Free To Trust a Stranger by Karen Robards Page B

it was turned off, the alarm beeped a loud warning in their bedroom.
    If she'd been asleep, she would almost certainly have woken up.
    And Sid, knowing that, would have taken the safer route of not turning the alarm on at all. After all, there was no real risk. Crime in Summerville was practically nonexistent.
    “Then we're in business.”
    Julie pointed out her house, an eight-thousand-square-foot Greek Revival mansion that Sid had designed and built himself, and the Blazer stopped in front of it. The tall iron gates were still open-they stayed that way most of the time because it was a pain to wait for them to open electronically-but he didn't pull up the driveway.
    “It'd be better if we walk up. That way, the neighbours won't see a strange car pulling into your driveway in the middle of the night,” he said, answering her unspoken question.
    “Good idea.” Although the neighbours were in all likelihood sound asleep. At least the other houses-she could see only three from where she stood, the Macalasters', the DeForests', and the Cranes'-were all dark. Like her house, they had been designed and built by Sid's company to similarly tasteful specifications, although of course the facades were all different. Sutherland Estates was Sid's showcase development, which was why they had a house in it. Whichever development was his baby of the moment was where they lived.
    Since their marriage, they'd had no permanent home. Sid's father his mother had died when Sid was young-was living with his girlfriend in the family's moldy Civil War-era mansion in Charles ton's historic district, which Sid, as the only child, expected to inherit one day. Given that circumstance, he'd seen no compelling reason to establish a real, true home of his own. At first, when Julie had hoped to fill the many rooms of the various big houses with children, she'd planned to go to the mat with Sid about settling down permanently as soon as she got pregnant. But Sid basically felt about children the way he felt about dogs, and he'd kept putting her off about having any of their own. She'd let the matter slide, and now she guessed that she wouldn't be going to the mat about living in this house permanently, either.  
    It was starting to look like she wouldn't be living in any house permanently. At least, not with Sid.
    She and Debbie were both out of the vehicle now, and Julie was walking around it to join him. He was wearing the gloves, she saw as she reached him, and carrying a crowbar in one hand. Her stomach turned over at the thought of what they were about to do, but there was no help for it. She was just going to have to lie as convincingly as she could and hope for the best.
    Too nervous to talk, she walked silently beside him up the driveway. It was paved in brick, and pink and white creeping petunias bloomed in bright profusion along the edges. Night reduced their colors to no more than shadowy patches of dark and light, but their perfume scented the air. Julie reached under a loose stone and grabbed the spare house key. The katydids were busy, adding their distinctive chorus to the soft chirp of the crickets and the piping of the tree frogs. The strategic stand of palmettos that, along with a brick privacy fence, provided protection from the Macalasters next door rustled faintly as some nocturnal animal moved about among the branches. The sound certainly didn't result from a breeze. There wasn't any. The air could only be described as sultry.
    They reached the garage, a long, single-story brick rectangle angled away from the street with a quartet of identical white car doors set into it, and paused.
    “Which one?” he asked.
    Julie indicated the second door from the left.
    He glanced at it. “Piece of cake.”
    “You've been great/' she said, the words heartfelt, looking up at him through the shadowy darkness. “I don't know what I would have done without you tonight.”
    “I try.” He smiled at her, a slow, charmingly crooked smile that