Paolo drove past the farmhouse and kept right on going. At first glance, his guess was that the info they’d been given was bad. From what he’d seen of the house, pushed back off the road and in a cluster of barren trees, it was decrepit and hardly the kind of place the government would use as a safe house. The feds leaned more toward motels and hotels, military facilities and public housing, not a neglected farmhouse, isolated and out in the middle of nowhere. Defending such a place would require a minimum of two, probably more like four to six, which again struck him as far too rich for federal law enforcement.
He also couldn’t be sure it would be the same mark as he was after, but the assignment had been handed to him, passed along to Philippe by a supposedly reliable source, and he had to stick with it. How many witnesses in and around St. Louis could they be protecting on a given day? He followed the map, making a full circle of the area, driving close to five miles before pulling around and back up the steep hill again, and passing the same rock outcropping that looked this time like some sort of face: part human, part devil.
He’d left Penny behind in the motel, her hands taped behind her back, her ankles, knees, and thighs taped around her pants to keep her legs straight, the gag in place. He’d left her on a towel in the bottom of the dry bathtub with the sink water running, and the television in the other room left fairly loud. With the removal of four screws he’d reversed the bathroom door’s knobs and lock, so that it now locked from the outside. Even if the kid got free-impossible, he thought, though he didn’t put much past a child-she was imprisoned.
He slowed and studied the surrounding property, held in the evening dusk as if sprinkled with fireplace ash. He turned the car up a muddy, rut-covered track, stopped at a rusted metal gate, climbed out, and swung it open. The air smelled different here, the way really cold water from a bottle tasted more like melted snow than tap water. Once through the gate, he backed up and parked, tucking the car in alongside a hedgerow of overgrown, weedy trees and shrubs. From here, the track rose into the spines of gnarly, barren apple trees that cast a chill in the air, forewarning winter’s approach. The hill rose up to a rocky queen’s crown, the swells of the orchard below rolling, once up and then back down, before slipping left toward a crumbling fence line in disrepair, and just beyond, leveling to nearly flat ground and the fading farmhouse, now only a suggestion in the dwindling light. Paolo charted a course through the orchard to the house, committing it to memory so that he could return to the car by one of two different routes.
He spotted one tree among all the trees that would serve well as his lookout. The apple trees had been trimmed and cut back for many years, keeping them full and at a height convenient to harvest. He couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead-they looked as inert as gravestones-but they’d lost that look of being tended to.
He crept carefully through the separating rows, the trees as regimented as soldiers, starting and stopping, alert for the slightest sound, change of color, shift of light or shape. Once into the tree, he climbed to the small branches, from where he could see the gray geometry of the farmhouse. Farther to his right and slightly down a hill, a large milking shed with a metal roof bisected a free-stacked stone wall, jutting into a fallow field thick with grass. The hint of an approaching moon warmed the horizon with a yellowish glow, seen through the gray haze of ground fog, just lifting out of the ground as if sucked by the retreating light.
Paolo waited, as was his way. Worked alone, as he and the Romeros preferred it. If he’d been trained in anything, it was patience. He could sit immobile for hours, never bothered by stiff joints or the urge to do something. Ten minutes passed before he detected the red pulsing light. In another season, another color, he might have mistaken it for a lightning bug, but well into October, the evening air chill, its perfectly timed flashing meant electronics, more than likely a cell phone or radio. It was clipped at a height that made sense for a belt. A waist. A guard.
He warmed with anticipation, the falling temperature meaning nothing to him. The information had been good: The dilapidated farmhouse might indeed be a safe house, given that he’d now spotted a patrol. But police and federal agents were like termites-for every one you saw there could be many more in the nest. Overcoming them one at a time presented the kind of challenge Paolo lived for. Subterfuge, stealth, baiting, razor work-all his skills would be required here.
He gave no thought of calling for backup. Of waiting hours or days. Opportunity had presented itself, and he intended to capitalize, to prove himself.
The red flashing stopped. Either the guard had turned, or the phone had been briefly exposed as he’d gone for a stick of gum, scratched an itch, or donned a sweater or jacket against the cold. A small mistake lasting no more than a few seconds, but enough to signal the warning to Paolo. A God-given blessing.
