Compelled

by D. B. Reynolds

  “Sure thing. We don’t use them much in the city. Come on, I’ll walk you to the garage.”

  She didn’t really need him to accompany her. It wasn’t like there was any security risk inside the townhouse, but she didn’t protest. He was just being a nice guy.

  They walked in silence to the back of the townhouse where there was a two-car garage. That garage was one of the main reasons Raphael had selected this property. Off-street parking was at a premium in Manhattan. One of Steve’s men greeted them in the kitchen. Armed to the teeth, he kept his gaze dead serious as he looked to Steve for some kind of signal. It wasn’t unheard of for her to go out during the day, but two things were different about this particular morning. One, of course, was that they’d all heard about the blow-up last night between Raphael and Nick. But the second thing, and the one that had the guard looking to Steve for direction, was that, day or night, she rarely went out alone. Normally, her daytime bodyguard, Robbie Shields, would be right beside her, but Robbie’s wife, Irina, had been seriously injured in a fall the day before they left on this trip. She was a vampire and old enough to heal almost anything, but the healing went a lot faster with her mate, and his blood, by her side. Cyn had told him to stay home, and Raphael had concurred. Irina was one of his longtime staff people.

  So, Cyn was alone, a fact which suddenly seemed to hit Steve.

  “I’m going to send one of my guys with you,” he said abruptly.

  She almost groaned out loud. So close. “That’s okay, Steve. I’m just going there and back. Once I get there, I’ll be behind her security. Her husband’s mega rich, and their estate’s like Fort Knox.”

  He eyed her for a long moment, deciding. If anything happened to her, Raphael would have his head, and he knew it. But Cyn knew it, too, and she’d never risk it if she wasn’t confident about the situation she was heading into. No one was going to get hurt. It would be a quick in and out. Marshall wouldn’t even know she’d been there. And if everything that could go wrong did, and the op went sideways? Well, Raphael would know where she was, because he always did.

  “God damn it, Cyn. If you’re up to something . . .”

  She laughed. Apparently Steve knew her too well. “It’s lunch, Steve,” she assured him. And that much was true. She did plan on grabbing a burger on her way to Marshall’s estate in Dobbs Ferry. She was always hungry in the morning these days. Probably because she usually skipped dinner to be with Raphael . . . because, of course, she was his dinner.

  Steve studied her a minute longer, then grabbed a set of keys from the board next to the garage door and tapped in the alarm code. The door buzzed open. “This one,” he said, pushing a button on the remote and unlocking the nearest Suburban with a flash of lights. There were two vehicles parked in the garage. They were identical and kept at the townhouse all the time. It would have been less expensive to rent what they needed when they were in town, especially since they didn’t visit often. But it was more secure to maintain their own vehicles.

  Cyn took the keys from him. “Thanks, Steve. I’ll take good care of it. See you in a bit.”

  The Suburban had been backed in for a quick exit, so she threw her backpack across the center console and slid onto the smooth leather seat. It took a few minutes to adjust everything to her liking—the seats, the mirrors, the radio. Someone had been listening to elevator music. You’d think vampires would have better taste, what with having all that time to develop it.

  Steve was standing in the doorway watching her. She gave him a little wave, then waited until he’d stepped back into the kitchen and closed the door. Standard security measures during the day dictated that the garage door was never open at the same time as the house door. She hit the button on the SUV’s visor. The garage door slid open nearly silently, and she drove out into the sunshine.

  “Success,” she whispered to herself as she drove down the alley. But on the heels of that thought was the knowledge that getting out of the townhouse was the easiest part of her still-evolving plan. She wouldn’t know the rest of it until she laid eyes on Marshall’s house, but she really wasn’t all that worried. She’d figure something out. She always did.

