Chapter Thirty-Three

Nutsbe parked two doors down. He did want to warn Olivia. He did want her to sleep somewhere else. But if everything was okay right now, he wouldn't scare Olivia with lights pulling into her drive.

If he parked in his own drive, his motion-sensor lights would illuminate the backyard as he walked over her lawn.

And his gut was telling him to go in quietly.

As he moved up the street, he could see the steady glow through the corner window upstairs. Behind the drawn curtains, a human-shaped shadow shifted and bobbled on the right-hand side. Lights flashed on in other rooms downstairs in the front of the house.

Nutsbe moved up the walk and tried the front door.

Locked.

The light blinked on in the living room to his right. It went dark. It blinked on in her dining room to the left; it went dark. A softer glow shone, probably where the person had moved to the back of the house.

Olivia wasn't checking her rooms before she went to sleep. She couldn't be in two places at the same time.

"Iniquus Communications. Identification."

"Nutsbe, Panther Force. Possible home invasion. Track this phone's GPS. I'm in the yard now, making a circuit to investigate the exterior. Over."

"Copy. Possible home invasion. We have you on the board. Be advised that Alexandria P.D. is being routed to your GPS coordinates. Over."

Nutsbe moved to the empty driveway and up to Olivia's detached garage. Shining his phone's flashlight into the garage door window, Olivia's was the lone vehicle. Nutsbe extinguished the flashlight and scanned up and down the street. The neighborhood was dark. There were no extraneous cars parked along the roadway save his. This wasn't a late-night visit from her bestie.

Rounding to the back, Nutsbe flattened himself against the side of the house and sidestepped slowly, hoping to avoid illuminating the floodlights he had positioned to protect Olivia.

He made it to her back door. It was shut and locked, but the cardboard was missing from the pane with the broken glass.

Thick storm clouds had momentarily cleared a portion of the full moon, allowing Nutsbe to decipher the most obvious of shapes inside. This was a laundry-mudroom kind of space. The door into the kitchen was half open, and a light shone from somewhere toward the front of the house.

From this position, Nutsbe could now hear a wailing cry that sent a shiver down his spine. K9 or human, he couldn't tell.

He whispered into his comms. "Are you picking this up? Over."

"Our computer system has identified a distress vocalization at your location. Over."

And he wasn't waiting. That could be an angry or injured Henrietta, or someone could be doing something terrible to Olivia.

Nutsbe slowly reached his hand through the broken glass, grasped the door handle, and turned, letting it open just past the catch and then pulling his arm back.

There was the clatter of things hitting a wooden floor, someone dumping a drawer in the living room?

"I'm entering the house through the back door. Over."

"Be advised Iniquus has rerouted closest available tactical force operator. ETA nine minutes. This line will remain open and recording. Over."

A hell of a lot could happen in nine minutes. "Nine minutes. Copy. Over."

Nutsbe stole through the kitchen, slid along the wall in the darkened hallway, and peeked to the right, where a biker was rifling through a stack of papers.

Above, on the second floor, was the droning, sleepy sound of a man's voice as if reading from a book and not engaged in a back-and-forth conversation.

Nutsbe didn't hear Olivia.

He rounded onto the stairs and dropped his hands to the risers. He bear-crawled, both to keep his profile below that banister and for stability and quiet.

The hall upstairs was dark.

His back to the wall, he slid toward the light in the next room and squinted through the crack by the hinges.

Olivia, dressed in a nightshirt, was duct-taped to a chair.

The man in front of her wore jeans and wallet chains, spiked boots, and a heavy leather jacket. His neck muscles were massive. But his voice didn't work with the getup. His word choices made this man educated, even refined. The oddity of the two aspects confused Nutsbe's ability to process how to go forward. In a fight, you had to assess the background of the fighter—Chuck, the martial artist, was one kind of fight. Mickey Pauley and an alley brawl was another.

What was this?

Two against one.

An Iniquus brother was nine minutes out. Eight. Maybe seven.

Should he wait?

Olivia rolled her lips in and shook her head.

And when the biker stood, reached over his shoulder, and back-slapped her, Nutsbe's body was moving.

He flew through the door, grabbed the lamp, jerking it from the wall socket. In the sudden dark, the man spun to identify the sudden changes.

With the moonlight streaming through the curtain, Nutsbe clocked the guy across the temple with the heavy lamp base.

The impact momentarily twisted and bent the man, dropping him to a knee.

The man grunted and sprang to his feet as Nutsbe loaded the bat as if he were going to hit one out of the park. Aiming, Nutsbe swung.

Throwing up an arm to block, the intruder collapsed the lampshade. The house momentarily brightened with the glistening, tinkling sound of glass shards as the bulb broke.

Feet pounded up the stairs as the other man roared toward the scene. The upstairs man fell toward the door as, once again, he collapsed to one knee. Rising from the ground, he reached a hand toward his back belt.

The downstairs man shoved the door open, hitting Upstairs, making him stagger to catch his balance.

Nutsbe took advantage, pulling his knee to his chest; he aimed his boot toward Upstairs's hip and push-kicked him back to the door to block Downstairs from getting in.

One at a damned time.

Nutsbe, with the lamp base still in his hands, dropped his hips onto the small of Upstairs's back. The sheer weight and velocity collapsed Upstairs to the ground.

When Upstairs tried to rise, Nutsbe chambered his fist and pounded him in the back of the head and the base of his neck.

Every drop of adrenaline, every ounce of fear, every boiling degree of anger found its way into Nutsbe's fist, and he punched.

Nutsbe only stopped when Upstairs's body relaxed into unconsciousness.

Outside in the hall, there was a scramble and thuds.

A set of feet thundered down the stairs, followed by another.

The bang of the door being jerked open and hitting the wall.

Feet back on the stairs, a voice outside the office, "Iniquus. Iniquus. Iniquus."