She pulled back and looked at him. “You’re already thinking about leaving again, aren’t you?”

“I’m delighted to be home,” said Sam. “I don’t have any specific plans to go anywhere.”

She leaned against him again. “I guess that’ll have to do for now. No specific plans means we won’t be leaving tomorrow.”

“True,” he said. “As of today, we don’t even own any luggage.”

Chapter 6

LA JOLLA

On their first day back from Mexico, Sam and Remi walked from the Valencia Hotel with Zoltán, their German shepherd, through the ground floor of their house at Goldfish Point, marveling at the newly remodeled building. Nothing revealed to the uninformed eye that a few months ago the house had been attacked by an assault force of more than thirty men armed with automatic weapons. The thousands of bullet holes that had pierced the walls and splintered the hardwood, the dozens of broken windows, the front doors that had been battered open with a pickup truck were all long gone. Everything was new.

Only the upgrades might have hinted to an astute observer that a battle had taken place here. The steel shutters that they’d had in the original design in case of a once-in-a-century Pacific storm were replaced by a set of thick steel plates that were designed to come down by force of gravity and lock at the press of a button. The surveillance system now included cameras mounted on all sides of the house and even in the tall pine trees at the edge of the grounds. As they walked the floor, Selma sounded like a tour guide. “Please notice that every window is now double-paned safety glass. I’m assured that a man couldn’t break them with a sledgehammer.”

Selma walked straight to a bookcase, tugged out a particular book, and the case opened like a door. Sam and Remi followed her into a passage and swung the door shut. “See?” she said. “The light goes on when you open the bookcase. The rest is just the way you designed it.” She led them to a stairway that led to a steel door with a combination lock. Selma punched the code in and the door unlocked. She opened it and took them into a concrete chamber. “We’re now under the front lawn.” She pointed at the ceiling. “You’ll notice that the ventilation comes on automatically, and the lights. They laid two hundred feet of concrete culvert, seven feet in diameter, to make the shooting gallery.”

“We prefer the term ‘firing range,’” said Remi.

“That’s right,” said Sam. “If we call it the shooting gallery, we’ll have to give people the chance to win Kewpie dolls and teddy bears.”