LITMIR.BIZ

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presumably, to the front gate and possibly to the stables.

      A shot of a lake came into view on the screen, followed by a view of tennis courts, expanses of lawns and gardens, horses grazing, a Roman pool. Then came a series of shots showing nothing but stone walls and foliage. Those were of the property’s perimeter, she told him.

      “There’s no one on the property other than Ina, Eddy and…what’s the groundskeeper’s name?”

      “Jackson. And no. There’s no one.”

      “I need to know what they look like in case they show up on the monitors.”

      “I’ll call down and ask Ina to introduce you.”

      Parker watched her move past him to pick up the phone on the desk. As she did, the softness of her perfume, something subtle, warm and as elusive as the woman herself, drifted in her wake.

      He had first become aware of that disturbing scent when they’d both reached to strap her son into his seat in the car. He’d thought then that the tightening low in his gut had been caused by the purely feminine softness of her skin brushing his. He knew now that he didn’t have to touch her for that unsettling sensation to take hold.

      He needed to move.

      “She’ll meet you by the hedge arch,” she said, giving him the excuse he needed to head for the door. “Just follow the stones across the lawn.”

      “I’ll check out the interior when I get back.”

      Tess started to tell him he didn’t need to worry about the inside of the house, only to remember that she’d never been alone in the big and rambling mansion before. When she’d lived there, even with both parents gone for a weekend and all her siblings having moved out, the cook, the head housekeeper, at least one maid and her dad’s butler had been in their respective quarters.

      Tonight it would just be her and her son—and the no-nonsense bodyguard who walked out the door as if desperate for fresh air.

      Tess leaned past the computer, watching his powerful strides carry him across the expansive deck and along the stone path by the flower beds.

      It wasn’t air he was after, she thought. He’d just wanted to use his cell phone.

      “I’m sort of in the middle of nowhere at the moment. But it won’t be a problem to keep up from here.”

      Parker held the small cell phone to his ear as he angled for the gap in the hedges some twenty yards ahead. The logistics of juggling two jobs at once came easily to him. The admission that Tess Kendrick had a definite effect on him did not.

      “The best thing to do is send them to the FedEx office in Camelot, Virginia,” he continued, grateful for the diversion from her. “I’ll pick them up there. Give me a couple of days to compare them to the diagrams we already have and I’ll get back to you.”

      On the other end of the line, his counterpart at the U.S. Marshal’s service told him he’d have the blueprints they’d been waiting for by noon. Those blueprints of a hotel they were securing for a high-risk conference would indicate everything from the public and restricted areas to ductwork, access ports, elevator shafts and any other place someone bent on mayhem or sending a message might hide in, slither through or plant devices of varying degrees of destruction.

      After a quick briefing on the status of surveillance equipment being installed at the hotel and an even quicker “Thanks,” Parker flipped the phone closed and dropped it into his jacket pocket.

      In the past year he’d coordinated security for rock concerts in Central Park, Los Angeles and London. He’d worked with the security teams for the Oscars. He would begin consultant work on the Emmys and a film festival in Cannes within the next month. Presently he was coordinating individual protection and exit strategies with the Marshal’s Service and existing hotel security for a judicial conference in Minneapolis next month. Because judges could be targets for retaliation from those who didn’t agree with their sentences or judgments, the government spared no expense on protection.

      Considering how seriously he took his obligations, Parker spared nothing of his expertise. That expertise was considerable and current. He’d been Special Ops in the Marines and still remained on call as part of a special training group. He loved the tactical end of the business. Unlike his father, he just didn’t want the military to be his whole life.

      He could easily live without the mayhem he’d encountered—and caused—in clandestine operations in certain Third World countries. But his heart and soul would always crave a challenge. That was why he hadn’t thought twice about taking the job with Bennington’s at its headquarters in Baltimore. Or about taking the promotion he’d been offered a couple of years later to coordinate the firm’s high-profile tactical projects. When he’d first signed on with the company, the novelty of the job, the varied and exotic locations and the firm’s exclusive clientele had been enough to keep him intrigued. Yet it hadn’t been long before he’d begun to miss using his psychological and technical skills. He missed strategizing. Mostly he missed the challenges that came with the bigger projects.

      The whinny of horses drifted on the early-evening breeze. Up ahead, emerging through the break in the high hedge, Ina waved to him.

      Seeing the maid Tess had dismissed reminded him that, for all practical purposes, he was her only employee. That alone warned him that challenges on this particular job wouldn’t be in short supply.

      His client’s unanticipated decision to attempt self-sufficiency was no longer on his mind when he returned to the house a half an hour later. Now that he had a general idea of the property’s layout, he remained totally preoccupied with his visual inspection of the back of the house as he approached it. The bad news was the number of balconies and French doors overlooking the admittedly beautiful grounds. Every one was a potential photography or entry point. The good news was that anyone trying to get up or down from them would probably break a body part if they fell.

      He walked in the back entrance, catching the screen door before it banged shut so he wouldn’t make noise if the boy was still asleep. Even before he’d cleared the utility room, with its walls of cabinets, he could see Tess at the island in the big kitchen.

      She’d raided the cook’s stash of cookbooks from the open bookcase in the hallway. The sizable collection sat in stacks on either side of where she leaned with her forearms on the white tile studying one of them.

      She looked up when he stopped in the doorway. The overhead lights caught shades of pale gold in the depths of the hair clasped at her nape. Pushing back the strands that had escaped in the breeze at the airport, she straightened.

      It was then he noticed that she’d kicked off her heels. Bright coral toenails peeked from beneath the hem of her slim white slacks. The gold chains she’d worn sat in a gleaming pool near a stack of three blue pottery plates topped by silverware wrapped in cloth napkins.

      “Is everything okay?” she asked.

      “Seems to be. Ed said there are no alarms on the perimeter of the property because of the wildlife, but the intrusion alarm for the main house and the garage goes off in his quarters and at the security company. He thinks it can take anywhere from two to ten minutes for the Camelot police to get here, depending on where their patrol cars are.”

      “Did he say something to make you think we’d need the police?”

      “If you mean has he seen paparazzi hanging around, no. Everything’s been quiet here this summer.”

      Her slender shoulders lowered with the breath she quietly exhaled.

      “Mind if I look around inside now?”

      Knowing the layout of the interior was essential to his work. He especially wanted to know the location of doors or any other possible points of access or egress. He wasn’t aware of any threats against any of the Kendricks, and according to Bennington’s files there had been no incidents involving kidnapping for ransom, revenge or recognition for someone seeking their fifteen minutes

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