Night Prey

the door. Koop knew the system: typically magneto-offset doors, usually with motion detectors sweeping the first floor.
    If the detectors were tripped, they’d automatically dial out to an alarm service after a delay of a minute to two minutes. The alarm service would make a phone check, and if not satisfied, would call the cops. If the phone wires were cut, an alarm would go off at the monitoring service. If other phones in the neighborhood weren’t out, the cops would be on their way.
    Which didn’t make the place impossible. Not at all. For one thing, Posey had a dog, an old Irish setter. The setter was often in the front window, even when Posey wasn’t home. If there was a motion detector, it was either turned off or it only guarded the parts of the house that the dog couldn’t get to.
    He would wait until Posey left and then go straight in, Koop decided. No hiding, nothing subtle. Smash and grab.
    Koop was in no condition for subtlety. He thought about Sara Jensen all the time. Reran his mental tapes. He would see her in another woman—with a gesture or a certain step, a turn of the head.
    Jensen was a sliver under the skin. He could try to ignore her, but she wouldn’t go away. Sooner or later, he’d have to deal with her. Bodyguards or no bodyguards.
    But Koop knew something about the ways of cops. They’d watch her for a while, and then, when nothing happened, they’d be off chasing something else.
    The only question was, could he wait?
     
     
     
    AT EIGHT-THIRTY, KOOP stopped at a downtown parking garage. He followed a Nissan Maxima up the ramp, parked a few slots away from it, got slowly out of the truck. The Maxima’s owners took the elevator; Koop took the plates off the Maxima.
    He carried them back to the truck, stepped out of sight for a moment when another car came up the ramp, then clipped the stolen plates on top of his own with steel snap-fasteners. A matter of two minutes.
    Posey had an active social life and went out almost every night, mostly to sports bars. Koop checked by calling, calling again, calling a third time, never getting an answer, before heading back to the house.
    The night was warm, humid, and smelled like cut grass. The whole neighborhood hummed with the air conditioners tucked in at the sides of the houses. Windows and doors would be closed, and he could get away with a little more noise, if he had to.
    Four blocks from Posey’s, a group of teenagers, three girls, two boys, stood on a street corner smoking, long hair, long shirts hung out over their jeans, looking at him with narrowed eyes as he passed in the truck.
    A few porch lights were still on, yellow and white, and the sound of easy-listening music seeped from an open, lit garage. There were cars—not many—parked on the street; the neighborhood was too affluent for that.
    He cruised the house. It looked right—Posey usually left two lights on when he was out. Koop had an eight-ball with him: he did a hit, then another, got his tools from under the passenger seat, and drove back to the house. Pulled into the driveway. Waited a second, watching the curtains, checking the street, picked up his tools and got out, walked up to the front door, and rang the doorbell.
    The dog barked; the bark was loud, audible in the street. Nobody came to the door. The dog kept barking. Koop walked back down the front of the house, checked the neighborhood one last time, then walked down the side of the garage.
    The side of the garage was windowless, and faced the windowless garage next door. Between them, he couldn’t be seen. The backyard, though, was different, potentially dangerous. He stopped at the corner of the garage and scanned the houses on the next street, facing Posey’s. There were lights, and a man reading a newspaper behind a picture window two houses down. Okay. . . .
     
     
     
    KOOP WORE A jogging suit, the jacket open over a white T-shirt. In the hand-warmer pocket he carried a pair of driving gloves. A sailing compass, called a “hockey puck,” was stuffed in one glove, a small plastic flashlight in the other. He carried an eighteen-inch crowbar down his pants’ leg, the hook over the waistline of the pants.
    He waited two minutes, three, his heartbeat holding up, then zipped the jacket and pulled on the gloves. Nearly invisible, he edged around the corner of the house until he was standing behind a dwarf spruce, looking up at the first balcony.
    The bottom of the balcony was eight feet overhead. He