Midnight Man (Midnight #1)(41)
He was in trouble—real bad trouble—if jerking off to the thought of Suzanne Barron was ten times more exciting than actually having sex with any other woman.
“Okay, Bud, talk to me.” John leaned back in the rolling leather chair holding an untraceable satellite cell phone to his ear.
When he’d felt his legs would hold him up—and that had taken more time than he was comfortable thinking about—he’d pulled on a black tee shirt and faded gray sweatpants and padded barefoot into the living room. Nudging aside the cheap supermarket rug, he’d reached down and put his thumb to a scanner. A blue steel panel opened up seamlessly, while a stainless steel ladder stretched down to the floor of the cellar.
As always, John felt a glow of satisfaction entering his little high-tech lair. Upstairs he sort of realized that the shack was bleak though he had no frigging clue what to do about it, but downstairs in the cellar—well, everything was top of the line there, as perfect as it could be. He’d had access to the best in the world in the Teams and damned if he was going to settle for less in civilian life.
Downstairs was his little playground, row after row of gleaming electronics, monitors, keyboards, gizmos and widgets up the yin-yang. You name it, he had it.
He’d waited until Suzanne had fallen asleep before heading down here to his spy kingdom. She was spooked enough as it was, without seeing that he had what looked like Houston Mission Control down here.
He was perfectly aware that most civilians were absolutely clueless about the dangers of the world, the big scary things out there. He’d trained for vigilance his entire life and it was now as much a part of him as breathing.
But if you weren’t a soldier, if your life didn’t depend on fanatic attention to detail and an underlying awareness that enemies were out there and could strike at any time, if nothing bad had ever happened to you, why then he came off as a totally paranoid freak. A number of women had been completely turned off by his constant awareness of danger, the precautions he took.
The way he wouldn’t let a woman walk on the side closest to the road. Not out of chivalry but because women stupidly carried purses dangling right there off their shoulders, hanging by a thin leather strap. Big brightly colored purses screaming, “Hey! I’ve got money and credit cards right here!”
Why the hell did they do that? He could never figure it out. It was such a dumbass thing to do, like walking around with a bull’s eye on your back. Any passing scumbag on a bike or motorcycle with a flick knife could slash and grab and that was why he walked on the outside. They’d think twice about slashing and grabbing him.
He never even paid lip service to the ridiculous notion that a woman could defend herself against a mugger. He didn’t care how many self-defense courses she took and no matter what her shrink said. If she was his date for the night—even if they would never see each other again after the sex—then she was under his protection and he acted accordingly. It made a lot of women angry that he couldn’t pretend the world wasn’t full of predators and that nature had made women prey. So he was used to making most of his precautions as invisible as possible.
He’d been called a dinosaur often enough, not that he cared, except that it was inaccurate. Dinosaurs didn’t know how to keep up with the times and he did. He knew exactly what to do and how to do it and he’d stayed alive so far under the most dangerous conditions life had been able to throw at him because of it.
Like now.
No one but Bud and the police could know Suzanne was with him. No one had followed them. Even if someone was looking for him, it would take a long time to connect this shack with him, and that included Bud and the police and all the resources they could muster.
John was good at what he did, good at arranging security. He knew the security here was about as tight as that of a nuclear power plant. Maybe tighter. They were safe as safe can be. But a good soldier always double-checks and he was still alive because he never ever took anything for granted. Ever.
So he sat down and checked his equipment.
He had the sweetest new toy and he loved it. A series of sensors with a special microchip programmed with an algorithm to detect heartbeats. And not just any heartbeat, oh no. That was the beauty of the little gizmo invented by Crazy Mac Rowan, the Team computer geek. The chip could distinguish human heartbeats from the heartbeat of 10 mammalian species by the frequency, so the alarm wasn’t tripped by a deer or a bear. The system had been bought for a cool ten million dollars by the INS for use by the Border Patrol but Crazy Mac had given him the prototype. John ran his special program and found exactly what he was hoping to find.
Nada. Zip.
Next step, the motion sensors. Then the bank of monitors connected to weatherproofed cameras all around the perimeter of his land. Then the sensors along the dirt road leading up to the shack. Nothing, nothing and nothing.
No one here, no one coming. Great.
Okay. Now he could call Bud.
Bud sounded tired. “We’re in trouble, John,” he said. “Big time. Both guys’ prints came up immediately. First shooter’s a street punk, been in and out of the cooler all his life starting from juvie when he was fourteen. Assault, rape—“
John’s blood ran cold. Rape. Once a rapist always a rapist. Jesus Christ, the guy would have had Suzanne at his mercy. He would have raped her before killing her.
He was surprised his hands didn’t leave prints on the phone, he was clutching it so hard.