Private Affair(19)
Or they could have come here afterward and been lucky enough to stay out of the range of the sensors until they decided to sneak up on the house. That would mean that whoever it was didn’t actually know that the property had been wired for motion detection. They’d come too close and set off the alarm. At least that part of the defensive strategy had been successful. Too bad Max hadn’t seen the barbed wire before plowing into it.
In the clearing, he played his light over the ground and saw nothing notable—except that the weeds had been beaten down by the vehicle’s tires. The marks were wide apart, probably from an SUV or a pickup truck.
It hadn’t rained in over a week, which meant the ground was too dry for the car to leave tracks, just impressions in the dust. But Max would come back here tomorrow anyway to have a look around in daylight.
With a shake of his head, he turned and started back toward the house, moving faster now that he wasn’t in danger. He was anxious to get back to Olivia.
“Jack Brandt,” he called out as he approached the house, using their agreed upon signal. And really, saying the password made sense since he could have gotten bushwhacked between calling her and coming back.
“Okay,” she answered. Then, “Uh—runway.”
A low light was on in the kitchen, and she opened the door before he reached it. He saw that she still had the gun in her hand, which showed that she hadn’t let her guard down.
As he stepped inside, she switched on the overhead light. He watched her take in his appearance, then drag in a sharp breath as the full impact hit her.
“Max, you’re hurt. What happened?”
“I got a little cut up, is all. It’s not bad.”
“With what?” she asked.
“Barbed wire.”
“How?”
“The bastard set a trap out there in the woods,” he said.
“It looks wicked. Come up to the bathroom where there’s more light.”
“In a minute. I want to check the surveillance output.”
“You think you’ll find anything?”
He made a dismissive sound. “Unfortunately, no. I’m betting the sneaky bastard didn’t get close enough to the house to get his picture taken. But I can’t dismiss the cameras out of hand.”
“You think it has to do with the murders?” she asked.
“I thought of some other possibilities while I was outside. But that was before I ran into the booby trap.”
Before she could ask more questions, he strode into the office and sat down at the desk, where he called up the surveillance program and scrolled back through the video to the point where the alarm had gone off. Leaning forward, he watched intently, but his gut feeling had been right. The guy hadn’t gotten close enough to the house to show up on camera.
Olivia was standing in back of him, watching the computer screen.
“He’s not there,” she murmured.
“Like I said.”
“Then come up and let me take care of those cuts.”
He would rather have taken care of the problem himself, yet he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it, either.
Chapter 7
Olivia saw Max hesitate. “You’re too macho to let me take a look at those cuts?” she inquired in a voice that she tried to make both quiet and challenging. “I mean, they’re on your face. You need to close your eyes to disinfect them.”
Turning, she walked down the hall, her breath shallow as she waited to see if he was following her. At first she heard nothing but the snick of the lock and realized he was securing the door. Still, she didn’t start breathing normally until she detected the sound of footsteps behind her.
She climbed the steps, reached the bathroom, and turned on the light.
Max followed her inside, and when she got a better look at him, she made a low sound.
“What?” he growled.
Wordlessly, she gestured toward the mirror over the sink, watching him take in his own appearance. There was a cut across his left eyebrow, perilously close to the eye, another one on the right side of his forehead a half inch farther up, and bloodstains on several places across the front of his T-shirt and on his arms, corresponding to tears in the fabric.
“I guess the shirt is going in the trash,” he muttered as he began to pull up the hem.
She watched him ease it over his head, being careful of the injuries, then turned away, opening the medicine cabinet and seeing only items that must have been there for years, like her father’s old shaving cream and deodorant.
“There’s nothing we can use,” she murmured.
“I have a first-aid kit in my bedroom.”
She nodded, watching him turn and stride down the hall. When he came back he was carrying his T-shirt and a metal box, which he set on the edge of the sink.