As he paced back and forth, the protection officer tasked with watching Roxana raised his hand to strike her twice, but both times he lowered it before hitting her. Finally, he just sat down in front of her, his hand fingering the butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster, and he stared at her with pure malevolence.

But Roxana didn’t care. She felt better now. Yes, she would probably die today, but it didn’t matter now, because before she left Charlotte Cage hiding in the pool house, Roxana had used the teen’s phone to send a very short but very informative text to her sister.

9102 Jovenita Canyon Drive. Director is Ken Cage. Ten men with guns here. Whatever happens—I love you. Do not reply.

And then she’d returned to the main house.

Roxana knew that if she escaped, Cage and the others would flee the property immediately. No, she had to wait, to buy time for Talyssa, even if waiting meant dying.

FIFTY-THREE

   I disconnect the call with Talyssa, repeat the address she just gave me out loud, and then Rodney types it into Google Maps on his phone. Even before it comes up he says, “Jovenita Canyon? That’s up in the Hollywood Hills.”

We look at the satellite map, zoom in on the place, and see a large Italianate mansion that looks like it must be worth fifty million bucks. The property is positioned on a steep hill, the grounds around it are meticulously sculptured, and a detached pool house looks like it’s twice the size of the home I grew up in.

A.J. says, “We’re really gonna hit a mansion in Hollywood? Cops will be all over the place. If the bad guys don’t get us, then five-oh will.”

Carl adds, “LAPD helicopters fill the skies down there. I can insert you boys, but it will be a one-way trip for all of us.”

Both men are right, of course. With a shrug, I say, “I’m going in, with or without you guys.”

Kareem chuckles a little as he fingers the bloody bandage on his shoulder. “Settle down, hero. You ain’t the only dude here that wants to do the right thing.” He looks at Carl and his two surviving teammates. “For Shep, we’re gonna see this to the end.”

Carl, A.J., and Rodney agree.

The wiry Vietnam vet starts walking over towards the helicopter now. “We’re skids up in three minutes, fellas.”

A.J., Rodney, Kareem, and I turn back to the satellite image, and we all get to work on making a hasty plan to hit the mansion.

* * *

• • •

Fourteen minutes later the last of the bags were loaded into the Mercedes SUVs. Cage grabbed a small framed photo of him and his entire family off his desk and carried it in his hands through the expansive foyer towards the front door. Both Jaco Verdoorn and Claudia Riesling moved along with him, and Sean Hall walked just a couple steps behind, next to Maja, who was being led by one of his men.

Hall pulled his phone out and checked the time, and when he did so he realized he’d missed a text from Charlotte. In a sudden panic he remembered he’d agreed to take her surfing this morning, but quickly he relaxed, knowing that her mom had told her to stay well clear of the house.

But when he tapped the text to look at it, the panic returned.

“Oh, shit,” he said, and he slowed, then stopped. Charlotte was waiting for him right now back at the pool house.

Cage kept walking with the rest of the group nearing the front door.

Hall started to call out to his employer, but then he turned his head at a faint noise.

Helicopters are common in the skies over Los Angeles, so no one in the entourage had paid any attention to the thumping rotor sound till it echoed louder than usual along Jovenita Canyon Drive, bouncing off the higher hills in front of the house and rolling in from all directions.

Cage stopped at the front door, Hall’s men around him, Jaco standing at the Director’s side.

Sean was frozen in place in the grand entry hall of the mansion, recognizing that the helo was low, it was racing closer, and it was right now shooting over the rear of the property.

Then the helicopter flew over the mansion itself, towards the front of the home, its rotor noise vibrating paintings on the walls.

Verdoorn reached out and grabbed Cage by the shoulder and brought him back away from the door, then leaned back out and looked for the source of the thunderous noise. There was nothing in front of him but Hollywood Hills and megamansions, but then a red helicopter suddenly shot over his head, not fifty feet in the air.

He’d not seen the aircraft that attacked the night before at Rancho Esmerelda, but this one sounded identical to him.

He reached for his waistband, and as he pulled out his HK pistol, several small objects, each the size of a soup can, bounced right in front of him on the drive between the front door and the row of Mercedes SUVs.

Red smoke poured from the canisters as they bounced on the stone drive, billowing quickly in all directions.

Verdoorn started shouting orders, Cage’s men began rushing forward, and Sean watched twenty-five feet away through the growing cloud of red smoke while the helo pulled up steeply and transitioned to a hover over the steep front drive. Bodyguards and White Lion men raised weapons to shoot at it, but rifles began barking from inside the helicopter, so the men abandoned their counterattack and sought cover.

One of Sean’s men was already outside the home, on the other side of the row of three Mercedes; he fired on the threat with his handgun but was cut down by rifle fire before he got a second shot off.

And then the smoke became too thick to see the chopper hovering over the driveway.

Verdoorn yanked Cage down onto his back in the foyer and rolled him away, while Duiker, one of Verdoorn’s two surviving operatives, took a round through the forearm and tumbled back, writhing in agony as blood spurted from him.

Sean and his men had pistols and submachine guns. Loots had a rifle, but no one dared return to the doorway. Instead some men took up positions in windows in the front room and the library, eyes peering around walls, searching for a target in the impenetrable red smoke, while Hall and others ran forward to get to Cage so they could move him to safety.

* * *

• • •

   Two minutes ago Carl dove his AS350 towards sea-level Hollywood, then turned the nose away from the downtown LA skyline and back towards the Hollywood Hills. He followed the incline, low and fast, towards the rear of Cage’s mansion on Jovenita Canyon Drive.

A.J. and I stood outside the cabin on the starboard side, with Rodney and Kareem opposite us on the port-side skids.

Carl nearly caught a set of power lines with the skids on the ingress, and a few seconds after this I was certain we were going to plow into a glass-and-steel luxury home. We missed the flat roof by five feet, and then I saw the target location right in front of us, higher on the hill. I reached into the cabin of the helo with both hands, letting my rope lifeline hold me there, my boots on the skids. From a cardboard box I retrieved a pair of M-18 smoke grenades and pulled the pins one by one, and thick red smoke burst from the bottom of each.