A Billionaire's Redemption(14)

Furthermore, the intruder probably had a partner in Washington. Which meant there was some larger conspiracy at work here. And based on what she’d read in the missing files, she hesitated to think about how dangerous the owner of that breath on the other side of her door had been.

What were the odds that an intruder had shown up within two hours of her first opening the Committee on Miscellaneous Affairs file and not been connected to the file? And then the file was mysteriously erased overnight? No coincidence was that far-fetched. She stared at the antique reproduction telephone on her father’s desk in sudden apprehension. Was it tapped? Was she being watched?

Maybe she was as paranoid as that cop last night thought she was. Maybe she was overwrought after James’s attack and her father’s murder. Maybe Minnie was right. Maybe she needed to get away for a while...

...or maybe she wasn’t crazy at all.

On impulse, she unscrewed the cover of the phone’s mouthpiece. She had no idea what she was looking at, but she pulled out her cell phone and took several pictures of the guts of the thing from different angles. She screwed the receiver back together and headed for the garage, grabbing her purse on the way out.

Will you be back for supper, Willy?” Louise called after her.

Probably not.”

Marcus can come up to Vengeance, but he said you better pay him good if he’s gonna have to beat up ghosts.”

I’ll pay him a fortune!” she called over her shoulder as she slipped into her little car.

She was relieved to see the mob of reporters had found other prey today, and wasn’t camped in front of the mansion. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with their aggression. Following the instructions her onboard navigation system gave her, she headed for a spy shop in a strip mall in north Dallas. It was mostly a gimmick store, but she hoped someone there could help her.

Thankfully, she was the only customer when she walked in to a dizzying display of cameras, microphones, binoculars and unrecognizable electronic gadgets.

Can I help you?” a middle-aged man asked. He had a crew cut and appeared to be in pretty good shape. Ex-military, maybe? In that tight black T-shirt and camo pants, he certainly cultivated the image.

I hope so.” She pulled out her cell phone and called up the pictures of her father’s telephone. “Can you tell me if this has a bug in it?”

The guy took one look at the first picture and replied immediately. “Sure does. Big as day.”

Her face felt hot and she was a little light-headed all of a sudden. Her father’s—her—phone was tapped? “Can you tell me anything about it?”

Mind if I transfer these pictures to my computer so I can enlarge and enhance them?”

Have at it.”

The guy hooked her cell phone to a laptop on a workbench behind the counter, and fiddled at the keyboard for several minutes. All of a sudden, he swore, startling her away from a display of stun guns and personal tasers.

What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.

Where’d you get this picture?” he asked tersely.

Why?”

That’s a military-grade device. State of the art. I’m talking brand-new. I didn’t know these acoustic bugs were out of prototype testing. They’re not available on the open market, yet.”

Military? Why would the military bug her? “Which branch of the military does it come from?”

Hell if I know, lady. Could be CIA, for that matter. But I can tell you one thing—unless you’re a high-ranking government official, you should not have a picture of it.”

Guilt flashed through her before it occurred to her that she actually was a high-ranking government official. Still, her rushed security clearance wouldn’t be processed for at least another week, according to the governor’s people.

Do you sell anything for finding surveillance equipment and disabling it?” she asked.

You’ve come to the right place for that....”

An hour later, armed with a bag of nifty electronic gadgets, she guided her car back toward Vengeance. Never in her life had she paid so much attention to the vehicles in her rearview mirror. If she was being tailed she couldn’t tell, but that didn’t mean much. She was a rank amateur at this cloak-and-dagger stuff.

She dialed her office in Washington, D.C., as she drove and got Amber again.

Hey, it’s me. Willa Merris. I need you to do me a favor and cancel the Secret Service security detail they’re assigning to me.”

I don’t think that’s a good idea, Senator. There are more crazies out there than you might imagine.”

She doubted that. She could imagine a whole lot of crazy people right now. Thing was, she had no idea how deep into the government that secret committee’s reach extended. Was the Secret Service compromised? Were there sleeper agents inside that agency who were loyal first to that damned committee? Nope, she dared not take a chance on one of the crazies ending up in her own protection detail.

She hung up on Amber’s efforts to talk her out of the decision with a repeated order to cancel the security team.

The closer Willa got to home, the more jumpy she became. She couldn’t stay at her parents’ house one more night. If she was going to die of fright or worse, she wanted to do it in her own bed. She had to assume her house was bugged as well, hence the bag of goodies on the seat beside her.

Thankfully, the press wasn’t camped out at her little bungalow. There must have been some new development in the murder case that drew them away temporarily. Whatever it was, she was grateful for the break from media scrutiny.

As she parked her car in the detached garage, it dawned on her that the old Dawson house was only a few blocks away. Not that Gabe ever stayed there anymore. The way she heard it, he’d bought the place, renovated it and stopped by once or twice a year to remind himself of his roots.

Idle speculation was that he planned to make some sort of museum out of it in his old age. “The Birthplace of the Great Gabe Dawson” or something like that. Maybe he planned to charge a few bucks admission to add to his billions.

She carried the bag of electronics into her house and spent the remainder of the afternoon setting up gear that the guy at the store had promised would create static interference and thwart any camera, bug or other surveillance equipment hidden in her home. She stashed the remote control that armed the system in the coffee table in her living room, along with the collection of TV, stereo and DVR remotes she kept in a drawer there.

She didn’t turn the system on, though. The guy at the spy store had cautioned her against finding and disabling any surveillance devices. He said it would tip off the bad guys, and furthermore, they would just come back to plant more powerful gear and hide it better next time.

Or worse, they would shift to direct human surveillance, which apparently involved bad guys peering through her windows and using parabolic microphones to listen in on her life. The spy-store guy had said something about them looking through her walls, too, and she’d tuned out at that point. The thought of being that vulnerable and visible was too much for her to contemplate.

She would leave the static generator off until she needed to talk to someone in private. If the bad guys wanted to listen to her cook supper and watch television shows, more power to them.

But as the hour grew late, the prospect of going to bed alone in the dark loomed. She could do this. As long as she wasn’t poking around nonexistent files, she wasn’t a threat to anyone, right? If they’d wanted to kill her, they’d had their chance to do it last night, right?

The whisper of that light, careful breathing and the faint sound of sirens approaching played through her head over and over as she reluctantly lay down to sleep. She resorted to pulling the covers up entirely over her head when the fear became too much to stand. Then, she’d start to feel foolish and poke her head out once more. She’d emerged from the cocoon of her covers a fourth time, and her alarm clock said it was nearly

2:00 a.m. when she heard a noise.

Not a big noise. A rather innocuous little creak. Except she knew that creak. It was the spot just inside her dining room from the kitchen. A person had to step on the loose floorboard to make it squeak like that. Oh, God. Someone was out there!

She flew out of her bed in sudden terror, grabbed her cell phone from her nightstand, and tore into her bathroom. She closed the door as quietly as she could and locked it carefully. Finally daring to breathe, she eased away from the door and climbed into the bathtub.

She put a towel over her mouth and phone to muffle the sound of her call, dialed the police and whispered in panic, “This is Willa Merris. I’m at my house on Elm Street, and there’s an intruder in my home.”

Ma’am, you thought there was an intruder last night, too. Are you sure there’s someone in your house? Is it possible your imagination is playing tricks on you?”

They didn’t believe her. Someone was right outside, and there was no telling what the intruder had planned for her. She had no time for arguments with skeptical sheriff’s deputies.