Her reluctance was understandable. Marty cherished his privacy enough to spend a fair amount of time and money on a custom security measures that included air horns, stink bombs, and the dreaded fish catapult. It was the latter that had finally caused UPS, FedEx, and the post office to stop serving his address.

Smith just shook his head miserably and began climbing over the tall hedge that acted as a surprisingly effective fence. He dropped into an untended flower bed on the other side and waited a disconcertingly long time before Randi landed gracefully next to him.

Pulling the Glock she’d lent him, he examined the expansive yard and confirmed that it was exactly as he remembered: half dead and half overgrown into a jungle-like mess. Apparently Marty hadn’t been able to coerce his gardeners to come back either.

“House looks fine,” Randi observed. “No broken windows. No damage to the door that I can see from here.”

Smith nodded. “You go left. I’ll go straight.”

He’d made it less than four meters when a mechanical whirring became audible just in front of him. His heart sank when he saw a potted plant start to flip backward on a hinge. If it was the catapult, Marty was going to wish he’d never been born.

It wasn’t. Instead of rubber tubing and out-of-date seafood, the mechanism in front of him had two serious-looking barrels sticking through heavy steel armor.

“Jesus!” he shouted and hit the ground just as one of them opened up.

He rolled immediately to his feet and sprinted left, seeing Randi firing uselessly at the mechanical bunker that was, thank God, just a little too slow to track him.

It quickly lost interest in him and targeted Randi, who broke into a run only to be hit with a fire hose that took her feet out from under her. She was obviously dazed and just lay there in the mud as Smith angled toward her, diving when he was still a meter and a half away. He landed harder on top of her than he’d planned, but his momentum was enough to roll them both behind a tree. The staccato bark of the gun when silent as it lost line of sight on its targets.

“Are you okay?”

She choked and a stream of water flowed from her mouth. “I…I told you we should let the police handle this.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on or who the hell installed real weapons, but we need to find out without getting any cops killed.”

She gestured toward a large concrete planter halfway between them and the front door. “If you can keep the bunker busy, maybe I could make it to there.”

The planter looked new and a little out of place. “Too obvious.”

“Drawing us in?”