The Starshine Connection by Buck Sanders Read Free Book Online Page A

the Targa.
    “What about that?” Slayton said, angling his head back toward the box on the floor, which must have contained twelve decanters
     of the illegal, narcotic moonshine.
    “What about it?” she said, not stopping.
    “Seems like an awfully expensive thing to leave sitting around.”
    “So’s the Porsche,” she said, dismissively. “Both of them are drops in the proverbial bucket. Petty cash time. You’re not
     really concerned about that, now are you?”
    “It looks like I’m not,” he said, allowing himself to be led away. Ben Slayton himself represented a great deal of money.
     Independently wealthy, a collector of antique autos, a property baron with an excellent stock portfolio, he considered self-sufficiency
     the mainstay of life. Such an attitude had led men of his stature and ethics all the way to the top of the hill. And still
     it pained him to see frivolous waste. Anna Drake wasted lavish sums of money just to stave off the pressures of madness that
     came from being wealthy in the first place. It seemed quite silly.
    But Slayton remembered something his late father had once told him regarding such immense wealth and the freedom it brought
     to its holders: “The titled are entitled.”
    Entitled, Slayton thought now, to kill themselves in pursuit of expressing the freedom money brings. The old, hoary patriot’s
     rationalization. In that moment he found himself wondering if Roxanne Drake was doomed to the same sort of wealthy despair
     as her stepmother.
    He watched Anna precede him and hoped not.
    The lock was as intimidating as the townhouse door—outwardly. It yielded easily to Slayton’s combination of picks after about
     a minute of preliminary poking and teasing. The alarm system was based on interfacing electronic contacts. It would not go
     off until the connection between the deadbolt and metal socket of the door jamb was broken.
    Slayton drew a jumper out of his pocket. He could not have anticipated a specific type of electrical system, so he had brought
     along the most practical jumper lead, one with a ball of conductant gum on each terminal. Unlike the fancier jumpers with
     their clips and attachments specific to defeating certain kinds of lock and alarm systems, the gum allowed leeway because
     it adhered to almost any surface.
    He edged the door open about half an inch and poked the first terminal, a black wire with the wad of gum, inside. The difficult
     part would be attaching it to the counterpart section of the door jamb.
    Spearing the gum on one of his lengthier “tickles,” or lock picks, he extended the assemblage through the space too narrow
     for his own fingers. The pick clicked onto the interface of the jamb, and Slayton pushed it with his thumb. The gum hit home
     solidly and stuck.
    Slayton stood up and carefully eased the door open. The slack wire played out. As far as the electrical systems were concerned,
     the door was still in contact with the jamb, which was now several feet away. There was a dimly lit stairway leading up to
     the front door proper.
    He stepped over the nearly taut wire and closed the door behind him, withdrawing the jumper after it was closed. He could
     figure out how to test-delay the system from the inside when he needed to get back out, later.
    This was the address the two Treasury agents had delivered to Info Central, and which Slayton had gotten over the coded scramble
     line minutes after they had checked in. The silver Trans-Am’s first stop was made here. There were two other locations on
     the list. Slayton did not need to make an equipment stop; he had anticipated what he would need, and made sure that it was
     all in his own car when he finally left the company of Anna Drake, promising her that she would see him again.
    That had turned out to be another condition of her bargain. She was nothing if not a tough negotiator.
    The door at the top of the stairs was nothing to defeat. Slayton was inside.
    The first impression was