Page 29 of Deny Me
She eyed the white face beneath the cap. The finer features were blurred, but there was enough to get an impression of eye and mouth shapes, jawline, and dark hair beneath the edges of the cap. Finally she shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
He nodded, unsurprised. “Saint will clean it up and send it to some of our contacts for possible identification.”
“He’s inside the house,” she hissed quietly.
“We know. We planned for this.”
“Is the team there?”
“Not exactly.” Saint was on the move, headed for a rendezvous point with one of the support members JCL had sent, and the rest of the team was ready to move in right behind him. King was upstairs, and Elliot would stay with Ruth and Ben while Dain and another JCL guard provided backup for Saint if necessary.
“What do you mean, not exactly?” King had to force back a grin when he saw Charlotte’s foot lift, looking as if she’d stomp it in frustration. She controlled the move just enough to set it down gently after a hasty glance at Becky. “He’sin the house. How are you going to stop him?”
“Stopping him isn’t the plan,” he murmured just loud enough for her to hear.
“Why?”
“Charlotte…”
“Don’t Charlotte me!”
No way could Becky and Kim miss that sentence. They jumped up from the couch and hurried over. He sighed.
“King?”
Becky’s trembling voice and the way her hand shook against her belly had his heart aching when he needed to be focused. “The objective isn’t to stop him,” he explained again.
“Why ever not?” Kim asked.
“Because we learn more from letting him go.” The screen on his phone split, showing two camera feeds, one from the hallway where the intruder was reaching the far end, one from the hall at the back of the house that connected to the man’s current location. He tilted his hand so all three women could view the video. “Notice that he doesn’t seem uncertain where he’s going? He ran straight for the back entrance of the house—the only one left unlocked during the day, which is probably why he’s here now and not after dark—and walked right in with barely any hesitation. He moved straight down the hall, not into the kitchen. And he kept his head down when he passed the kitchen entry, which means he knows there was a camera located there. He protected his face so we couldn’t track him.” Or so the man thought. “He might guess you have extra security here right now, but he’s not worried about a full-out battle based on the limited weapons he’s carrying, so he’s not here to take you or Becky today.”
Surprise lightened Charlotte’s stormy gaze. “Then why is he here?”
“Reconnaissance, most likely. They want to know what they’re up against.”
“And you’re trying not to let them know too much,” she mused.
This time King let his grin out. “Exactly.”
The man on the screen eased the door open. A quick flash of his face showed on the second screen, and then Saint and his partner appeared, rounding the corner to stalk down the hall. They didn’t pause at the cracked door but kept walking, giving the intruder a good look. The pair rounded the far end, and seconds later the sound of a walkie-talkie crackling came through. JCL teams didn’t carry walkies—too noisy; earbuds were the superior choice—but the noise occasionally came in handy.
“Intruder detected at rear of house.”
The intruder’s head cocked on the video, but he didn’t startle, didn’t hurry. He didn’t move until Dain and another guard entered the hall at the opposite end of where Saint and his partner reappeared, and the two teams moved in on the door to the kitchen hallway.
Still, as King watched, the man moved with confidence and stealth back to the outer door, then slipped outside. He retraced his steps to the rear of the property. Saint and his partner followed only after he was out of sight, keeping the intruder in the dark as to their knowledge of him but continuing to herd him off the property nonetheless.
“He knows about the house now. Isn’t that dangerous?” Kim asked.
King clicked his phone off and pocketed it. “We want him to. We want him to take the information that you all are well-protected by a large team back to his boss and hopefully discourage them from a full-on attack. This was what we call a soft entry, an information gathering mission. We don’t want them coming back.”
Charlotte blew out a breath, her hand coming up to rub at the crease between her brows. “So he’ll attack us somewhere else?”
“We’ll find them before that happens,” King assured her.
Charlotte didn’t seem convinced. “How do you know that?”
“Because I know my team,” he assured her. “And we now have a lot of information about the group that’s coming after you.”
