Page 160 of Secondhand Smoke

She stifled a scream and recognized Aidan.

He pressed a gloved hand to the pane and spoke through it. “Check for an alarm.” With his other hand, he pointed upward. He was nothing save a face, all the rest of him black-wrapped.

Heart thundering, she glanced up and saw two plastic rectangles: the sensor and its mated half. Shit.

“There is one,” she said. “What should I do?”

Three more dark shapes crowded in behind him: Carter, Ian, and Fox. He shook his head. “You’re gonna have to trip it, and we’re gonna have to move fast.”

Fox’s voice floated through the door. “It’ll only be the motion detector, love, but they’ll hear it.”

Right. So. Move fast.

She twisted the knob and yanked the door open, a blast of frigid air pouring in around the boys as they hustled past her into the house. As predicted, the motion detector gave an electronic chime of alert, but no major alarms went off.

“Where’s Jazz?” Carter asked.

“Down the hall, in the sitting room. She was distracting them.”

He growled something unintelligible.

Sam glanced out the open door, the cold air stinging her face, and thought she might be sick as she thought about fleeing. That was the plan, sure, but the idea of running away as Aidan was running in, saving herself, when –

His hands locked on her wrists and he turned her to face him, his dark eyes shining in the moonlight. “Sam,” he said, like he knew what she’d been thinking. “Go. Like we talked about. Go now.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” she whispered. “But I know. I’m going.” Her eyes stung. “God, Aidan, be careful. Please.”

“I will.” He kissed her, then shoved her out the door.

She went three steps before she realized the shoes had to go. She stepped out of them, snatched them up, and fled, light-footed across the grass, gritting her teeth against the cold sting of the frost against her bare soles.

They had talked this moment to death, and now she was glad for it. Most of Ellison’s property was crowded with trees, but a single wedge of lawn provided access to the pool, pool house, guest cottage, and a section of fence that wasn’t crawling with ivy. The cameras would catch her, undoubtedly, but with the boys inside making a big commotion, what kind of threat was she?

Still.Fastapplied here too.

She sprinted, sucking cold air down into her lungs, her coat flapping wildly around her like a cape. Despite the landscape lighting at the foot of each building, and around the pool, this patch of grass was dark, and her imagination conjured countless terrors.

Lights came on in the guest house.

She kept running.

“Hey!” someone shouted.

She kept running.

The fence reared up, closer than she’d thought, and she found the place where Fox had blow-torched a gap. She turned sideways, leapt through it, and landed with a gasp in the leaf litter of the woods beyond.

She was off the property.

But that didn’t mean she was safe.

Sam scrambled to her feet, dragged in a deep breath…

And was promptly lifted right off her feet, a pair of arms like steel bands closing around her and swinging her up off the ground.

Before she could scream, a warm, familiar voice spoke in her ear. “Hey, it’s me.”

Mercy.

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