He knew it was unlikely anything would actually happen here, but his training said to prepare for the unexpected. He was the bait in the trap, but the rat was never intended to actually get the cheese. The act of looking for his location would trigger the trap.
Still . . . shit happened.
If it were just him, he wouldn’t mind, but he had Bo to consider.
The simplest approach usually had the highest degree of success. The more complicated a plan became, the more details could go wrong. In this case, the simplest approach would be to come up the driveway. The very length of the drive itself was part of what made it the most likely; anyone could get far enough from the road to be out of sight from both road and house.
He couldn’t turn the house into a bunker; it simply wasn’t feasible to bury the entire house, or reinforce walls and windows and doors. Nor was it feasible to dig an underground escape tunnel, not when weighed against the likelihood of anything actually happening, how long it would take, how much it would cost.
There were real-world, more reasonable approaches he could take.
He didn’t talk it over with Bo because he knew she’d kick up a fuss—either that or come to the not unreasonable conclusion that he hadn’t told her everything she should know about the level of danger. He and Axel had definitely downplayed that part of the situation, but neither of them had exactly lied.
Logically, the townsfolk would be fine. Only an idiot would try to take him out in town, where there would inevitably be a bunch of witnesses and someone to interfere. No, if trouble came, it would come here, to Bo’s house.
There were commonsense measures to take that wouldn’t involve turning the house into a bunker. He called a security company and made an appointment for a salesman to come out, listen to what he wanted, and give him a price. Because he wasn’t stupid, he waited until the day of the appointment to tell Bo.
She was working at her computer, but at his words she swiveled her chair around to face him. “You did what?” she demanded, annoyance in both expression and tone. “Don’t you think you should have talked this over with me first?”
“No,” he said baldy. “I knew you’d balk, just like you’re doing now.”
“I already have a security system.”
“You have an alarm on the doors and windows. You need more.”
Some of the things he liked best about her were that she was logical and reasonable and organized. Unfortunately, that meant she immediately came to the logical and reasonable conclusion he hadn’t wanted her to reach. “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked, her dark eyes narrowed. “If you can’t be traced here, why do I need beefed-up security?”
“Because things can always go wrong. What I’m thinking of is stuff you should have anyway, such as security cameras. You live out here by yourself; you need to be able to see what’s in the yard before you take Tricks out at night. You need motion-sensor lights. I’m paying for this, and I’m putting it in. If you don’t like it, after I’m gone you can have it taken out.”
She glared at him and finally muttered, “Don’t be so damn reasonable. Give me something I can argue against.”
He knew better.
She had to leave for town before the salesman got there, which frustrated her to no end. She was still scowling as she drove down the driveway. At least Tricks was smiling at him from her normal seat in the front of the Jeep.
The security salesman was the usual sales type: friendly, gregarious, with a knack for overselling. It was his bad luck that Morgan was immune to overselling.
He took the guy on a walk around the property, telling him exactly what he wanted, and where: cameras that covered all of the house exterior, no blind spots, with monitors in the most-used rooms of the house; motion sensor lights; driveway alarm. The driveway alarm was problematic; the best was a buried sensor probe, and that worked on a line of sight, which meant that putting it at the beginning of Bo’s driveway, close to the road, simply wouldn’t work. There were too many hills, trees, and curves in the way. If he had unlimited time and money, and government resources to work with, he could get something that worked, but he didn’t have those three things, so he had to settle and have the probe located at the farthest line of sight, which unfortunately was about seventy-five yards. It would have to do. If anyone approached at night—again, the most likely scenario—they could well turn off their headlights and drive close enough to set off the alarm.
He ignored the salesman’s efforts to sell him a maintenance and service contract. He wanted the system, not their monitoring—and he wanted it installed as soon as possible.
Installation was an all-day project, which meant Bo was there for the first part of it. The cameras were installed first, and she was impressed by the clarity of the images on the monitors; he let her choose the location of said monitors because it was, after all, her house, and he wanted her involved so she’d stop glaring at him.
Then she had to go to work, which pissed her off all over again.
He was grinning as he waved to her on her way down the driveway.
“You think you’re so smart,” she muttered when she got home, still disgruntled. The fact that he was cooking supper—nothing fancy, just grilled steaks and baked potatoes, with a stab at a salad for her—evidently held no sway with her.
“Want me to drive down far enough to set off the alarm, so you can see how it works?”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation at all.
So he drove down far enough to set off the alarm, then reversed back to his usual parking spot. When he got out of the Tahoe, he could hear Tricks barking her head off.