She sighed. Mitch O’Brien, her ex-fiancé. Their engagement had lasted three years, until Allison finally admitted that her failure to set a wedding date wasn’t mere procrastination. It had been nearly eight months since their amicable breakup, but ever since he’d called three months ago to congratulate her on the adoption, he’d made a habit of calling every Monday night. Allison didn’t mind, though when she’d told him she hoped they could remain friends, she didn’t exactly mean best friends.
“So how’s little Miss America?” he asked.
“That was last week. This week she’s best actor.”
“You mean best actress.”
“We’ll see about that,” she said coyly.
A happy gurgle crackled over the baby monitor. Emily seemed to concur.
Allison smiled. “Actually, she’s so chatty lately I may groom her to replace Oprah in 2010. How’s this for her first show? Michael Crichton and Martha Stewart jointly touting their delicious new cure for cancer.”
Mitch laughed, then changed the subject. He was soon fishing to see how things were going in the dating department. She did have a new “significant other,” though a long-distance relationship with a man who lived in New York hardly seemed significant compared to what was in the next room. Allison was tuning out, focusing instead on the happy sounds of her baby transmitted by the monitor. To all else she was nearly oblivious—to Mitch’s words, to the passage of time.
To anything in the world that didn’t revolve around Emily.
“The Taker” was getting interference. He’d been parked at the end of Royal Oak Court for over ninety minutes, where the radio signal had been strong and clear. A steady chorus of gurgles and sighs, followed by intermittent snorts—the infantile version of sawing logs. Now, the airwaves were filled with annoying static, peppered with an occasional lapse into inane conversation between Allison Leahy and Mitch O’Brien.
She’s on a cordless phone, he realized. The combined radio frequencies were screwing up the signal he’d intercepted from the Leahy’s baby monitor.
He switched off the digital electronic scanner on the dashboard. The crackling stopped. The van was dark and silent. He cracked the driver-side window to release stale cigarette smoke, then crushed out his Camel in the overflowing ashtray. The blinking orange light on the console said the miniature cassette tape was still recording. He hit the stop button, then eject. He had all the recorded cooing and baby grunts he needed—nearly ninety minutes worth, counting the audiotape he’d made on last week’s stakeout.
Thanks to his earlier handiwork, the streetlight was out on the corner, leaving the Leahy residence in a shroud of darkness. He removed his sport shirt and slipped the top half of a hooded Nomex body suit over his torso. It fit like a wet suit, a sleek and perfect nighttime complement to his black jeans and black sneakers. He checked himself in the rearview mirror and covered his face with black greasepaint. His camouflage complete, he wiped his hands and pulled on black rubber gloves. He never used leather. Animal skin left its own set of distinctive patterns, like fingerprints. Quietly, he stepped down from the van.
The ranch-style house sat toward the back of a heavily wooded quarter-acre lot. A thick, ten-foot-high hedge enclosed the yard for privacy. Beneath the twisted limbs of towering oak trees, a curved front walk stretched seventy-five feet from street to doorstep. He selected the tallest oak, the one closest to the house, then quietly broke through the hedge and started up the tree. In a matter of seconds he was stretched out on a long limb that hovered over the roof. Gently, he lowered himself onto the cedar shingles.
With three silent steps he reached the chimney. He knew from an earlier drive-by that the alarm box was fastened on the back of the chimney. It was the size of a large lunch box, painted gray. It was padlocked, but it had slats on the front that allowed the noise to escape when the alarm sounded. He zipped open his pouch and removed a spray can, then fastened a six-inch plastic straw to the nozzle. The straw fit perfectly between the slats on the alarm box. He pressed the nozzle, unleashing a stream of white foam insulation that expanded to fill the entire box. It hardened in seconds. The alarm was silenced without cutting a wire.
He stuck the spray can back in his pouch, zipped it up quickly, and climbed back