Page 106 of Triple Threat

I avoided that particular trap and found the intruder’s vehicle. “I’ve got a vehicle with a hot engine, hot exhaust. One passenger,” I said. I flipped to the low light, and the heat map turned back to green and black. I fumbled with the keyboard trying to get the camera to grab some stills. Roan shouted the keyboard shortcut at me. “Thanks, mate,” I said.

“The MMOs are good for keyboard multi-tasking,” Roan said.

“This isn’t a guild raid,” I said. “Or whatever you do in those games.”

“Ah, no, this is not a guild raid, this is a pair of idiots who don't know what they’re getting into,” he said.

“Should I go get a sniper rifle and put them down?” I asked. I could almost hear Sadie tense at the suggestion.

“No need,” Roan said. He picked up his encrypted phone, dialed, and placed a nuisance call to the Indigo City police department, trespassers at the house on Bootlegger Head, and that the police were being politely requested to apprehend and detain the trespassers. There was a pause, some wrangling from dispatch on the other end, and then he dropped a hammer, telling them that if there wasn’t a cruiser on site in five minutes, they would hear from their commissioner and the lieutenant governor, because the house is part of the state historic registry and vandals would not be tolerated.

There were a few more choice words, and then he thanked the dispatch.

A helicopter came over Bootlegger Head, coming in low across the water and circling around the property until they spotlighted the intruder. It turned out to be a woman with tightly braided hair and a black bodysuit. She bolted across the property, scaled the wall like a cat, and popped over. She attempted to make it to her accomplice in the getaway vehicle. The key word was attempted, because a police cruiser had finally rolled up behind the car, and the passenger had already been dragged from the car by several aggro cops.

Within fifteen minutes, everything was quiet, the helicopter was gone. A tow truck likewise had come and gone.

Sadie stood at the windows overlooking the front of the property, facing the distant wall and the groomed grass and bushes. Her eyes were tight, and she was tense. “Nothing else will happen tonight,” I said.

“Are you sure, and who is it?” she asked.

“Some clients we recently did work for aren’t taking rejection well,” Roan said softly.

“We’re freelancers,” I said. “We do jobs, then we come back home. They wanted us to join them.”

“What do they do?”

“Heroin cartel,” Roan said.

“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a piece of shit smack dealer,” I said.

“We’ve seen the poppy fields,” Roan said. “Where zealots and radicals force people to harvest the sap at gunpoint.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a time and then, finally, she whispered, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Roan put an arm around her.

“What for?” I asked, mildly interested.

“For not killing them.” Her voice was so quiet, shaken.

I looked at her and said gently, “It doesn't always have to be blood and body count.”

“Aye,” Roan followed me up. “Corpses draw attention and paperwork, especially on your front lawn.”

I frowned at him and said, “Damnit, man. I’m trying to be smooth here.” I turned back to Sadie who was looking from one to the both of us wide-eyed.

I shrugged and sighed. “He’s not wrong.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Sadie…

Things were tense around the mansion, and I hated it. It was as if Roan held his breath, justwaitingfor something to happen. Spending long hours in his Bat Cave at his computer keys and when I couldn’t find him there? It was typically at one of the first-floor windows, staring out as far as the eye could see at the leaden gray sky and over the steely blue waters of the Chesapeake. His keen green eyes bouncing back and forth as he swept the landscape, the gears and wheels forever turning in his skull – and I have to tell you it was driving mecrazywatching him worry all the time but not as crazy as it drove me when he tacitly denied it every time I brought it up.

On the third or fourth day I’d had enough.

I found him in the large, formal dining room off of the kitchen, staring out the windows again and I knew it wasn’tnothinglike he proclaimed it to be… because if it werenothing,he wouldn’t have left a pot of water boiling over on the stove unattended. Thus, was his level of distraction.

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