“…and, of course, Grandfather Fletcher.”

“Fletcher?” I took a guess. “Graydon Fletcher?”

“Oh yes, do you know him?”

“I know of him,” I said. “I haven’t met him yet, but I hope to do so soon.”

“He’s the best grandfather in the world. I mean, I don’t know a lot of other grandfathers, but he’s kind and good to us. That’s where the rest of my family is today. Everyone except my mom.”

“And you.”

“Yes. I was supposed to be with them, but I wanted to talk to you, so Genie and I played a trick on everyone, you might say.”

THE garage door is open,” Giles said in disgust. “That idiot didn’t close it.”

Cleo had planned to look things over, to check out the level of activity on the street and then circle the block and park some distance away. Seeing the open garage door and the utter absence of life along the street, she changed her mind.

“What the hell are you doing?”

She pulled into the garage, quickly got out of the vehicle, and hit the control that shut the door. She found the light switch as the door closed.

Giles got out of the car, angry.

She was already taking off the suit jacket, putting on the coveralls. Seeing the look on his face, she held up a halting hand. “Don’t you dare shout in here.”

He drew a hard breath but said nothing. She straightened, hands casually at her sides.

“Do you plan to draw on me? Go ahead, let’s see who’s faster.”

He shook his head. “No, of course not.”

“Good. Now you listen to me, Giles, and listen well. This is what I do. It’s what I’m best at. You, on the other hand, aren’t even an amateur. You’re a tourist. So you are going to do what I tell you to, and you are not going to question shit. When this is all over, you can go back to calling the shots. But not until then. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now go into the house and call Victoria.”

“What?”

“Giles, you’re doing it again.”

He swallowed hard. “She’ll be asleep. Roy drugged her.”

“You also told him to close the damned garage door, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, with a meekness that made her feel a little shiver of excitement.

“So, if she happens to still be awake, she knows you and won’t react the same way she would to a stranger, right? Coax her downstairs, and bring her out here to meet me. That way there will be a little less evidence inside the house, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

He reached for his weapon, and she stopped him by quickly grabbing his wrist.

“For God’s sake, don’t do that. What’s gotten into you?” She smiled. “Don’t be afraid of her, Giles. She’s drugged, and she has no reason to suspect why you’re here.”

“Right.”

As he reached the door into the house, her cell phone rang. Giles jumped, and it was all she could do not to laugh at him.

The ring tone let her know that the caller was Roy. Good. She had been meaning to call him. But she didn’t want to talk to him in front of Giles. Still, she’d better find out what he wanted. She made a shooing motion at Giles as she answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” Roy said. “God, I’m so glad I reached you. Listen, call it off. The whole thing. Carrie’s at the house.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Hang on.”

She said to Giles, “Giles, hurry up!”

“Who is it?” Giles asked.

“The movers. I have to settle this now. I’ll be right here if you need me.” She gave him a hard stare.

He went into the house.

G ILES was tempted to go right back into the garage and demand that she hang up and-

His attention was caught by a high-pitched whistling sound. What the hell was that?

“Victoria?” he called. Then more loudly: “Victoria!”

The whistling continued as he moved toward the sound. Some kind of-Oh, Jesus Christ, it was an alarm.

“Victoria!” he shouted desperately.

THE moment the door closed, Cleo said in a low voice, “Yes, Giles is with me! Listen to me, Roy, and get out a piece of paper and a pen while I’m talking, because we have maybe one minute to save your life and that of the kids. Remember what I told you this morning, about not taking that SUV because he’d have some kind of locator on it? Well, sure as shit, Giles is setting all of you up. Do not-repeat, do not-go to the meeting place he arranged. Go to this address.” She gave him the address of one of her cabins. “That’s my place-you’ll be safe there. The door opens with a keypad combination.” She gave it to him. “There’s also a booby trap that’s not on the alarm system.” She told him how to disarm it. “Now, I’ll do all I can to bring Carrie with me, but I have more to tell you about that when I see you. Don’t contact anyone from the family. You understand?”

“Yes,” he said weakly.

“Read the address, combination, and disarm instructions back to me.”

He had just finished when the alarm sounded piercingly from inside the house. “Christ! Giles has set off the fucking alarm. What’s the code?”

GILES cringed as the alarm howled at a painful level of decibels. He reached the keypad and madly entered Roy’s birthday, to no effect. Apparently that wasn’t the code.

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up the stairway. Victoria stood on the upper landing. “Victoria!”

She frowned, said something he couldn’t hear over the noise, and took a lurching step forward. She missed the first step entirely and tumbled down the stairs, her body pitchforked against stairs, railings, wall, and finally the marble of the foyer, coming to rest at his feet.

He stared in shock.

“OH,” Carrie said, “before I talk any more about myself, I have a really important question to ask you.”

I was trying to absorb all the implications of a connection to the Fletchers, so maybe I wasn’t concentrating as much as I should have been when Carrie took a deep breath and said, “Do you know someone named Mason who is missing a little girl?”

“Mason?”

“Yes.”

“My God…”

But I didn’t get to say more than that before we heard a loud alarm going off somewhere down the street.

“My house! That’s my house!” she cried, and began running away from me.

CLEO was inside, pressing buttons on the keypad almost before he was aware of her presence. There was an instant silencing of the alarm, although he was sure some echo of it was still ringing in his ears. She looked down at Victoria, felt for a pulse, and said, “That was quick if noisy work, Giles.”

“I didn’t-”

“Yes, I’m sure. Now grab her ankles and carry her out to my car. Now!”

He obeyed, too numb to do otherwise. Victoria was surprisingly heavy. When they reached the Beemer, Cleo opened the trunk, then said, “Wait a minute.”

She lifted a set of clothing on hangers covered in a dry cleaner’s plastic bag and hung it in the back of the car.

“That’s a Las Piernas Police Department uniform!” Giles said.

“Put her into the trunk. We have no time to waste.”

As they lifted the body, the phone on the wall of the garage began to ring.

They unceremoniously dumped her on top of a thick piece of plastic inside the trunk. Cleo closed the trunk lid.

“Answer the phone. It will be Fletcher Security. Tell them who you are and that the code word is Graydon, and that there is no need to send a police unit here. Tell them you agreed to look in on the house while Roy was on vacation and accidentally set off the alarm.”

He did as she said.

He watched her clean up drops of blood on the outside of the car.

When he hung up, she said, “I talked to Roy when the alarm went off. He told me Carrie isn’t with him.”

“What?”

“Yes. So you are going to wait here and intercept her.”