  Chapter Seven

  Dobbs Ferry, New York

  CYN SAT IN THE Suburban a half-mile away from Marshall’s estate. She’d had to park so far away because his place was out in the middle of nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere, but properties out here were big enough that he didn’t exactly have neighbors, and she couldn’t park closer without looking suspicious. On the plus side, there were lots of trees, which provided much-needed cover, and the absence of other houses meant there was little traffic and no one to wonder why she was just sitting there. Especially since she was making good use of a very excellent pair of binoculars to study the place, and so far, everything she was seeing was what she’d hoped for.

  Every property she’d passed in this clearly affluent neighborhood had some kind of sign posted which advertised the security company they employed. And every one of them, including Marshall’s, was the standard, home security type of company. This was good news from Cyn’s standpoint, but it was what she’d expected. The mistake that Nick, and even Raphael, had been making with regard to Isaac Marshall was in assuming his security would equal their own. But Marshall wasn’t a vampire lord with hundreds of minions and plenty of dangerous and unpredictable enemies. Nor was he an ancient sorcerer, though Cyn didn’t know what that meant, exactly. Obviously, Nick had enemies, or at least one enemy, the one who’d stolen his warriors from him. And she’d guess his security would be closer to Raphael’s than that of your average wealthy suburbanite.

  She thought about her grandparents’ elegant home in Bel Air, or her father’s estate in Brentwood. They had state-of-the-art security . . . for their neighborhood. Every door and window was alarmed, with regular patrols by their security company, and in her dad’s case, a guard at the front gate whose main job was stopping solicitors and other unwanted visitors from ringing the doorbell.

  Financially, Marshall was closer to her father, in terms of both assets and profession. Her dad even had an expensive art collection and had remodeled a space in his house to create a safe environment for it. Marshall’s collection happened to be magical devices instead of art, but that didn’t mean he had to secure his entire estate to protect it. Just the room he kept his collection in. She probably should have quizzed Nick more on what kind of magical protections Marshall might have bought for himself, and the best way of getting around them, but if she’d asked too many questions, he’d have grown suspicious. And besides, in the final analysis, it didn’t matter. She was going in there, and she’d simply deal with anything magical that was triggered by her physical intrusion, just as she would anything mechanical. How different could it be?

  She’d been sitting and watching the front gate of Marshall’s estate long enough to see that there was only one guard in the gate shack. Ideally, she’d have kept up her surveillance for several hours to see when and if someone showed up to spell him long enough for a break, but she didn’t have that much time. She didn’t know how long it would take once she got inside, and she at least wanted to be back on the road to Manhattan by the time Raphael woke. She’d prefer to be a whole lot closer, like lying in bed next to him, because he was not going to be pleased. Hell, he already wasn’t pleased. He had this spooky, sometimes reassuring, way of following her activities during the day and making his feelings known when she did something he didn’t like. That usually being something that put her in danger. And today, she could feel his anger like a simmering heat in the back of her mind, an anger tempered by worry for her. It wasn’t just that he was a control freak, although he was. It was that he honestly feared for her safety, and the best way he knew to express that was to get angry with her.

  Her vampire. She did love him.

  She smiled and straightened slightly in her seat, p
utting the binocs to her eyes as a gardening service pulled up to Marshall’s gate and was waved in without fuss. Granted, this was probably a regular service, but even so, at least a brief conversation might have been in order. Hell, if this were Raphael’s gate, the van wouldn’t have been admitted in the daytime at all, and at night, it would have been searched right down to the undercarriage. For that matter, Marshall’s gates themselves were nothing but decorative wrought iron, giving a clear view of the house which sat about a hundred yards beyond them, an easy shot for even a modestly skilled sniper.

  It was at this point that Cyn realized how much her life had changed in the last couple of years. Before she’d met Raphael, her own security had consisted of video cameras and reinforced doors. Hell, she’d slept many nights with her second floor patio door open to the beach below, so she could hear the waves better. Now, she was sitting here criticizing Marshall’s security because he didn’t guard against snipers.

