Chapter 8
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Scarlett was already walking toward the living room. She poured drinks while he set up the remote to find the relevant CCTV footage.
“Let’s see who tossed Patterson’s car first,” he said.
He pulled up the exterior camera feeds on the flat-screen and scrolled to the timestamp from forty minutes before Scarlett arrived, as a place to begin.
The street camera covered the block from Flint’s front porch to the second oak tree on the east side and an equal distance on the west side. Patterson’s sedan sat at the curb four houses up, half in shadow.
Flint hit the fast forward through Scarlett’s SUV arriving all the way until he’d escorted Patterson to the garage. Then he slowed again.
Two men approached from the west end of the block.
One went to the driver’s side of the sedan and opened the door in under three seconds.
The other broke into the passenger side.
They moved through the vehicle quickly checking the glove box, console, back seat, and trunk access panel. The interior light was off.
“These two know what they’re doing,” Scarlett said from the couch, leaning forward to peer at the images on the screen.
When the thieves had finished inside the sedan, the taller man carried Patterson’s laptop under his arm. The shorter one had the atlas and the folder of printouts. They closed both doors and walked back the way they’d come. They rounded the corner at the end of the block and the camera lost them.
Flint switched to the garage cameras. Which was when he noticed the side door was open. He was certain he’d closed and locked it.
He zoomed in on the man entering the garage through the side door twelve minutes after Flint had escorted Patterson into the house.
Flint paused the feed to study the intruder.
“Do you recognize him?” Scarlett asked.
“No. You?”
She shook her head, ignoring the whiskey.
Flint noted his average build, dark clothing, and dark ball cap. He wore an equipment pack around his waist. He moved through the door and Flint switched to an interior camera view.
The intruder stopped inside the garage after closing the side door. He pulled night vision from his pack and settled it on his face.
Then he moved easily across the garage floor in darkness straight to the junction where the camera cables ran along the ceiling joist. He reached up with something in his hand.
Flint zoomed in to see a small device in his palm which he held against the cable housing for mere seconds.
The feed died.
At that moment, the security app on Flint’s phone showed the system connectivity interrupted alert as it should have. But he’d missed it when it happened because he’d been questioning Patterson inside the house.
“Dammit,” Flint muttered under his breath.
Scarlett didn’t reply, which was unusual. She generally took every chance to tease him for his failures. It was a pattern that had started when they were kids. She wasn’t in the mood.
He glanced toward her. She was staring at her phone. The color had drained from her face, and her jaw was set the way it got when something hit her hard in the solar plexus.
“I gotta go.” She turned the phone to show Flint the screen.
Her home security feed was bright in the room’s dim lighting. The CCTV in her daughter’s bedroom showed Maddy sitting upright in bed, mouth open, face red and wet with tears. She was screaming.
The audio was muted, but the image was more than enough. A seven-year-old girl alone in a dark room, terrified by whatever had crawled through her sleep.
Flint hoped that’s all it was. A nightmare.
Given the rest of today’s events, Scarlett was taking no chances. She was on her feet and moving toward the door before Flint could speak.
“I’ll come with you,” Flint said, rising from the chair.
“Not yet. That’ll freak her out even more if you come running. Ruth’s there. I’ll call her from the car.” Scarlett grabbed her keys from the side table and shot through the front door in three strides. “Let me know what you find. I’ll be awake until I hear from you.”
“Keep me posted, too. I can be there in fifteen minutes. Or less.”
Scarlett was already outside. Her armored SUV started up, and the headlights swept across the front windows as she sped past the house.
Flint returned to the CCTV feed. The TV showed the frozen frame of his dead camera system revealing a solid black screen and nothing more.
He couldn’t do anything for Maddy or for Scarlett at the moment. Instead, he picked up his weapon and ejected the magazine to confirm he had a full round. Fifteen in the magazine. He slapped it back into place.
Good to go.
Flint tucked the pistol into his waistband at the small of his back and grabbed a flashlight as he exited the house through the back door into the yard. The pool lights were off, but he knew every inch of his property. Ambient light would suffice.
The air was cool enough to raise gooseflesh on his arms. He crossed the yard to the garage and stood to one side of the open doorframe to listen. After two minutes of complete silence within the garage, he reached inside to flip the overhead light on.
Flint scanned the garage quickly. The intruders were gone.
Near the workbench he noticed a partial boot print. The print was a tread designed to grip on smooth surfaces. And the substance that left it was dark and wet. Mud, maybe. Or something from the alley.
Flint followed the print with a flashlight beam. A second partial appeared near the side door, pointed outward.
He stepped through the side door and moved along the concrete walkway between the garage and the stockade fence.
The walkway was three feet wide and paved with the same concrete as the garage floor. He pointed the flashlight beam along the ground and moved toward the back gate.
