Butterfly Stomp Waltz

Chapter 21

21

The only way to any door in Noah’s home is across the pool of light.

I lead Rob and Jacka partway around the ring, until the Polynesian hut of the bar offers a small shield from observation from the main floor of the sprawling house. Bradley stays in the darkness to prep her part of the plan and act as lookout. The three of us trot out to the back of the faux Polynesian hut bar, then loop around and walk quickly towards the door. We neither crouch, nor shimmy on our bellies. A maid staggering sleepily towards the powder room might look out the window straight at people walking normally without seeing them, but if we play commando the Stone Age “sneaking predator detector” in her medulla will wake her right up.

My heart is pounding, but I keep my breath slow and deep and steady. That same predator detector in my brain insists that Noah’s up in his tower bedroom, watching us. The faint crunch of crushed gravel beneath our boots gives way to soft footfalls on an embossed cement patio. I walk straight to the sliding door, studying the keypad by the door with each step.

The LED readout dimly spells out DISARMED. A green LED agrees.

If I need confirmation, the screen door is open a fraction of an inch. Not enough to let bugs in, but enough that the alarm couldn’t be set.

This has got to be a trap.

I slip a magnetic field detector the size and shape of a deck of cards out of its belt pouch and pass it over the screen door’s frame. The meter remains dark. No sign of electrical activity.

Jacka’s voice is too soft to understand, but sounds clear when transmitted from the throat mike into my earpiece. “Infrared clear.”

This stinks. If we’d done all this fancy preparation for something that needed the guile of a twelve-year-old raiding Mom’s purse…

No. It had to be a trap.

I touch the door.

It doesn’t explode.

While the doorframe itself isn’t electrified, and there’s no sign of a sensor, pushing the door to the side might set something off. I pull a knife and s***h the screen from top to bottom, then along the bottom. If we come running out in a hurry, I don’t want anyone tripping.

The sliding glass door itself is unnaturally thick. Probably heavy enough to need mechanical assistance to open. I key my throat mike. “Door is armored plate glass. You’ll never shoot through it.”

“Ack armor glass,” Bradley says in my ear.

I lift the savaged window screen aside and slip into Noah’s home.

Some of the light outside leaks through the tinted glass, but mostly this room is shadows and shapes. As per the plan, I flip on my night vision goggles. The plan splits us between bare eyes and night vision, and I drew the short straw.

What the blueprints described as a “pool room” is actually a “drunken party room.” The clusters of plastic tables and chairs, while having the fancy curves and shapes that meant someone paid extravagantly for them, can all be wiped clean with spit and a damp rag. There’s a serve-yourself bar covering one wall, topped with hundreds of bottles in all shapes and sizes. The other wall has a television big enough to invite a hundred of your most favored lackeys over to watch the big press conference and still have space for the wait staff. I smell chemical cleaners over years of ingrained booze. There’s two refrigerators between the small doors leading to the pool restrooms.

A set of double doors lead further into the house.

Beyond them, the staircase leading up to Noah’s room.

We’re almost to the door when Bradley says “Motion. The pool door is closing. On its own.”

Yep.

It’s a trap.