In Her Sights (9 page)

The hum of the air conditioner whined in the otherwise
silent night. Two hours passed and that’s when the low-volume beeping of her
old security panel mounted on the wall dinged.

Her breath caught and relaxed as she blew it out on a slow
exhale. Being stuck in the dark and waiting for someone to come to her was strange and her heart pounded.

Whoever just stepped inside her home had sixty seconds to
pad in the code before the cops would be alerted. It would make her life easier
if they would all run for her office and be in one contained room. When it came
to police sirens and thieves, the thieves tended to scatter like roaches.

She checked her watch. One twenty-eight a.m. A touch too
early for her taste when doing such work. Nice, though, because if she happened
to kill one of them, there was enough time to dump the body and clean up.

Footsteps ran with the beeping of her security. She rolled
her wrists around and stretched her neck. Energy threaded through her legs.
This waiting was killer. She was so used to being the one sneaking in and
moving around. Doing a hit, she studied behavior patterns and movements. There
was none of this guessing and hoping. She knew what would happen and had back
up plans for other options.

She huddled back in the corner. Not right behind the door in
case they shoved it open further as they came in, but to the side. Behind a
long raincoat hanging from a coat rack.

Something shattered outside her office. She stilled and listened over the pound of her pulse. It was a little far
away and sounded like it was in the foyer. If that was her hand-painted, porcelain
vases from Italy, these thieves might not make it back out alive. She didn’t
collect a lot of art. Instead when she saw something she liked, she bought it.
She got those vases on her last honest vacation. As in no one died by her hand
during that time.

The beeping of her security stopped and within a moment, the
phone rang. That would be her current company calling for a vocal password. It
might be outdated but her old system was still reliable. Her employees already
knew to let the phone ring. It would send a message immediately to the police,
and they would be on their way.

Now all she had to do was buy a few minutes and gather her
thieves in one place. And get it done before those sirens were close enough to
hear. There weren’t footsteps in the hall yet, so she eased from her spot and
slipped around to the door. The hallway was dark and she hurried down it, ready
to engage if they rounded the corner. The hallway emptied into the foyer where
six men stood in the center and fanned out.

Each carried a flashlight. She hurried from the hall and ducked under a low side table as a beam of
light landed on the hallway.

“Over here,” one of them whispered.

Another across from them faced a different hall. One that
led to a library, a sitting room, and then, further down, it wrapped around to
her employees’ rooms.

“No, this one.”

“I think it’s this side,” they argued.

She shook her head. Granted, there were five places to go
once entering the foyer. Six, if the stairs were counted, but they should have
figured this out. With all those exit routes, the center of her house wasn’t
where she wanted them when those police sirens would start.

They continued arguing back and forth until more light came
from the back of the house. The thieves turned and pinned that area with their
flashlights. She twisted around, taking a guess that whoever was coming wasn’t
with this group.

The police were already called, so if whoever was coming
decided to fight it out, that just meant she wouldn’t have to get involved. The
less involved, the less she had to lie about later.

“
Get down on the floor!
” a male voiced yelled out.
She started. That sounded official, but that was not how the police were
supposed to show up. It also sounded somewhat familiar.

She eased out of her spot, ready to move. Two more men
stepped in the room, and Lexie’s warm, ready-to-attack body completely froze.

Not the police.

Her heart pounded.

Worse.

Chapter Eight

Clayton shifted on his hard seat atop Lexie’s security wall.
The thick branches he intended to cut back once his security was in place
draped around them to keep them hidden. He wanted to catch these fools to get a
break on what was going on. Having fifteen men stationed around her perimeter
would scare anyone away so it was just him and Reid. They were positioned so he
could see inside her office window and along the back of the house. It still
left a lot of ground to cover, but since those were weak areas, he hedged his
bets. She still had her existing security system in places, so she wasn’t
unprotected.

Reid let out a heavy sigh, dropped his phone in his pocket,
and stared at the dark house.

