. Whitney, just as these men, was a respected professional. He had the ear of people in high places. He had trust and even high security clearance, yet he was a predator, ruthlessly destroying the lives of others to further his own cause. Saunders was also such a man, and she had no doubt, just by observing Parsons in the clubs, that he was the same, even though they were on different sides of the law.

“It’s like a damned secret society,” she whispered under her breath. “To get in you just have to screw everybody.” And why did people believe that sharks like Whitney and Saunders would eventually be brought to justice? In her experience they were never brought to justice. They schemed and muscled and killed and grew fat on their profits and everyone turned a blind eye. More than likely Parsons would end up dead someday, alligator bait in the bayou while Saunders got fatter off of his illegal profits. Her headache was getting worse and if she didn’t tamp down her anger, the house was in for an un expected shaking. Did Louisiana get earthquakes? She hadn’t bothered to check.

The light in the room below went off suddenly, alerting her to the fact that Saunders was heading downstairs to greet his guest. The door to the office closed and she could hear the distinct click of a lock. Immediately she moved to the skylight and peered down. Sure enough, the tower room was empty.

Flame smiled- securing a little justice went a long way in curing headaches. Staying low to prevent skylining her body, she examined the skylight, looking for evidence of magnetic switches or motion detectors inside the frame. It didn’t seem possible that Saunders could be so arrogant as to not install security on the skylight itself. Surely he wasn’t that stupid? She’d come prepared for a difficult task, but she found nothing to do but use her laser cutter to open the glass dome. Before lifting the glass free with the attached suction cup she once more checked for security, this time using all senses, not just visual.

The sound was much too high for the human ear to detect. Flame froze without pulling away the glass. Saunders was using an old-fashioned ultrasonic motion detector. It was placed inside the skylight where little would disturb it. She rarely encountered them anymore because they were just too sensitive and often produced far too many false alarms. And that meant when she lifted the glass away the slight rush of air into the room would trigger the alarm.

It was a simple enough device. A transmitter sent out a frequency too high for the human ear and the receiver picked up the sound waves reflected in the area under protection. Motion would cause a shift in the frequency of sound. The larger the object the greater the shift in frequency. Most detectors were configured to ignore the small shifts that might be caused by insects, but a larger shift would trip the circuit and set off the alarm.

“You have the old Doppler effect going, don’t you, Saunders?” Flame murmured aloud, under her breath. “Well, sound just happens to be my specialty, you cheap slimeball. Your little old detector is simply comparing the frequency emitted by the transmitter when no motion is detected to the frequency of sound that results when motion occurs. And that, my lovely little mark, is easy enough for someone like me to work around.”

She cocked her head to one side, pressing close to the dome to listen, determining the pattern in the high- frequency sound. With no motion present, the sound bouncing back was an even, steady configuration. She simply had to find that exact frequency and pattern and make certain that nothing interrupted it when she removed the glass and dropped down into the room.

Flame nearly laughed. Here she was with all the latest high-tech equipment a cat burglar could possibly need, and she had to run into someone with an old-fashioned setup. “cuz you’re just too cheap where it counts, Saunders. You think because you rip off a lot of really nice people that makes you smart. It only makes you a mark, just like the ones you steal from.”

It was gratifying how all those government-given talents came in handy when she went to work. Dr. Whitney and his little team of scientists would be so pleased to know their work had gone to a good cause.

She maintained the high-frequency pattern even as she pulled the circle of glass away and set it aside so that the sudden air shift wouldn’t trigger the alarm. She dropped a line slowly, careful of the pattern, as she lowered her body into what Saunders believed was his impenetrable fortress. Landing lightly, she began a thorough search of the room all the while making certain the high-frequency signal remained a nice steady pattern. Saunders had money in the bank, but everything he stole was going to the tower room, in cash, hidden away.

She found the safe behind a section of wall panel looking as smooth as the rest of the walls, but as she tapped lightly with the pad of her index finger along the textured surface, she could hear the slight differences in sound. It took only seconds to locate the hidden mechanism to slide the panel aside.

The safe gleamed at her, outrageously shiny in order to provide as many great fingerprints as possible should it be broken into. Flame smiled at it. “Hello, baby. Mama’s come to free your soul.” She peered closer. “You’re a primo model, aren’t you, hon? I’ll just bet you’ve got a few layers of hard plate behind the door, don’t you? I’ll also bet you have a few ball bearings in the hard plate to chew up the drill bits too. That’s just not nice, but then I’m not going to drill into you. That would hurt, wouldn’t it, gorgeous?”

