Ice Storm - Anne Stuart [57]
He picked up the sling, gently, but Swede opened his blue eyes to stare up at him with that solemn expression he’d been born with. He looked like him, a fact Bastien found disarming.
Chloe was in the half-finished kitchen of their rambling house, and she raised an eyebrow when he came in. “How’s the Hundred Years War coming?”
“Carpentry takes time,” he said. “You can’t rush these things.”
She simply shook her head, knowing him too well. The work would be done in his own time, and meanwhile she managed with only two interior doors, on their bedroom and on the working bathroom, plus a door on every closet in the house. No door to the bedrooms, but the closets were complete, and fortunately no one asked why, when there were no kitchen cabinets, and only plywood flooring and Sheetrock walls. He wanted to do it all himself, needed to. Every other weekend Chloe’s family came up to help him, but in the end it was up to him to make the house secure. And he needed to do that, to make peace with himself.
Chloe moved past him, scooping up the baby and giving Bastien a fleeting kiss. “I know, dear,” she said.
It was close to dusk, almost time for him to quit for the day. He reached out to her, to pull her back, when suddenly the power went out, leaving them in the afternoon dusk.
Power went out often enough up in the mountains of North Carolina, but there was no wind storm, and the day was calm. There were only two possible reasons.
Someone might have hit one of the power lines with his car—an accident.
Or someone knew that most of Bastien’s elaborate security devices ran on electric power.
He froze, waiting for the familiar, comforting sound of the generator powering on. Nothing. The lights stayed off, just the one battery-powered emergency floodlight spearing into the room.
He was crushing Chloe’s hand, and she hadn’t made a sound of protest.
“Where’s Sylvia?” he mouthed.
“Down for a nap.” She could be as silent as he was.
“Take the baby and go to her room. Take her and get in the closet. Lock it and don’t come out until I tell you to.”
“But—”
“The closet’s fortified, remember? You’ll be safe.”
“But you…”
He simply stared at her and three years fell away, and she was looking into the face of a killing machine. The man she’d probably thought she’d never have to see again.
She simply nodded, vanishing silently into the shadows.
Leaving Bastien to the hunt.
He didn’t carry a gun—it upset Chloe, and his security system was top-notch. He hadn’t counted on them hitting the generator, too.
He’d grown dangerously soft. Nonetheless, Bastien had no doubt he could get his family out of this. He’d gotten out of worse situations, and it had only been his own skin. No one was going to touch his wife and children.
No gun, but he could improvise. He could kill someone with a wooden spoon if he had to, but there were plenty of knives in the kitchen, tools in the unfinished library. He wondered if the men who’d come after him had been properly warned what they were up against.
He was almost insulted there were only three of them. The first was skulking around the back door, looking for a way in. Bastien cut his throat and took his gun.
It was a heavy pistol—something Dirty Harry would use. It lacked finesse, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Bastien would rather not use it—the sound might frighten the babies, and even though Chloe had nerves of steel he didn’t want to test them.
The second intruder was heading toward the stairs, and he was good, better than the first. The fight was short and savage, and Bastien broke his neck with a quick, ruthless snap.
One more. He was moving in the library where Bastien had just been working on the burled walnut paneling, fitting the pieces together with the painstaking precision that was driving Chloe crazy.
If the man moved fast enough he might make it up the stairs before Bastien could stop him. His family would be safe