  She put away the binoculars, shaking her head at her own thoughts. Time to give this puppy a test run. If she was right, all she’d need to do was find a spot on the wall that was out of sight of the guard shack and climb over. If she was wrong . . . well, she’d always been a fast runner.

  She started up the Suburban and drove slowly past, noticing that the guard didn’t even look up. Nodding to herself, she continued on down the twisting road, circling around until the GPS told her she was on the far side of Marshall’s estate. Looking up, she saw that the wall was the same pale gray stone as the front, which seemed to confirm her location. There were too many trees for her to see the house at this point, but once she reached the top of the wall, it should come into view.

  There was no street parking as such in this neighborhood, but there wasn’t much traffic either. In fact, other than the gardener, she hadn’t seen another car the whole time she’d been sitting there. This had all been part of her thinking about the job. Kids were in school, adults were either working, or recovering from the breakfast rush. Or in Marshall’s case, sleeping late after being out much of the night. Or up much of the night, she thought, chuckling to herself.

  She pulled over onto the soft shoulder of the road, picking a spot where tree branches hung low, careful to park so that the entire vehicle was off the roadway. Stepping out, she walked around to the cargo hatch and geared up, checking that both of her weapons had full magazines. Her favored Glock 17 went into her shoulder harness, and the second, identical weapon was tucked into the back of her pants beneath her jacket. A short blade went into her boot, something she’d started carrying after she’d found herself bound up with duct tape not so long ago. She added a few other supplies, throwing them into a backpack that was a little smaller than the one she usually carried, but big enough to hold the manacles once she found them.

  Looking around, she considered not using the keyed remote to lock the doors, but then did it anyway, figuring the beep of a car remote was one of those noises no one paid attention to anymore. She slipped the key into an outside pocket on the backpack and zipped it shut, then walked down the road and crossed the ditch to the wall surrounding Marshall’s property. Back here, the wall was far less manicured than it had been up front. It was overgrown with vines, and trees grew right up against both sides of the wall, with heavy branches hanging over the top. A ten-year old could have climbed this wall. Probably faster than she could.

  She patted her weapons to make sure they were secure, drew on a pair of gloves, and slung the backpack over one shoulder as she eyed her options. She could climb the wall—those vines wouldn’t hold her weight, but they’d be useful hand and footholds for a quick up and over—or she could climb one of the trees. Deciding on the most direct approach, she took as much of a running leap as she could and went for the wall.

  Her foot slipped at first; she hadn’t considered that the leafy vines might be slimy and the boots she was wearing, with their flat soles, weren’t exactly designed for climbing. But she caught hold of a ropey vine and used it to propel herself high enough to get a handhold on the top of the wall. From there, she used some of the upper body strength that Elke was always forcing her to work on and pulled herself up until her hips rested against the lip of the wall, allowing her to get a good look beyond it.

  What she saw was nothing but trees for about twenty-five yards. Beyond that was a stretch of lawn, and then a big pool against a furnished and covered patio with a brick firepit. The house looked awfully quiet and locked down, almost as if no one was living there at the moment. Not emptied out, but as if the owners were on vacation somewhere else. She had a moment’s doubt. What if Nick had been wrong, and this wasn’t Marshall’s main home? She’d have done all of this for nothing. But the doubt passed quickly. Marshall’s credit card activity proved that not only was this where he lived most of the time, but that he was living here now.

  Pulling herself all the way up, she briefly straddled the wall, then flipped over and shimmied down the other side. Going down was always easier than climbing up.

  Once she hit the ground, she paused to take stock of things. This far out in the country, there was little ambient noise to muddle her senses. There were no sounds of human activity inside Marshall’s house, no voices, no music, no footsteps. And, thankfully, no dogs. The estate was perfectly quiet. She pulled a smaller pair of binoculars from her pack and searched the doors and windows on the back of the house. Most of the window coverings were pulled back, letting her see at least partway into the rooms, but there was no movement. She also looked for a doggy door or doghouse, any sign that there might be an animal on the property to give her away. But again, there was nothing. That didn’t mean there was no dog, any more than the absence of movement meant there were no people, but she felt confident enough to move closer.