“Something on your mind.”

His best friend stroked a hand over his face and then
shrugged. “You’ve had me reading those Magnolia newsletter things. I must have
read hundreds. I just finished one that was dated a few years ago.”

“Find something?”

Reid didn’t profile suspects. He was a bodyguard through and
through, but Clayton was in a bind, needing information. Lexie’s life was
extensive, and they had a lot of ground to cover in a matter of hours. He’d put
Reid to work reading the society pages. Whether the man admitted it or not,
they all knew he liked reading those things anyway.

Reid rested a hand on his thigh. “Not really, just…not much
has changed with her in those papers from when she was a girl, to the time when
her parents were killed, to now. Every photo could have the same caption. What
I found interesting was you could nearly date her life on these pictures by
pre-parents’ death and after-parents’ death.” Reid pointed at the house. “That
housemaid is pictured with her most of the time when she was a girl. Every now
and then, Gennita Griffin pops up in a picture. Playing on the courthouse lawn,
along the river at Claremont, shopping, whatever. Always happy, always smiling.
Pictures always saying something about having an ice cream cone on a hot day or
something similar.”

Sounded normal so far. As far as he knew, she was always
shoved in front of the camera for a picture. One some level, his stomach
churned a little. He wouldn’t have dared let anyone exploit his daughter like
that. “People like kids.”

Reid nodded. “This is where it gets interesting. After her
parents’ death, she’s often with Senator Dearing—or Mayor Dearing if it’s
earlier editions—or she’s with Gabe Maxwell, enjoying the spring afternoon at
Olympia’s annual golf tournament or whatever the hell she’s doing.”

He couldn’t help it. It burned him up a little on the
inside. How can someone take a little girl and thrust her in front of cameras
like that? He shook his head. Hell, for all he knew, she asked for it. “She’s a
local public figure.”

“Yeah, but in all the photographs I’ve looked through, the
only time she’s pictured with her parents is at their funeral. When she’s
placing flowers on their headstones.”

Pitiful. Clayton resisted the desire to open his wallet to
look at the faded pictures inside. He could be accused of a lot, but neglecting
his daughter at any point wasn’t one of his faults. “Sad when people don’t
spend more time with their kids.”

Reid nodded. “Looking at her life like this, it’s like she
was never meant to just be a kid. Her entire life seems to exist for the
purpose of entertaining someone, smiling for an exhibit, or making people
happy.” He lifted a shoulder. “She has everything anyone could ever want, and I
feel sorry for her. I never thought about it until I had to look at her life as
a timeline, and her life is shit.”

Clayton nodded. “I see what you mean.”

“Guess what they say is true. Money can’t buy everything.”

Clayton stared at the dark house. Did she even know what she
missed? She was home-schooled, her only friend was Gen. Tutored after high
school instead of experiencing college. She wasn’t involved in activities. No
tee-ball. No dance recitals or gymnastic competitions or pee-wee cheerleading.
Audrey had been ready to do it all.

Lexie had spent her whole life without experiencing football
once a week, or the crush of a crowd surrounding a basketball court. No
memories of friends sitting at bonfire or a last-minute trip to the beach for
the weekend.

Hell, it sucked. All the people he met, the things he’d done
growing up. He couldn’t imagine having those experiences while being trapped
behind a security wall. He faced Reid to see if there was more, but movement at
the back of the house stopped him.

He gestured with a tip of his head. “I count six.”

“Same.”

“Let’s go.” Clayton hopped from the top of the security wall
and kept to the shadows as they closed in. One of the men knocked out a window,
reached in and opened her back door. All six slipped in, her security system
beeped on cue, and they raced forward to catch up.

They ran to the back patio. Their careful steps were silent
over the concrete. He wasn’t sure how armed they were, so until he had a
visual, he wanted to maintain their cover. It wasn’t any fun to get shot in the
dark. He swallowed and kept his breathing even. There wasn’t any room for extra
nerves even though he was sweating them. He slipped through the back door and
moved quickly through the house. He’d studied the blueprints, came through here
once, and saw it all in person this afternoon for a backup.

