Betrayal by Christina Dodd Page A

affection to shake, sit up, and beg—and clean house.”
    Rafe smacked him in the chest. “Shut up, you idiot.”
    “I was trying to help!” Noah protested.
    “God protect me from your kind of help.” But in the first bit of humor Penelope had seen in Rafe, one corner of his mouth kicked up in a crooked grin.
    Brooke chuckled and shook the hair back from her face, and when Rafe pulled her into his embrace, she went willingly.
    Noah’s glance touched Penelope, but for her he didn’t seem to feel the good humor he felt for his brother and his brother’s wife. For her, his gaze was grave, considering, and she looked back steadily. She wanted to speak up, to tell him that if she fled Bella Terra, it wasn’t because of him. He meant nothing to her now; all that mattered was finding her place in a world that had become cold and lonely.
    Oh—and staying alive.
    But she didn’t speak. Of course not. To start that discussion would be perilous in the extreme.
    “So who swept the back porch, and why?” Brooke asked Rafe. “Are you sure it wasn’t the neighbors trying to be social?”
    “I’m sure.” Penelope noted that although Rafe held Brooke close to his side, he kept his shooting hand free. “The lock contains a computer chip that records all the activity at that door, and is supposed to send the record to my security team. The door was not only opened from the outside, but the electronics in the lock were scrambled in such a way that the alarm didn’t go off and the report was not sent.”
    “If the lock was scrambled, how did you get that information?” Penelope asked.
    Every eye turned to her with varying degrees of suspicion.
    DuPey replied from the head of the stairs. “Rafe always has a backup system.” Slowly he descended and he, too, kept Penelope locked in his gaze. “Everything’s fine upstairs. You might do a sweep for monitoring equipment, though, Rafe.”
    “Oh, believe me, I intend to.”
    Penelope had never felt so awkward, so embarrassed, as if she were guilty of some heinous crime, of distracting Brooke while these people, these criminals, slipped in and did… nothing.
    “What about the video? Surely you can see who broke in,” Brooke said.
    “It’s been wiped,” Rafe said. “This is my best system. Or was. It’s about to be upgraded.”
    Penelope still struggled to understand. “Why would someone do that? Break in and do no damage?”
    “It’s a warning.” Rafe gazed pointedly at Noah.
    Noah stood still and silent, and that did seem… odd. But now he turned to DuPey, and in a quiet voice, he asked, “What are you doing here? Is this a social call?”
    “Hardly. With all the crap that’s been happening in Bella Terra, I don’t have time for social calls.” In the flash of an eye, DuPey assumed a different attitude, one of a sheriff questioning suspects. “I was going to call you Di Lucas and have a little chat about this guy who’s currently in the hospital with ten broken fingers.”
    “Ten broken fingers.” Noah’s voice was very quiet. “Sounds like we have a gang in town.”
    “Yeah, what Noah said. So why do you want to talk to us?” Rafe asked cautiously.
    Brooke’s mouth tightened into a thin, grim line. “Why would you assume we’re involved?”
    As far as Penelope was concerned, no one was askingthe right questions. Shouldn’t they be asking how a guy got ten broken fingers? Or why? Why were they acting like ten broken fingers were a usual circumstance in Bella Terra?
    “I know you’re not involved, Brooke. Not Chloë or Mrs. Di Luca, either. It wasn’t a youth gang, if that’s what you mean, Noah. Just possibly the Di Luca brothers. The hospital called when this guy showed up at the emergency room with his hands looking like someone took a crowbar to them. We don’t see stuff like that here.” DuPey pushed his hat toward the back of his head and scratched his forehead. “Or we didn’t used to. It took a while to dig the story out of him,