Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)(3)

“Maybe that’s what we need,” Duncan said. “Though I am in no hurry for this assignment to end.”

“It’s a bore,” Eve said.

She made the comment just as they pulled into the pressed-concrete faux-cobblestone driveway of their two-story house, which they’d told neighbors they were renting until they could build a new home in Malibu. It was on a corner lot and had a low stucco wall around the front perimeter for decorative purposes rather than for providing any privacy or security.

Eve got out and walked around to the other side of the Rolls to get the grocery bag and the walker out of the back seat. Duncan didn’t actually need the walker, but she wanted to play it safe. She didn’t know who might be watching. There were gardeners working next door. A pool man’s truck was parked across the street. An Amazon truck cruised up the hill. She opened his door and held the walker for him.

Duncan slipped his feet back into his shoes, got out of the car, and smiled. “I could stay here until my retirement party.”

“This is your retirement party.”

Eve walked past him to unlock the front door, which was mostly glass and ineffective from a security standpoint. Not only could the glass be broken, allowing easy access to the dead bolt and doorknob, but anybody walking up to the door could see the marble foyer, the grand staircase, and the two-story great room with its massive windows that looked out over a lagoon-style pool, waterfall, and the homes on the opposite ridge.

They went inside, and Eve typed the alarm code into the keypad on the wall. It deactivated the alarm and also alerted the sheriff’s deputy assigned to watch them at Lost Hills station that they’d arrived home. Eve and Duncan also waved at the camera in the entry hall, one of a dozen throughout the house that were being monitored by the deputy at his computer screen. As an extra precaution, Eve and Duncan each had a tiny key fob in their pocket that, if pressed, activated all the hidden microphones in the house and alerted the observing deputy that they were in danger. Armed backup would be there in five minutes or less.

Duncan left the walker in the hallway as they went to the enormous kitchen, which was larger than Eve’s Calabasas condo and had a marble island with a dozen barstools around it. They sat down at the island and started unpacking the grocery bag from Bristol Farms, though the wine would go untouched, along with all the other alcohol they’d bought over the last four days. They were on duty 24/7 during this assignment.

“I don’t know why you’re whining,” Duncan said as he unwrapped his sandwich. “Living in this big house has got to be better than your room at the Hilton Garden Inn.”

She’d been staying at the hotel while her condo was being gutted and renovated after the fatal shooting that had occurred there, though, as time went on, she wasn’t entirely sure that she could ever move back. Eve went to the giant subzero refrigerator, took out a Diet Coke for each of them, and used her hip to close the door.

“This doesn’t feel like police work to me.” She handed him his Diet Coke.

“It’s an undercover assignment,” he said, popping open the can. “The problem is you can’t stand the luxury.”

“I feel like I’m being intentionally exiled.”

Eve picked up the iPad that was on the island and checked out the security camera video feeds, just to be doing something productive. The iPad screen was divided into a dozen screens, each with a different live feed.

There weren’t any cameras mounted outside, to make the place seem like easy pickings, but there were plenty of them hidden inside, strategically aimed at the windows to show them, and the deputy on duty at Lost Hills, all sides of the house. One camera in the guest bedroom upstairs showed them a view of the back hillside, all the way down to the golf course and Parkway Calabasas, while another in the master bathroom gave them a view of the front yard. Other cameras in the house were placed to record video and audio that would be used as evidence if they were ever robbed.

“You’re being eased back into active duty after being seriously injured on the job,” Duncan said, talking with his mouth full. “But don’t fool yourself. This is a big case. The department is spending a fortune on it. If it doesn’t pay off in another day or two, we’ll be back in our cubicles at Lost Hills and you’ll miss this.”

“You mean that you will. You’re getting paid to ride around in a Rolls-Royce, eat free food, and sit in a plush home theater all day watching westerns.”

Duncan washed down a mouthful of corned beef and sourdough with some Diet Coke. “Would you feel better if we were undercover as homeless people, eating rancid scraps from garbage cans and living in cardboard boxes on urine-soaked dirt beside a freeway off-ramp?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You’re just feeling guilty because soon you could be living like this.”

She unwrapped her sandwich. “Never.”

“You just optioned your life story as a TV series.”

The first episode would probably begin with her off-duty arrest of a violent movie star, hero of the globally successful Deathfist movies, and the viral video of the takedown that was shot by onlookers. It would tell how she’d leveraged her popularity with the public, during a time when the LASD was embroiled in scandal and bad press, to get the sheriff to promote her from a lowly deputy to the robbery-homicide division just to keep her at the front of the news cycle. And it would cover her first murder case, the capture of a killer who’d slaughtered a family.