Hard Fought (A Stepbrother Warriors Novel)(44)

He clears his throat uncomfortably. "Well, I better get back."

"Everything OK out here?" Carter says as he comes sprinting around the side of the house. "I was doing a check of the neighborhood and heard you on the walkie-talkie."

"Everything's fine," Roger confirms.

"I probably just let my imagination run away with me," I add, smiling weakly. "So silly of me. Sorry to waste all of your time."

"Well, just be a little more careful next time," Carter says gruffly.

"I said I was sorry," I reply. "I'm going back to my bedroom to lie down. Carter, please bring me a glass of water. I feel I'm getting dehydrated," I say archly.

Carter glares at me, and I almost smile. It's a bit fun to order him around, even if we're only playacting. I turn on my heel as though I'm in a huff and quickly make it back to my room. I sit on the edge of my bed, playing with a string coming off the edge of my towel. I hope Carter got what we needed, though at least we didn't get caught. A few minutes later, I hear the boat house door open and his footsteps on the stairs.

"Your water, madame," he says with a small bow, presenting me with a glass of ice water.

"Thank you. I actually am thirsty," I say, taking a long sip. "You find anything?"

With a grin, Carter produces a thumb drive from his pocket. "I think this should be it. Let's see," he says, turning to my laptop. He slips it into the USB port and scrolls through several files. "There, that's the date that Bree was injured," he says, clicking on the nondescript file.

A Quicktime window pops up and I lean down next to him. The image is black and white, but surprisingly clear, and shows four different views of the neighborhood at once. Three are of the street, and one is of the security entrance. Even before my father upgraded all the security, the neighborhood association didn't scrimp on safety issues. There's no sign of Bree, but Carter pauses the film.

"See this car? It was let into the front gate five minutes ago but is still just driving around. It has the decal to get it past security, but it seems odd." He presses play again, and soon a young woman appears in the corner of a screen. She has a hat on, but it looks like it could be Bree.

"Look!" I gasp, pointing as the car turns so that it's following Bree. I feel Carter tense beside me as the car speeds up, and Bree glances behind her. She jumps out of the way as the car guns its engine toward her, and we can just see her limp body in the corner of the screen as she lies on the side of the road. "So the car didn't hit her."

"Wait," Carter says, pointing to the passenger side of the car. A short man gets out and hurries to Bree's inert body, keeping his head tucked low. He reaches his arm behind him and stops as he looks down at her, then turns and appears to say something to the driver. Then he hurries back to the car and it peels out. A moment later, it's pulling back out of the security gate.

"I'm confused," I admit. "Why'd they just run her off the road?" Carter doesn't answer, but rewinds the tape to the moment just before the car speeds up. We watch again as the man comes around the side of the vehicle. Carter pauses it as he reaches his right arm behind his back.

"He looks sort of familiar..." I murmur, leaning close to the screen. The image isn't quite crisp enough to jog my memory. "You know, I think he's just got one of those faces, doesn't he? The kind that just blends in. And maybe this sounds stupid, but I thought we were looking for someone Mexican."

"El Nuevo Muerto wouldn't send one of their own up to a country where he wouldn't even be a native speaker. He'd stick out like a sore thumb. I'm sure they outsourced it to someone local. I bet with your father's connections, he knows someone in law enforcement, and I might be able to run this image through their databases, see if I can get a name."

"Not that he'd let you use those connections," I point out. "We're not supposed to know anything about this." I turn back to the screen. "Why's he reaching behind himself like that?"

"He's going for his gun. I'd recognize that move anywhere," he says grimly.

"So why doesn't he use it?"

"I don't know... it looks like he's studying her, doesn't it?" he asks, playing the next few seconds of the tape.

"She's wearing a hat," I murmur, a sinking feeling in my stomach. "And they came up from behind her. So maybe they thought she was someone else, and then they realized that they had the wrong person."

Carter looks up at me. "William said El Nuevo Muerto targets their enemies' children...Bree had just moved in to the house, so they probably had no idea who she was. So maybe they were actually looking for—"