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Garin had several phone calls to make so A
They’re here, was all it said.
She dashed back through the halls, slipping through the main foyer only seconds before Henshaw and Roux entered the house, and joined Garin in the study. There they waited for the guest of honor.
“Surprise!” they shouted when Henshaw led Roux into the room.
The older man started, then scowled first at the two of them and then back over his shoulder at Henshaw.
“Traitor!” he said, “I suppose you’re in on this, too, then? What are they doing here?”
Henshaw gave one of his rare smiles. “Celebrating your birthday, of course, sir.”
Garin smiled easily, ignoring Roux’s brusque ma
“It’s not a question of forgetting. You’ve never bothered with my birthday before. What’s so different this year?”
But he accepted the surprise good-naturedly and even began to enjoy himself as the evening wore on. They ate together in the dining room down the hall—braised duck in a pear chutney, which A
Garin and Roux had lived so long and seen so much that A
“Did you hear that?” A
The other three had for they were already in motion. A lifetime spent in dangerous situations had fine-tuned their senses, including Henshaw’s, and they all recognized the sound of guns when they heard them. A
Henshaw went straight to the computer sitting on a nearby desk. As he settled into the seat in front of it an alarm began to sound throughout the house. He silenced it with the touch of a button and then pressed another. A section of the wall to the left of where he sat split apart as a result, revealing sixteen security monitors in four rows of four. Each of them showed a different part of the manor grounds and on several of them A
The hiss of hydraulics captured A
Roux could have armed and financed a small private army with what was in room.
It was the weapons stored in the vault that her two companions were going for. Garin armed himself with a pair of heavy pistols while Roux took a rifle for himself and then carried another over to Henshaw.
Garin held up a pistol for A
She shook her head. “Thanks but I’m already carrying all the weaponry I need.”
“Suit yourself,” Garin replied, then joined the others at the security station where Roux was trying without much success to reach the head of his security detail on the radio.
When he was unable to get a response, Henshaw gestured to the escape tu
Roux was silent for a moment, considering, and then looked over at Garin for his opinion.
The other man hefted the weapon he carried and gri
There was no missing the challenge in Garin’s answer and A
She was opening her mouth to advise against taking on the intruders themselves when Roux did precisely what she expected him to.
“Garin’s right. This is my home and I’ll be damned if I’m going to run like a rabbit at the first sign of trouble.”
And that was that. A
A
If something happens to Roux…
She would just have to ensure that it did not.
They quickly devised a plan that, when it came down to it, was pretty basic. The four of them would take up position inside the foyer and defend the house against anyone who tried to enter.
A
They left the study and quickly made their way through the house toward the front entrance. Roux led the way, followed by Henshaw and Garin, with A
The others ran on, but her attention was caught by the landing on the second floor. Her intuition was calling to her, telling her the problem was above her, on the second floor, rather than out front where the others were headed. Ever since taking possession of the sword she’d been subject to heightened senses and her intuition was just one of them. Right now it was telling her that there was a problem on the second floor, one that would come back to bite them in the ass if they didn’t deal with it right away, and she had learned to trust such instincts.
Were they too late? she wondered. Were the intruders already inside the manor house?
Leaving a potential enemy at their backs could prove disastrous, so when she shouted at the others to come back and received no response, she made the decision to check things out on her own.
Turning away from the others, A
3
There were six of them.
They were dressed in dark, loose-fitting outfits with hoods pulled up right around their heads and ninja masks covering the lower parts of their faces, making it impossible for her to identify them.
Five of them stood in a rough semicircle facing the door, swords in hand. The sixth stood behind the first group, watching, and A