"Yeah. Seeing how you been after my ass for five years, it is."
Garvin pulled into an illegal space in front of the Linwood house and leaped out. Otto crawled over the front seat, over Vic, and beat him out the passenger door. Vic cursed about dog hair, dog slobber, dog asses in his face. It was his way, Garvin realized, of keeping fear at bay. "Why the hell couldn't Sarah have picked a woman with a nice little Pekingese or something? No. She goes for the one with the frigging rottweiler. Hey—hey, come back heref
But Otto had already bounded up the walk and over the fence and was charging across the manicured lawn to the Linwood front entrance.
"Jesus," Vic breathed. "He looks like a demon straight out of hell."
Garvin felt a stab of fear. "Yes, he does."
Vic shot him a look. "Annie?"
"He must have picked up her scent. Let's go."
They ran. Halfway up the walk, Vic put a hand on Garvin's arm. "Maybe we shouldn't go in through the front. Bastard could be waiting for us."
Garvin nodded. "All right. We'll go in through the back." He glanced at the older man. "You up for this?"
"I'm an innocent man, MacCrae. All I ever did was fall for an heiress and teach her how to play poker, get her some money when she needed it. I may be five years late, but I'm willing to put it on the line to clear my name." He gave him a weak grin. "And I kinda like this Annie Payne character. You?"
"Yeah," Garvin said, his throat constricted, "me too."
They cut down the narrow yard to the back of the house.
Garvin approached the back door, Denardo on his heels. They'd lost Otto. "I don't have a key."
"I do," Vic said.
"I'm not even going to ask."
Denardo produced a set of keys, and thirty seconds later they were in. Wanting to keep noise to a minimum, Garvin deliberately left the door open. The rear entrance came in at the basement level, lower down on the hill, allowing for the panoramic view from the ballroom. He knew the way to the stairs, but Vic wriggled ahead of him, undaunted by the dark, the potential for wrong turns. Obviously, he'd been this way before. Vic Denardo and Sarah Linwood had carried on their affair right under her father's nose.
They took the stairs up to the main floor carefully, as quickly as they could without sounding like a stampede. The stairs let out in the butler's pantry. Staying close to the wall, they slipped down the hall.
Up ahead, Garvin could hear voices from the library. Neither he nor Vic had a weapon. Garvin didn't care. He would do what he had to do. And maybe he was getting ahead of himself. Maybe Annie wasn't there. Maybe it was just the new owners talking about wallpaper.
He and Vic made as little noise as possible as they stayed close to the wall and came up on the library door.
Garvin recognized Ethan Conninger's voice. His heart sank. If only Haley had come to him, told him the results of her investigation into Sarah's finances, but she'd only dropped hints. She wanted to know the depth of her gambling problem and confront her with the facts. But she'd found something she hadn't been looking for. Preoccupied and troubled, Haley had only said she needed more information before she could tell her husband everything.
She'd never gotten the chance.
"I'm a good shot," Ethan said from the library. "You won't suffer."
"What you are," Annie said, "is a coward who's too scared to face himself in the mirror. You just can't admit it. You want to think of yourself as the carefree playboy type, the urban sophisticate, the ultimate yuppie, but you're just a miserable chickenshit."
Eyebrows raised, Vic looked around at Garvin, who grimaced at her impolitic words. But Annie Payne was a Mainer who'd stood on the edge of the abyss before, and damned if she was going down without a fight.
Garvin shifted forward and peered around the door frame. Ethan had his back to the door, but Garvin could see the gun in his right hand, leveled at Annie. She looked remarkably unafraid for a woman in her position. But that was Annie Payne. An optimist in spite of what she'd seen of life's harsh realities. She wasn't naive or blind, only determined to carry on, no matter what.
"You know," Vic whispered against Garvin's back, "I wouldn't call somebody with a gun a chickenshit."
Garvin glared him into silence.
There was a sound behind them. Vic frowned. "What was that?"
"Hell," Garvin said under his breath, but he was already too late.
Out of nowhere—with no finesse or hesitation— Otto streaked past them in a blur of black fur and muscle. He charged into the library, not growling, not barking, just moving. His rottweiler genes had taken over.
"Holy shit," Vic breathed.
He and Garvin surged into the library together, but Otto was already pouncing on Ethan, sending him sprawling onto the floor, gun flying, Ethan screaming. Otto landed on him with the force of his powerful one-hundred-and-twenty-pound body.