Edge

though they would deter only people who didn’t know about sensors on fences. The grounds themselves weren’t monitored everywhere, though atkey approaches (not necessarily the obvious ones) there were weight sensors buried in the dirt. Of course, the whole place was amply covered by video cameras, some obvious, some not. I’d activated an employee, what we call spectators, or specs, that morning to begin monitoring the place. Ours sit in West Virginia, in a dim room, and watch TV screens all day long and—though they don’t admit it—listen to really loud music, usually headbanging. They can do so because our cameras aren’t miked. That takes too much bandwidth. Someday we’ll be able to afford both, and the specs’ll lose their sound tracks. But for now, it’s silent movies of the compound and Def Leppard coming from the speakers.
    I called the spec assigned to us and he answered immediately.
    “We’re here,” I said, though he knew that since he’d been watching us for the past five minutes.
    It was quiet, he reported. He’d seen nothing suspicious.
    “Where’re the deer?”
    “Where the deer should be.”
    Because of this job and some other aspects of my life, I’ve learned a lot about wildlife—for instance, what intimidates deer and other animals and why. I’ve told my specs—and protégés—always to watch for patterns of animal behavior that might give away clues as to intrusion. I’d actually lectured on this at professional conferences. An uneasy badger saved the life of one of my principals a year ago, alerting us to a hitter’s presence.
    “No funny business with nearby traffic either,” was the spec’s twangy comment. I’d never met the man but I had some impressions. Given hisresidence in the mountains of West Virginia, his accent and his taste for heavy metal, how could I not?
    I thanked him and punched in the code to the front gate, which swung open and a nearly invisible but impressive tire strip receded into the ground. We headed through the stockade fence and up the winding drive, which was about a hundred feet long. Garcia and Ahmad were looking around, carefully, as were Maree and the still alert Ryan Kessler, who I believed had snuck a drink or two. Joanne glanced out the window as if she were looking at a month-old magazine in a doctor’s waiting room.
    I parked and we got out. Beside the front door—looking like wood but reinforced steel—I opened a panel and typed on the keypad below a small LCD screen. The program confirmed via motion, sound and thermal sensors that the house was completely unoccupied (it can identify a beating human heart but won’t bother me with the sound of a river rat nosing about for food or the water heater coming to life). I unlocked the door and stepped inside, then temporarily disabled the alarm; it would reactivate once we were inside and then would lock, though there was a panic button that would allow anyone inside to open it in the event of fire or intrusion. The same was true of most windows, which otherwise would open only six inches.
    I got the lights on and the heat going—the temperature had dipped—and then I booted up our bank of security monitor screens, which mirrored the ones in West Virginia. Next the secure computer server. I checked to see that the shielded landlines were working. Finally, I verified that thegenerators were armed; they’d come on automatically if an intruder cut the main line.
    I showed the principals briefly around the musty ground floor.
    “Oh, neat!” Maree said, striding up to a number of old, sepia-tinted photographs on the wall, ignoring shelves of books and magazines and, yes, board games, though not ones I’d donated. Looking at the younger sister’s giddy expression, I tried to recall when I’d had a principal who could so quickly forget that she’d been part of a shootout an hour earlier. Never, I decided.
    I explained about food, beverages, the TV. Like a bellboy. I took the Kesslers to their room on this floor in the back, Maree to hers next to it. The young woman seemed impressed. “You’re redeeming yourself, Mr. Tour Guide,” she said. She offered me a dollar as a tip, a joke, I guessed. I didn’t know how to respond and so I ignored the odd gesture. She offered another pout.
    Ahmad, Garcia and I would sleep in shifts, with two guards always awake and on duty. The shepherd’s bedroom was a small one on the ground floor, between the front door and the bedrooms for the