It took effort, and a fight against the chain lock, but he got the smaller of the two roller doors raised high enough to wedge beneath. With his back to the ground and the full weight of the door resting on his chest, he ran a penlight along the ceiling, walls, floor in a search for cameras and motion sensors and let himself in.

Silver and black, his and hers Range Rovers filled two of the parking spots.

In the third was a workshop with an eighty-inch, double-stacked Snap-on tool chest, a ten-foot workbench, and a PegBoard, on which high-end power tools were mounted the way he would have mounted weapons, and not a hint that any of it had ever been used. On the back wall a rack held two trail bikes, both of which looked like they’d never made it farther than the box, and in the corner was an array of gardening tools, mostly untouched. The large, empty chest freezer beside the interior door was the closest he’d get to a place to hide. He sat on the cold concrete, looking out over thousands of dollars in wishes and wants, all of which spoke to an idea of life with no time to live it, the type of detail his sister would have used to worm her way into a person’s good graces, assuming they had something she wanted.

He’d never had patience for the head games, but he’d never really had to.

It’d always been easier to wind Jill up and set her loose.

They’d wreaked a lot of havoc, the two of them, and in spite of the insanity, they’d had some good times. Those had always been worth holding on to.

Footsteps from inside the house broke the reverie.

The door opened, the alarm chimed, and a man strode into the garage.

He was six feet flat, trim, midfifties, sharply dressed, on the phone, barking at someone about Taiwanese markets. The black Range Rover backed out. The garage door went down. Jack crept toward the door that Mr. Taiwan Markets had been in too much of a hurry to lock. The handle turned for him.

That would save him time gaining entry when seconds mattered most.

Today, the silver Rover would stay in the garage.

Instead, a town car would arrive at the front, and security would arrive with it, and men with guns would escort Liv Wilson from door to backseat. The message Jill had left with the tranquilized foot soldiers in the motel room should have seen to that, and on the chance that hadn’t been enough, the phone call from Kara would have pushed things over the edge.

He needed these precautions.

Needed the false sense of safety they provided.

Needed the change in routine.