  Putting the binocs back in her pack and slinging it over her shoulder, she started through the trees, doing her best to walk quietly. She smiled for a moment, remembering the first time she’d visited Raphael’s estate, and how she’d felt as if she’d sounded like a herd of elephants compared to his silent footsteps.

  She paused again, just inside the tree line, paying particular attention to the windows and roof where security might be stationed, but there was no one. Leaving the shelter of the trees behind, she started across the wide expanse of lawn, moving quickly, but not running. In a matter of seconds, she was on the pool deck, ducked down next to a large double chaise. And there was still no activity from the house, no sign that she’d been detected. She’d just begun to feel pretty confident about her chances, when a thought occurred to her. Marshall might not have any guard personnel on his property, aside from the gate, but he almost certainly had at least a basic alarm system. If the house was locked up tight, which it appeared to be, the alarm would be armed. So how the hell was she supposed to get inside? She was no electronics expert, and she certainly didn’t possess the skills to bypass an alarm panel in ten seconds or whatever it was.

  Well, damn. It was times like this when it was handy to have Raphael around. He didn’t need to bypass the alarm—he could simply zap it out. For that matter, if Nick was such a super duper sorcerer, he probably had a trick or two that would accomplish the same thing. Of course, that assumed the two of them could stop bickering long enough to avoid rousing the entire neighborhood before they even reached the front door. And that thought reminded her of why she was here on a sunny, Monday morning all alone. She’d been doing stuff like this for years before meeting Raphael, and she could do it today. There was always a way.

  With seemingly no one watching, she stood and strolled up to the house, passing beneath the patio cover and right up to the glass door. Standing to one side, she peered through the window into a very nice, open concept kitchen and den area. Marshall’s house was big, but not huge. It was definitely a house, not a mansion, with maybe five thousand square feet on two floors, and the possibility of a basement. There would be no endless
wings and levels for her to search, which was great. Now, she just had to get inside.

  She tested the sliding glass door, but it was locked. That would have been too easy. Feeling confident, she took a chance and walked along the entire rear of the house and up the right-hand side, checking out doors and windows, peering around the front, while being careful to remain out of the lone guard’s line of sight. Finding nothing that would help her, she retraced her steps, going to the left this time, and there she found what she was looking for—a narrow door with a window that was cracked open, as if for fresh air. Peering inside, she saw a good-sized laundry room, with a big washer and dryer. The dryer was still running, which was probably why the window was open, but it made her nervous. Was there a housekeeper around? That could be a problem. The good news, however, was that either the alarm wasn’t set, or it didn’t include windows, which would be rather pointless. It was also possible that only the upper floors were alarmed, or even the basement. Either way, she’d found her way in.

  Pulling the knife from her boot, she quickly slit the screen all the way across, then put the knife away. With her gloved hand, she reached through the narrow opening, pushed the window higher, and felt around for a lock. It was a deadbolt with a thumb turn. A double key would have been more secure, but most up-to-date building codes required the thumb turn for safe emergency egress. Good for them, better for her. She turned the lock slowly and quietly, then twisted the doorknob, and she was inside.

  This was far too easy. Cyn didn’t believe in easy, but she heightened her awareness and kept going. Slipping a glove off, she pulled her sleeve over her hand and felt the dryer as she went by. It was cool, and the selector was set on the wrinkle-free setting, which meant it could have been running on its own for an hour or more. She pulled her glove back on and walked over to the door, which was opened to a hallway. She listened at the door first, then leaned just her head out, looking first one way, then the other. The kitchen was visible to her right, and then the den, and a formal dining room. To her left, down a long hallway, was the front door. Just before that was a stairway going up, and underneath the stairs was a door that probably led to the basement.