The wall and trees, in turn, hid a couple of guard posts, with armed men watching the street and the wide green lawn. Two towers at opposite ends of the sprawling cream-colored mansion held more guards and guns and a direct line to a private “security company” that was more like an army. It was a hell of a setup, really, one the vast majority of people wouldn’t be able to afford. One Lazaro Doretti wouldn’t have been able to afford if he’d been the honest businessman he claimed to be. Speare hit his brakes and rolled his window down at the wrought-iron gate, ready to identify himself to the video camera there, but the gate was already swinging open. Not unusual, really, but given what his mother had said, it probably wasn’t a good sign. He nudged his old Dart up the curving driveway and stopped right in front of the house’s columned entrance. Statues of nymphs and satyrs—the usual pretentiousness, with some extra mysticism to reflect Lazaro’s devotion to the Old Magics—flanked the double doors.
