“Miss Harrison?” Someone called from downstairs. “Tarzana Police.”
Neil loosened his hold and held her face in one hand.
Real fear traced Neil’s brow. He tried to smile and failed miserably.
“Miss Harrison?”
“Up here,” Neil answered for her.
The heavy feet of the officer made it up the stairs. He glanced briefly at the door and then at the two of them. The officer, a kid not much older than twenty-five, looked around the room.
“Miss Harrison?”
Gwen nodded, not trusting herself to speak just yet. Neil still held her and she wasn’t about to push away.
“I understand you saw the bodies and notified the police.”
“I was on the phone with her and sounded the alarm by remote access,” Neil said.
The officer raised a questioning brow. “Remote access?”
“That’s right.”
Gwen’s gaze slid to her blinds.
The officer moved into the room and looked out the window. “You can’t miss that. You spy on your neighbors often, Miss Harrison?”
Neil’s arm tightened around her. “You’re out of line, officer.” The anger in Neil’s voice was thinly reined.
“Duly noted, Mr.…?”
“MacBain,” he answered. “C’mon, Gwen, let’s get you out of this room.”
Gwen was still shaking as she made her way downstairs with Neil holding her up.
When she closed her eyes, she saw her neighbors bobbing in the bubbling water. How long would she live with that image as company?
Neil perched himself at the edge of the couch and sat her down beside him.
Another officer had made his way into the house. “Are you the homeowners?”
“I am.”
“You reported the bodies?”
Gwen blinked twice. “So they are dead?”
The officer looked at Neil and nodded once.
Bloody hell.
The officer upstairs called his colleague.
“I need to talk to the police. Are you going to be OK here?” Neil asked.
Gwen wrapped her robe closer to her body. “I’ll be fine.”
“Where’s your cell phone?”
“In my purse, why?”
“I need you to call Eliza, get Carter on the phone if you can. I need him to clear a path for me to see what happened over there with my own eyes.”
Gwen cringed. “Clear a path? I don’t understand. It’s probably an unfortunate accident.”
Neil looked around the room, spotted her purse, and brought it to her. “Just call her.”
Eliza’s voice might help to calm her down, even if Gwen had no idea why Neil insisted on sticking his nose into the investigation.
While Gwen removed her phone from her purse, Neil walked up the stairs to the officers in her bedroom.
The phone rang twice before Eliza picked up. “Hey, Lady…what has you calling this—”
“Eliza?” Gwen heard the distress in her own voice.
“Oh, no, what’s wrong?”
Gwen closed her eyes; saw the bodies. “My neighbors…they’re, they’re…”
“They’re what, honey?”
She swallowed. “Dead.”
Eliza gasped.
“I was washing dishes. Neil called, pissing about the monitors in the backyard.” Recalling the events now made her remember the distress in his voice. More than normal.
“And?”
“The monitors have been acting up a lot. They don’t work when the neighbors are in their hot tub for some reason.”
“The naked neighbors?”
Naked and dead neighbors. Gwen sucked in her bottom lip and refused to let tears surface. “Neil told me to go check if they were in the tub. I was pissing mad at him, Eliza. Ordering me around. I told him it was the last time I was running up stairs to look down at my neighbors. And then…then I looked. Then the house alarm went off, and Neil was ordering me to lock the door and wait for him.”
“Oh God, Gwen. That’s awful.”
“Neil needs to talk to Carter. Is he there?”
“He’s not. But I’ll call him and tell him to call Neil’s phone right away.”
“OK…thanks, Eliza.”
“I’ll call you right back.”
Eliza hung up and Gwen held her phone in her lap. Lights flashed out her front and back windows.
Two people were dead. Gwen wasn’t sure she could live in this house alone after all.
“You noticed something abnormal on the surveillance system?” the sarcastic, wet-behind-the-ears cop asked.
Neil lied. “Yes.”
“What?”
“I’ll have my assistant make a digital file for you to examine.” What Neil needed right now was to get out of the bedroom and over the fence into the neighbors’ yard to check out the scene himself.
“Did you know the victims?”
“No.”
“Miss Harrison?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“Who are you to Miss Harrison?”
Neil narrowed his eyes. “Her security.”
“This is hardly an upscale neighborhood, Mr. MacBain. Sounds like the security system you have here and the surveillance is over-the-top.”
Neil’s jaw twitched. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to investigate the scene.”
“Private security isn’t cleared, Mr. MacBain. I’m sure you know that.”
Neil clenched his fist.
The cell phone ringing in his pocket directed his attention somewhere else and kept him from committing a felony.
“MacBain,” he answered.
“Neil? It’s Carter. What’s going on?”
Neil turned his back to the cops. “Gwen’s neighbors are dead.”
“That’s what Eliza just said.”
“Mr. MacBain, this is an active scene, we don’t—”
“I need clearance from whoever’s in charge of Tarzana PD to check out the scene. And I need it before they f**k it up over there.”
The officers looked at each other with slight smiles on their lips.
Cocky kids.
Neil heard Carter talking to someone before he got back on the phone. If anyone could arrange his clearance, it would be the governor.
“I have someone on it. Eliza just called Dean.” Good. Dean was a detective with the LAPD, and a close friend of Eliza’s. “Do you think it’s a homicide?” asked Carter.
“I won’t know until I look. Hope the hell not.”