With his flashlight over his hand holding a Taser and Reid
on his six, he took the last turn that would take him to the center of the
house. Lexie wasn’t the only one with toys, and he couldn’t shoot up the inside
of her home. It was quiet, and he moved forward, but beams of light were ahead.

He hurried over the last few feet and stepped into the foyer
with them. Six men held flashlights and had no weapons in hands. “Get down on the
floor!”

There was a moment of panic when all six men looked at them and
did nothing. Just a second. They reached for weapons tucked in their pants, and
movement to the left caught his attention. He shifted his flashlight there to
catch a slim figure dressed in black and wearing a ball cap kick a man in the
face.
She
landed, turned, and disabled another thief with a side kick to
the knees. Bones snapped. The man screamed as he dropped.

This couldn’t be real. He blinked and it was still happening.
She reset her stance and faced another man.

Reid’s Taser fired. The pop of the probes leaving the
cartridge jerked Clayton back to the room and a man drawing a gun at him.
Clayton fired his Taser. The probes grabbed him through his shirt, and he shook
as he fell to the floor. Barely a heartbeat passed when Clayton closed in on
another. Using the battery end of his flashlight, he got a second guy across
the face. The man hit the floor, and the gun that had been in his hand
scattered across the marble.

Clayton turned in the room to find Reid had the last two
down, and that was all six. She was gone. He glanced around with his heart beating
against his ribs and breathing hard. She was just gone. One of the men rolled
and flipped to his back, snatching his attention to where it should be. “Stay down. On your belly. Hands behind your head, legs spread out.”

He grabbed zip ties and moved from man to man. Reid went with
him, and in moments, they had each one tied off and secured. Police sirens
sounded in the distance, and Clayton backed up and gestured to Reid with the
tip of his head.

A few steps away from the bound men on the floor, Clayton
kept his voice to a whisper. “Did you see a seventh person in the room?”

Reid nodded. “She was fast. She got two, and she was gone.”

So he wasn’t seeing things. Police cars were closer. Light
flashed through the front windows, and Alex came down the stairs. “I’ll get the
door.”

Clayton handed his Taser to Reid. “Keep that part to
yourself unless I tell you otherwise. I’m going to see if I can find her. Get
photos, names, whatever you can off each of these guys.”

Clayton turned for the hall she’d been near. The one that led
to her office. She wouldn’t have run from the room if she didn’t want to keep
something a secret. It might be all the leverage he needed to earn her trust
enough to get the dagger.

Light spilled out from her office. He got close to the
doorway and she stepped out. The ball cap and gloves were gone.

She wiped her hands along her thighs, but the tell-tale
signs of red cheeks from vigorous movement was there. “Clayton. Thank goodness
you’re here.”

Her voice was slightly breathless as she tucked hair behind
her ears. Clayton pointed in her office. “Just a few moments of your time,
please.”

She backed up and he closed the door to make sure they weren’t
overheard. “I saw you.”

“Saw me where?” She adjusted a flower vase on the coffee
table in the middle of the room.

Denying? Not going to happen. “In the front just now. The
ball cap, gloves. The man you kicked in the face and the other whose knee you
broke. You know where.”

“I’ve been in here, working.” She tweaked a coaster on a
side table. “When my alarm went off, I hid under my desk.”

“Reid saw you too.” He stepped around the end table, cutting
off her path and blocking her between the small couch and the coffee table. “I
don’t know what kind of game you’re trying to play, but stop. The two men you
knocked down likely got a good look. Enough of a look to know it wasn’t one of
my men who took them down.” He paused and finally had a good arguing point. “Under
certain circumstances, though, it’s possible that Reid and I would claim it was
just the two of us who rushed in.”

She lifted her chin, turning her face up. She stepped in
against him, eyes focused. “What do you want?”