Chapter 5 - The Shadows in the Yard
Mave moved to her apartment window, keeping her body concealed behind the heavy linen drapes.
Outside, the estate gardens were bathed in the pale, cold moonlight. Everything appeared still at first glance, but as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw a flicker of movement near the line of pine trees bordering the eastern fence.
Two figures dressed in dark tactical gear were moving quietly along the perimeter wall, avoiding the sweeping paths of the main security spotlights. They carried long metallic cases and moved with military precision.
Not Gallagher’s men.
Gallagher’s guards wore charcoal suits and posted themselves near the main gates and front porch. These men were infiltrating.
Mave didn't panic. She threw on a dark jacket, slipped into her boots, and grabbed a heavy steel flashlight from her counter.
Instead of running down to the main house—which was three hundred yards away across an open, exposed lawn—she hurried down the internal spiral staircase that led directly into the attached kennel facility.
Inside the dark, climate-controlled kennels, Brutus was awake.
The giant dog was standing at the edge of his spacious indoor run, his body low, his thick tail stiff, a deep, silent vibration rattling in his chest. He smelled the intruders long before the security cameras picked them up.
"Shh," Mave whispered, slipping into his run.
Brutus didn't lunge at her. He pressed his broad side against her leg, his yellow eyes fixed entirely on the high, barred windows facing the east fence.
Mave grabbed his heavy leather harness—the reinforced working harness she had seen hanging in the prep room—and strapped it securely around his broad chest. She clipped a thick tactical lead to the back ring.
"Good boy," she murmured into his ear. "We're going to go check it out. Quiet. Keep it quiet."
She unlocked the side door of the carriage house, leading Brutus out into the shadow of the hedge rows.
Using the thick boxwood hedges as cover, Mave and the massive dog moved silently toward the eastern perimeter. Brutus moved like a ghost beside her, his heavy paws striking the grass without making a sound. The training Gallagher’s previous handlers had attempted had failed because they tried to dominate the dog; Mave was guiding him as a partner, tapping into his natural instinct to protect his territory.
Fifty yards away, near the electrical junction box that powered the estate’s thermal security grid, the two dark figures were kneeling. One was using an electronic bypass tool, trying to cut power to the main cameras.
"Just ten more seconds," one of the men whispered in a sharp, foreign accent. "Once the grid drops, the team at the gate moves in."
Mave felt Brutus tense beside her. Every muscle in the dog's 120-pound frame locked into lethal readiness.
She had two choices: run back and sound the alarm, which would give these men time to cut the power and ambush Gallagher in the dark, or use the monster beside her to shut it down now.
Mave leaned down, placing her lips right against Brutus’s folded ear.
"Fetch," she whispered.
She unclipped the lead.
Brutus didn't bark. He launched forward like a black missile released from a silo, crossing the fifty yards of open lawn in three terrifying seconds.
The intruder at the junction box barely had time to turn his head before a hundred and twenty pounds of fury slammed directly into his chest.
The man let out a choked gasp as he was smashed flat onto the grass, his electronic tools flying into the air. Brutus clamped down hard on the man's tactical vest, thrashing his head with brutal force.
The second intruder gasped, reaching for a suppressed pistol tucked into his thigh holster.
"Don't move!" Mave shouted, stepping out from the shadows of the hedge, shining the blinding five-hundred-lumen beam of her heavy steel flashlight directly into the gunman's eyes.
Blinded and disoriented, the second man instinctively shielded his face.
Before he could adjust his aim, a bright red laser dot painted the center of his chest.
THUD.
A heavy gunshot cracked through the night air from fifty yards away—not from Mave, but from the main house balcony.
The second intruder crumpled to the ground, shot cleanly through the shoulder.
Floodlights suddenly exploded across the entire estate, bathing the yards in blinding white light. Sirens began to wail from the main fortress, and within seconds, a dozen armed Romano enforcers poured out onto the lawn, led by Marco with his weapon drawn.
Gallagher strode down the hill, wearing a black trench coat over his clothes, a heavy semi-automatic pistol held at his side.
He stopped near the junction box, taking in the scene: one intruder bleeding from a gunshot wound, the second pinned flat on his back with Brutus standing over his chest, low growls vibrating from the dog's throat, and Mave standing calmly in her jacket, holding the heavy steel flashlight.
Gallagher looked at the disabled sabotage tools near the electrical box, then looked at Mave.
His dirty-ice eyes burned with an intense, fierce light in the white floodlights.
"They were trying to drop the power grid," Mave said simply, clicking off her flashlight. "Brutus stopped them."
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Gallagher stepped closer, looking down at the giant dog, then at the waitress who had just saved his life for the second time in three days.
"No," Gallagher said, his gravelly voice echoing over the wailing sirens. "You stopped them."
