Daemon

the trigger. Some pension fund loser bent on revenge. Tonight’s intruders sounded more serious.
    ‘Tony!’
    He turned to her. ‘Relax. Somebody tried to break in.’ Hollis got out of bed and put on his slippers and a robe.
    ‘Where are you going? I don’t want to be left alone!’
    ‘Don’t be a pain in the ass. They caught the guy. I just need to take a piss.’ He ignored her frightened look and headed to the master bathroom.
    He nudged the door closed behind him, turned on the lights,and padded across the Italian marble floor, headed toward the walk-in wardrobe. He opened twin doors to enter a sizeable room lined with H. Huntsman and Leonard Logsdail suits and rows of Edward Green and Berluti shoes.
    Hollis avoided his reflection in the wrap-around mirrors as he closed the doors behind him. Yes, he felt a twinge of conscience, but then, he didn’t really know this girl. He hadn’t done a backgrounder on her yet, and he wasn’t about to bring her into his secure room. She could be a plant. People were capable of anything for money.
    Hollis walked quickly to the far wall and opened the faceplate of a wall-mounted digital thermostat. It revealed an alphanumeric keypad where he tapped in his security code – the exact amount of his first investment. A section of the wooden wall rolled aside, revealing a hidden room whose lights flickered on automatically. The door was solid steel, nearly six inches thick – the reinforced concrete walls of his secure room were even thicker. A sign of the times.
    He moved inside and tapped a large red pressure switch near the door. The opening slid closed and locked with a dull
boom
. A large bank of security monitors glowed to life on the far side of the room above a security console. From here he could watch the action through dozens of security cameras. There was also a dedicated emergency phone line, a radio base station, and a house phone. The room also had a sofa, a wet bar, and flat screen television – not to mention shelves of emergency provisions and a narrow door leading to a Spartan rest-room.
    Hollis had everything he needed to await rescue.
    The house phone rang, and he tapped the speakerphone button as he clicked through monitors, trying to find the service gate cameras. ‘Talk to me.’
    Metzer’s voice came over the speaker.
‘Can you get a dial tone on your emergency line?’
    Hollis grabbed the emergency phone and held it to his ear.Nothing. Some cultural instinct compelled him to stab repeatedly at the hook switch. ‘It’s dead. This was supposed to be a buried cable. How did they know where it was, Metzer?’
    Hollis heard talking in the background. Then Metzer came back on.
‘We’ll talk about that later. Right now I’ve got men missing, and motion detectors in alarm all over the estate. I’m pulling everyone back into a perimeter around the master suite.’
    ‘How did these people get through the gates?’ On one of the security monitors Hollis was staring at the estate’s front entrance, which stood wide open.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘It’s your
job
to know! I wasn’t supposed to ever
need
this room, damnit.’ He fumed for a moment then added, ‘Send someone up to get Mary.’
    ‘She’s not with you?’
    ‘I can’t have her in here. Just put her in a closet or something. And figure out a way to contact the police. I don’t care if you have to use fucking smoke signals!’ He hung up and kept flipping through security monitors. He’d spent a fortune on security, and he wasn’t getting much of a return on his investment. He was going to sack the entire security team after this was over – starting with Metzer.
    As Hollis cycled through cameras, the monitors showed various rooms on a dozen screens – multi-car garage, pool patio, pub room, dining room, driveway …
    He stopped cold. In the middle of the driveway one of Metzer’s suited security men lay in a pool of blood, still clutching a submachine gun. His head was missing.
    ‘Jesus Christ!’ Hollis picked up the house phone and dialed Metzer’s extension. It rang several times and went to voice mail. Hollis pressed the call button on the radio base station but heard nothing but static. ‘Fuck!’
    Then the power went out.
    Here in the safe room backup batteries instantly kicked on, but on the security monitors he saw most of the lights kickoff around the estate. Now only interior emergency lighting remained. Outside was blackness.
    Hollis clicked around the