He hung up his Burberry trench coat and followed the bodyguard down the wood floor of the hallway. The house was warm. The sconce lights on the walls flickered. At the end of the hall, a wide oak door opened into an airy sunroom, but there was no sun. The room, on the corner of the house, featured a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, including two patio doors leading out into the garden. The glass was silver with rain.

A chocolate-brown frieze decorated the floor, but the carpet ended twelve feet from the patio doors, where Italian marble took over. The wall on Cab’s left was white, with stylized square panels and gold molding. A chandelier dripped crystal from the ceiling and was bright against the darkness of the morning. A claw-foot settee, with Tiffany table lamps on either end, was positioned on the wall on Cab’s right. The room also included a breakfast nook near the tall windows.

Diane lay face down on a massage table that had been erected in the center of the room. She was naked, with a towel discreetly draped across her backside. Garth, his hands glistening with oil, kneaded the muscles in her neck with his thumbs, under the fringe of her bobbed brown hair. The sound of the door made Diane open her eyes. She saw Cab and didn’t look surprised. Her eyes closed again.

‘Give us a few minutes, will you, Garth?’ she murmured.

‘Oh, sure, of course.’

Garth wiped his hands on a towel. His tanned skin looked almost orange under the chandelier. He wore a silk lavender polo shirt, black-striped Zubaz, and Crocs that matched his shirt. He’d swapped his ponytail for a hair knot on top of his head.

‘Hey,’ he said to Cab.

The masseur was subdued. He grabbed a sport coat, which sagged with weight. Cab figured that the man’s gun was shoved into one of the pockets. The masseur brushed by him as he left the room. Cab turned away to give Diane privacy, and he avoided the reflections in the windows. He heard her climb off the massage table and listened to the swish of fabric as she covered herself with a robe.

‘I’m decent,’ she murmured.

She sat in the breakfast nook near the patio windows. Her long fingers cradled a champagne flute, filled with a mimosa. She watched the storm assault the glass, and her face looked far away.

Cab took a seat across from her. ‘It’s not safe sitting so close to the windows.’

She shrugged. ‘They’re reinforced for storms.’

‘Not for bullets,’ he said.

She gave him a strange look. ‘Is there a threat?’

‘There may be.’