Miata nudged my left hand with his muzzle. He'd hung back to wait for me, and I reached down and gave him a scratch behind the ears. He looked up, fixing me with those soulful dog eyes, and I swear it was as if he knew what was going to happen next. Dogs' eyes are like that. Sometimes you can see exactly what they're feeling; sometimes, you see exactly what you're feeling yourself.
"Yeah," I told him. "Stop wasting time, right?"
By way of answer, Miata turned and headed up the path to the house.
I followed the dog. Natalie and Dan were in the kitchen, which seemed to be the only room with its lights on, and that was fine with me because there was no way to see into the kitchen from the outside. Looking from the exterior, the house would appear dark, and that was how both I and Natalie wanted it.
"Who's in the tree house?" I asked, taking off my jacket.
Dan's expression was one of both disappointment and surprise. "You saw him?"
"Not soon enough."
That mollified him, and he grinned. "That's Vadim up there. He's my boy."
Natalie arched an eyebrow. "You've got a son?"
"Nineteen," Dan said, then added, "He has promise."
I hung my jacket on the back of the nearest chair, fighting off a wave of sudden exhaustion while listening as Natalie and Dan continued discussing the security arrangements for the safe house. Oxford's death diminished the threat against Alena, but none of us was willing to say it was gone, not yet. Three hours before Oxford had planted his dagger in Scott Fowler's heart, Scott and I had met with two men at a Holiday Inn off Times Square. Two men who, we'd assumed, had been holding the end of Oxford's leash. One had been a big stack of jovial threat who had done most of the talking, but the other had been a quieter and more thoughtful piece of menace named Matthew Bowles.