“Okay, there’s our target dead ahead. The power is still on. At least the lights on the posts are still on. The houses are too far apart to see any others through this heavy rain. I’ll look for the power box, you go to the back door, and the minute you hear my whistle, use your elbow to crack the glass on the door and get in as fast as you can. I’ll be right behind you. You unlock the front door, and I’ll take the back. Go!”

Alonzo slogged his way through the ankle-deep water as he made his way around to the back end of the house, where he assumed he would find the power box. Using only the light from his cell phone, he finally saw it just as a horrible thought struck him right between the eyes. What if there was an emergency generator that kicked in when the power went off? He knew diddly-squat about generators. Should he take that out first, assuming he could find a way to do it? Time was marching forward. He looked around but didn’t see anything that even remotely resembled a generator. Unless he wanted a bottleneck and chaos, he had to act quickly. He opened the box, held the phone up, and hit the master switch at the top of the panel. Then he turned all the others off, one by one, to make sure the entire structure was without electricity. Seven minutes! Three minutes to spare. He raced around to the other side of the house to see if there was a generator but could see nothing.

Alonzo ran back around the corner just in time to see the back door swing open. He bolted through it, slammed the door shut, and shot the dead bolt. He looked up at the alarm’s keypad. He sighed when he saw no lights, green or red. Obviously, there was no generator, or else it would have kicked in by now.

Following his own instructions, he ran through the massive house till he found the family room and opened the French doors just in time for his two top lieutenants to bolt through.

Ninety minutes later, every member of the Scorpions was gathered in Cosmo Cricket’s monstrous kitchen, with its one-of-a-kind, custom-made twelve-burner stove that Cosmo had specially built for Lizzie, the stove on which one could spit-roast an entire pig while using the oven to prepare the rest of the meal to feed a small army.