A third partial boot print appeared on the concrete near the fence post. Same tread pattern. Same dark substance. The intruder had walked this path in one direction, toward the gate.
The gate was closed. The latch was in the down position, the way Flint always left it. He reached for the latch and stopped.
A thin dark line caught the beam of his flashlight. It ran from the latch handle to a small metal housing screwed to the inside of the gate frame at chest height. The housing was flat black, no bigger than a pack of cards, and mounted flush against the wood so it barely protruded.
Flint crouched and aimed the flashlight at the housing without touching it.
He recognized the setup before he’d finished looking at it.
A 12-gauge shotgun shell was seated in a short section of steel pipe. Behind the shell, a spring-loaded firing pin was held in the cocked position by a wire.
The wire ran from the pin to the gate latch. Open the gate, the wire pulls the pin, the spring drives it forward into the primer, and the shell fires at whoever is standing in front of it.
At chest height and this range, the shot column wouldn’t have time to spread. The full charge would hit a circle about the size of a quarter. That was more than enough to punch through his sternum and the rest of his chest behind it.
In the Marines, they called these mechanical ambushes. A trigger, a firing mechanism, and a projectile, assembled to kill the first person who performed a predictable action.
The device would wait forever until someone opened the gate because there were no electronics to fail, no timer to set, and no batteries to die. Simply a wire and a spring and a twelve-gauge shell with all the patience in the world.
He studied the pipe and the mounting bracket. The pipe was machined on a lathe, not cut with a hacksaw. The spring tension was calibrated so the latch pull would release cleanly.
The device had been built in a shop with proper tools and brought here ready to install.
One shotgun blast in a Houston neighborhood at three in the morning would register as a car backfire, or a firework, or a domestic dispute. No one would expect a shell fired from a pipe screwed to a fence post.
By the time a neighbor called the police, the device would be the only shooter on the scene, and devices don’t answer questions.
That meant the man who installed it didn’t care who opened the gate next. It could have been Flint. It could have been a neighbor’s kid cutting through from the alley in the morning. The device wouldn’t distinguish between targets.
Flint pulled the folding knife from his pocket and cut the wire six inches from the pin. The tension released and the pin stayed cocked with nothing left to pull it. He unscrewed the housing from the gate frame, removed the shell from the pipe, and put all three components into his jacket pocket.
With the device disarmed and secured, he opened the gate.
The alley stretched in both directions. Gravel and patched asphalt ran between the back fences of two rows of houses. No streetlights reached this far. The nearest light source was a porch lamp two houses east, throwing a weak yellow cone that died before it hit the alley.
Flint stepped through the gate, turned left, and moved along the fence line to the darkest section of the alley.
A shadow rushed from the dark and swung his knife for Flint’s throat.
Flint raised his pistol fast, but the blade beat it. Flint snapped his head back a hair’s breadth from the edge that hissed past his neck.
The killer crashed into him, too close now for the pistol.
Flint dropped it and caught the man’s knife arm in both hands as he drove the blade forward.
The guy was strong and fast. He leaned his body into the knife, thrusting the point toward Flint’s belly.
Flint relaxed his resistance and quickly sidestepped.
The killer’s own weight slammed him face-first into the fence. Flint wrenched his wrist back until it snapped and his fingers flew open.
The knife dropped to the gravel and the killer lunged to pick it up.
Flint was faster. He stepped in behind the killer, drove one hand up under his jaw, set the other behind his head, and twisted hard.
The killer’s neck snapped.
He went slack, fell, and landed face down against the fence.
Flint’s pulse pounded in his ears. He stood over the body. No lights came on. No windows opened.
He retrieved his pistol and held still, listening into the dark. If the guy had a partner he was gone. He holstered his weapon and crouched beside the dead man.
He looked to be mid-thirties with a compact build. Dark pants, dark jacket, running shoes. His head was turned oddly to one side.
Quickly, Flint checked his pockets. No wallet, phone, watch, or keys. Even the label had been cut from the collar of his jacket.
Flint didn’t recognize the face. He had never seen this man before tonight. He was certain. He never forgot a face. In his line of work, he couldn’t afford to.
He straightened up and looked at what he’d found so far.
A dead man stripped of identification. On the other side of his back gate, a device designed to kill whoever opened it next.
Inside his garage, an intruder had killed the camera system with a specific tool.
And out front, two men had tossed and burgled Patterson’s sedan while Flint was in the house, occupied with Patterson.
Those responsible were organized and definitely not amateurs.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Flint pulled it out. The caller ID showed the Lazy M Ranch landline.
That number had been disconnected for years. Long before she died and the property was shuttered, Bette Maxwell had switched to a cell phone.
He answered.