The safe also had a remote relocking device. If she punched out the combination, the remote relocker would engage, but she had no intention of cutting out the lock. She did everything by sound. She closed her eyes as she spun the tumbler, listening for the drop in sound. The first number was six and dropped easily into place. Flame spun the lock and heard the drop at nine. The third number was six. Scowling, she wasn’t surprised when nine came up again. Four more times the numbers repeated.

“Idiot. You’re such a freakin’ cheesy sleazebag,” she said as she swung open the safe’s door. Four briefcases fit snugly into the safe. All four had combination locks. She didn’t bother to ascertain they contained cash. It stood to reason they did. Scooping out all four, she secured them to her belt and carefully, without haste, put everything back exactly as it had been.

The climb hand-over-hand up the rope back to the roof was easy enough, and she kept the high-frequency pattern going in a nice steady beat the whole while. Back outside, she restored the skylight glass, using a high-end glue to replace the cutout, holding it in place until it sealed. They would find out, but it was always fun to make them work a little to figure it out.

Stashing the four briefcases in her bag, she crawled quickly to the hook, retrieved the anchor, and shoved it in her bag with the other tools. She left the line, to provide the illusion of an expected escape route to whomever the Whitney Trust had sent against her. Let him wait for her. If she was really lucky, when the break-in was discovered, he might even get caught.

She slipped the pack on her back and slithered over the roof to the front edge. It was a long drop to the ground, but she had no intention of going down that way. She’d already calculated the jump between the tower roof and the small guesthouse at the back of the property Saunders used for his playtime. During surveillance she’d seen his men bring several different women there. Saunders liked to play rough. The women always came out looking battered and bruised rather than happy with whatever he paid them.

The distance between the tower and the guesthouse was far too great for anyone to believe she could use it as an exit. A sweeping lawn and several flower beds separated the two buildings. Flame straightened up, a momentary risk as she took a running start across the tower roof to leap for the roof of the guesthouse. She landed in a crouch, gaze already probing the darkness for danger.

Best scenario, the theft wouldn’t be discovered until morning and she could leisurely get away, mask the sound of her motorcycle and hope one of Saunders’s really alert guards didn’t spot her. If so, well, that was one of the reasons for having the motorcycle in the first place.

Flame ran along the side of the guesthouse to the back of the property. The guards occasionally gathered to play a game of cards where Saunders never bothered to look for them. She made out two large men sitting in the gazebo housing a hot tub. Saunders went for the intimidation factor in his men, wanting them pumped-up in order to bully people with appearance alone. She could hear the murmur of conversation as they discussed a club in the French Quarter both were particularly fond of.

She moved past them easily, creeping along the hedge until she found the small rock, which she had painted white to make it easy to spot in the dark. Pocketing it, she looked left and right, listened for a minute, and leapt over the fence, landing blind on the other side. She’d dropped the rock hours earlier to mark the only place along the back fence she could go over and land in a clear spot inside the thick foliage surrounding the brick wall. She remained crouched, her heart beginning to accelerate again. Whitney’s man would know she was up to something. She would never stay inside the estate grounds so long. He was probably stalking her.

She sent every psychic and natural sense she had out to the night, searching for information, listening for the sound of footsteps, the whisper of clothing sliding through vegetation. Even the sudden silence of insects would tip her off to the other’s location, but she heard only the regular sounds of the night.

Flame didn’t wait for the alarm to be raised behind her. Staying low in the shadows along the brick wall she moved quickly, keeping to the foliage as much as possible, all the while scanning the area for sound or movement. She shushed several guard dogs as she passed more houses. When she was three blocks from the Saunders’s estate, she halted. She had to cross the street to get to the t where she’d left her motorcycle and the lamps were stilling light brightly across the paved road.

She waited there in the darkness. The feeling that she wasn’t alone crept in. The weight of the four briefcases was heavy on her shoulder, but she could use it as a weapon if necessary-if she got that close.

Soft male laughter reached her from deep within the trees of the park. “You may as well come on over, cher. Aren’t ‘cha getting all hot and bothered standin’ there wonderin’ whether or not I’ve got me a gun?”