The Harem on the Hill (Part LXXV) (Patreon)
Content
Rather than rushing headlong into an ambush, you open the security app on your phone and scroll through the feeds from your security cameras. Fifty cameras monitor your property--half are in the basement watching over your girls, and the remaining are affixed strategically throughout your estate. Between them, nearly every square foot of your home, and much of the woods surrounding it, are visible to you at any given moment.
It seems you made a smart decision. The hallway camera shows the gun Bernadette dropped is gone.
You rapidly swipe through the feeds from the rest of the first-floor cameras--the living room, sitting room, dining room, and kitchen--but there's no sign of Tina. When she first arrived, there might have been a nook or cranny where the diminutive brunette could hide, but not anymore. Not at over 400 pounds. The cameras should detect her. Hell, seismographs should detect her.
You check the cameras in your garage next. Although you've taken precautions to ensure the only one who can drive your fleet of automobiles is you, if anyone could hotwire one, it would be Tina.
She isn't there either.
A shiver suddenly shoots through you. Maybe she's monitoring YOU. Not only does your upstairs office have a wall of monitors with the same camera feeds, but the computers there control everything from the enabling and disabling of locks and alarms to the release of a variety of gases and toxins into the basement chambers.
Including the one you're standing in.
You hurry into the hallway just as strident beeps erupt from your phone. You recognize them immediately. Tina isn't upstairs preparing to gas you from your office, she's opening the front gate to your property!
You never expected Tina to make a run for it. Why would she concoct such an elaborate ruse only to flee on foot? Not only is it foolish (you're surprised she had the stamina to reach the gate, much less attempt the five-mile trek down the mountain), but she's had plenty of opportunities to escape before. Why now?
The footage from the gate answers your question. Tina is there, but she's not alone. The shadow of a vehicle parked just out of frame is at her feet. As the rot iron gate swings open, Tina waddles through, tugging the flaps of a London Fog trenchcoat, which she must have snatched from the hall closet, over her mammoth belly. Seconds after she disappears off camera, the shadow does too.
Your mind races. Even with Tina's headstart, there's a good chance you could catch her before she reaches town. There's only one road off the mountain and you're familiar with all its twists and turns. From the size of the shadow, the vehicle looked to be some sort of SUV, which would be no match for any of the sports cars at your disposal.
Of course, you'd be speeding into uncertainty. Tina may not be heavily armed--beyond the juicy ham hocks attached to her shoulders--but she has your pistol, and you have no clue who she might be with.
What do you do?