Page 15 of Countdown to Murder
“You’re the expert. I’d like to know you and Sloan and Ember agree on where you put me. If there’s adiscussion about the merits of one room over another, I want to listen in.”
I looked to Sloan, and he met my gaze. “Back of the house, two rooms away from the media room and workout room.” He turned to the client. “I’ve wished from the beginning that we could put you there. I’ll ask that you let us put screws into the window so it can’t be opened.”
I hadn’t seen the space, so I couldn’t respond, but Sloan has a good head for that sort of thing. “I’ll walk the property before giving my opinion.” I turned from Sloan to Mira. “I’d like you to walk with me. Once we figure out where Miss MacKenna will be, we’ll know where we’ll be, and then we can bring our equipment up from the car.” I looked to Jones, who’d just stepped back into the room. “There’s a cook, a maid, and the couple who live here, yes?”
“Yessir. I have people outside their doors and windows. Moved them when the body was found.”
I nodded and stepped twenty yards away to make the call to the FBI agent in charge of our client’s stalker case.
Chapter Eight
Mira
Whatever was going on with my genitals kicked into overdrive when Panda walked into the meeting with the client and took control. I could focus away from it, but there was still thisheatand throbbing and pulsing between my legs.
I walked the second floor with him, we took a look at the room Sloan recommended, and we raised the window a few inches to be certain we’d know which one it was from the outside. The control room had been set up in the second-floor media room, making use of the huge screen. They’d moved one side of the room’s recliners into the hallway, and set up their tables and chairs, laptops and other gadgets. Two-thirds of the media screen was taken up with camera views from around the property, the rest was blueprints of the four floors, and an overhead sketchof the property. Each had a green or red blip to indicate all motion detectors, and a camera blip to show where each had been placed.
“The kitchen is on this half of the mansion,” I mused, “one floor down. If we pack our people two to a room and double up for shifts, it should be easy enough to block off a portion of the other side from all movement. We should make our client think we’re using the entire second floor to house our people, so the vampire will think he’s safe to enter. That’s probably going to be the only way to trip him up with a motion detector.”
Panda walked two rooms down and looked in on the guest room. I followed him in. A single king-sized bed and an en suite bathroom.
“This will be ours, and we won’t share with Sloan and Ember.”
A raw wave of heat engulfed me. My clitoris throbbed even faster and hotter at the thoughts of being in a bed with Panda, and for the first time ever, I wanted to rub it. No, Ineededto rub it. My face flushed hot and I turned and walked out of the room.
One deep breath, and I talked on the exhale. “We should walk the grounds.”
Panda followed me and was walking alongside me within seconds. I felt his heat, his energy beside me though he was a foot away. Wild grace. Lethal. Dangerous. Ishould be wary of him, and yet, I wanted to climb up him and rub parts of myself I’d never noticed against him.
“Agreed,” he said. “I’m inclined to concur with Sloan on the room to put her in, but I’d like to see it from outside before I make a determination.”
We walked out of a back door, made a complete circuit of the house, and stood at the rear of the backyard. We were both silent as we took everything in. A patio came right up to the wall under the proposed room’s window, meaning there were no bushes or other shadows to fade into from the ground. We could easily put someone on the higher mountain behind, in the trees, to keep watch over the entire back of the house. We’d also have to figure out how to get someone up high from the front, to watch the roofline there as well.
Panda engaged his mic. “The room is a go. I’ll be taking the guest room two doors down — dark green walls with a sleigh bed. I’ll meet management in the weight room for a strategy session when we finish with the feds. No one else should claim a room yet.”
I counted the windows and looked at the outside of the one we’d be in. The sunroom was below us. “I propose a laser between the sunroom roof and the main building, just under our window.” I took a breath. “I need five minutes with you in the limo when we retrieve our equipment.”
“The driver will have the keys, or Jones, since the driver is about to be evacuated. I imagine the limo is locked.”
“Five minutes talking where our privacy is assured.”
“Doesn’t exist. Jones has everything within fifty yards of the house wired for movement and sound. If our target breaks a branch when he lands in a tree, someone in the control room will hear it.”
Right, because we had four tech people the client didn’t know about, which meant the vampire likely didn’t know about them either, since the media room had soundproofing. It’s possible he picked out the brains, though, even if he couldn’t read them.
I was trying to think of a way to tell Panda what I needed him to know, and he pulled a short pencil and a small notepad from his inside suit pocket and handed them to me.
Immortalizing this even in pencil seemed a bad idea, but I couldn’t think of a better plan. I shook my head but started writing.
He watched as I formed the words.
I have a problem. My genitals have become
I couldn’t bring myself to write the rest. I looked up, met his gaze, and said, “Active around you.Onlyyou, apparently. I can focus, but...”
I looked back to the notepad, moved a few lines down, and wrote,Sharing a bed isn’t a good idea.
He lifted a single eyebrow and took the pad and pencil.
