Cooper by Nhys Glover Read Free Book Online

still be up? Yes, it was only ten-thirty. He’d be in his study drinking and/or working until much later than this.
    There was a TV in that little common room, but Juanita was more likely studying. She wanted to graduate high school and was trying to do it part-time. But the Hayses didn't make it easy, with long working hours and their many demands, so taking the nightshift probably worked out well for her, Amy supposed.
    She heard the sound of male footsteps on the tiled floor of the kitchen. With her heart in her mouth, Amy looked around for somewhere to hide. The utility closet was next to the stairs. If she was quick she could get inside before the guard reached her.
    Faster than she thought possible, she dived into the closet and closed the door silently behind her. The footsteps walked on by without pausing, the sound echoing quietly down the corridor toward the front of the house.
    Slipping out of the closet, Amy headed for the kitchen and the back door. They didn't have an alarm code for the exterior doors because there were always guards on duty, whether the family was home or not. Her father believed it was too easy to take down electronic security; a lot harder to take down guards. In fact, he'd been talking about hiring more guards after Karl Rothmen was taken from his yacht in the Caribbean.
    Once outside, Amy pulled the collar up on her cashmere coat. The temperature had dropped just in the time since she'd gotten home. Her breath frosted the air.
    Scanning the dark half acre of land at the rear of the house, she could see no sign of the guard. Staying in the shadows, terrified she’d trip the motion detectors that would illuminate her location, she crept around the large Georgian style manor-house until she reached the front.
    Pausing yet again, crushed up against the pruned stems of the rosebush border, she was only too aware that time was against her. She might already be late. How long would Cooper wait for her? What if she was too late and he’d already left by the time she got there? He would be devastated and she’d be stuck having to get back into the house again.
    There, movement on the perimeter, not far from the gate. The guard was patrolling the fence-line in an counter-clockwise direction. If she waited for him to move around to the back, hopefully not catching sight of her still form as he passed, she could make a run for the front gate. Once there, she could enter the code and be out, the gates closed behind her before he made it around to the side again.
    The minutes crawled by. The guard seemed to be moving in slow motion. How long did it take to walk along the wall? Not this long, surely.
    There, she saw him clearly in the moonlight, just reaching the back corner of the property. Any moment now and he’d be out of sight of the front drive. Of course, she couldn’t run on the gravel, her footsteps could be heard, and she would certainly set off the motion detectors. No, she’d have to risk running on the frosty grass, along the edge of the drive.
    Taking to her heels, she dashed the hundred yards to the gate. Her mother insisted she maintain a healthy regime of exercise in the home gym, and she did so religiously. Now, for the first time in her life, she was grateful for that training. As she reached the gate, entered the code, and pushed the wrought iron bars open a crack, her breathing was only slightly more laboured than normal.
    For all the danger she was in, for all the insanity of seeing Cooper again, she felt truly alive for the first time in longer than she could remember. This didn't feel wrong. Cooper didn't feel wrong. Nothing had ever felt so right.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Coop pulled up just down from the elaborate iron gates of the Hays’ property. A high wall, complete with jagged pikes at its top, surrounded the two-storey, red-brick mansion set back from the road. It was just one of many such homes here on the outskirts of San Mateo.
    There would be a private security detail