“In my hand.”

“You’re with me. On my six.”

Dressed only in underwear, Nathan and Holly advanced down the hallway into the den, where vertical blinds covered the sliding glass doors. Standing off to the side, he cracked the slats just enough to see out. He activated his NV scope and scanned the yard.

Nothing. No movement at all.

He backed away from the blinds, returned to the hall, and stood perfectly still—listening. He inhaled deeply through his nose. No smell of anyone or anything. No faint cigarette odor, or cologne, or leather. Nothing.

He put his lips to her ear. “Stay close, I’m going to check the house.”

Knowing that any security system could be beaten—even his own—he conducted fast-moving reconnaissance, looking in every place big enough to conceal an intruder. In the living room, he picked up their clothes from the floor and tossed them into the coat closet.

The house was clear.

A second red light on the panel indicated a front yard motion detector had also been tripped. From the den, he checked the rear yard again. There. Two dark figures. In tactical SWAT-type gear. Moving toward the patio. In the green image of the night vision scope, he saw they carried suppressed Heckler & Koch MP5s.

He approached the keypad by the door and turned it off. If possible, he wanted to take one or more of them alive.

They hurried back to the bedroom.

Moving fast, he slipped into a pair of jeans, grabbed T-shirts for himself and Holly, and led her back through the house into the kitchen.

He handed Holly a shirt and put his on. “We’ll hide in here,” Nathan whispered, and pulled the cabinet doors open. Where there should have been pots and pans, a wide-open space loomed.

“In there?”

“Yes.”

Precious seconds were wasting, he didn’t have time to explain. Once they were both inside, Nathan pulled the cabinet doors closed. Holly ended up sitting with her back to one end of the cabinet with Nathan opposite her in the same position. They were enveloped in near blackness. The only source of light came through tiny holes on the cabinet veneer facing the living room.

“Nathan, what’s going on?” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and concentrated. He was forgetting something, something critical. What was it? Come on, damn it. What am I forgetting? Come on.

Holly’s purse. On the kitchen counter above them.

He opened the cabinet door, retrieved the purse, and placed it between his legs.

Low on his left, he turned the knob of a dimmer switch, adjusting it to the lowest setting before pressing the knob to activate a series of night lights plugged into wall outlets.

The tiny points of light in the cabinet face brightened.

“Peepholes,” he whispered.

Chapter 18

Chapter 18