A few minutes later his eyes adjusted to where he was quite certain he saw the guard that belonged to the flashing red light-a large lump of black neatly attached to a tree trunk in the side yard. Then, to his delight, another such lump moved from his left to right, and then left again. It took several seconds for him to identify this pattern as circular: This guard was slowly orbiting the farmhouse clockwise. Eight minutes later, around he came again, the original guard still not moving from his post in the side yard. The repetition of this, the combination of one moving object, one stationary, told him there were far fewer deputies than he’d anticipated. As few as two. No more than three. Eight minutes later, there he came again, around the near side of the house. They were lazy, these two. Typical government agents. They’d established a pattern, well conceived, but flawed in execution. Their undoing.
Having just driven onto 270 North, Larson received the call from Rotem, still twenty minutes or more from the farmhouse.
Larson rocketed into the far left lane and brought his speed up in excess of eighty as he spoke into his BlackBerry.
Rotem said, “There’s something else you need to hear.
WITSEC is reporting five protected witnesses dead, all executed.”
Laena, Markowitz’s defection or abduction. It seemed a world away from Penny and Hope, but only for Larson. For Rotem and most of the Justice Department the recovery of Laena was now a matter of national security.
Larson heard small sparkles of static on the line. “Why only five?”
“You catch on fast,” Rotem said. “Now add this into the mix: The Bureau’s OC unit is reporting increased chatter among the top West Coast crime families. A meeting has been called for this Friday. All the big guys. Undisclosed location.”
Larson put it together. “So the Romeros sold off or gave up those five witnesses to prove they had the real thing-that they could deliver the master list.”
“And now they intend to auction it off.”
“This Friday?”
“Two days,” Rotem confirmed.
Two days to find Markowitz. Two days to locate the Romeros. How long would they keep Penny alive?
“Listen,” Rotem said, “there’s one other thing, we don’t know how much weight to give it, if any. It’s a compromised source…”
“What’s going on, Scott?” Larson didn’t appreciate all the qualifiers.
“This source appears to have accessed utility records for our safe houses-including Orchard House. But… and I want to emphasize this: There’s no indication that information went any farther.”
“Jesus, Scott!” He disconnected the call.
Larson had to warn Carlyle and Marland that Orchard House may have been compromised.
He tried Marland first but when Marland failed to pick up he called Hope.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. Everything all right?” He worked to keep his voice level and calm.
“Fine.”
“Listen, the house may be compromised. I couldn’t raise Marland so I’m going to try Carlyle next, but I wanted to get to you first.”
“You want me to go find them?”
“No!” he said a little too loudly. “Do not go outside! Not under any conditions. Not for any reason. You keep the doors locked until I arrive. Hide somewhere inside.”
“Hide? You’re scaring me, Lars.”
“Just until I get there. It’s serious, Hope. Okay? Don’t hide anyplace obvious. Not under the bed or in the closet. Find a place you can be comfortable without moving around.” He told her to put the phone into vibrate mode and then double-checked that she’d done it correctly. “I’ll be there in minutes.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know myself,” he said.
Paolo went well out of his way to approach the far side of the house and lie in wait for the deputy on the circular patrol, costing him valuable minutes. He was warming to the kill now, and so took little notice of the sustained hush delivered into the wilds by the further setting of the sun. Only the very distant barking of a dog, almost a howl, interrupted the night’s still, quiet air-a yap-yap-yap that paused for a half minute before barking out into the void, a male no doubt, longing for company. The ground fog lifted like bedsheets, rolling and twisting and yet languishing at chest height. Paolo’s movement broke these plumes like a finger through cigarette smoke, creating feathers of vapor that slowly dissipated and dissolved.
The farmhouse, now within a stone’s throw, continued to appear empty and uninhabited. He couldn’t help but wonder if this was all an elaborate trap to snare him-leak the location, set up a patrol, lure him in. So he again practiced his patience, in no hurry to find himself in federal custody.
He allowed the circling deputy to pass, to complete yet another full loop, but decided against such foolishness. He wasn’t going to blow his chance by being overly cautious. He belly-crawled GI-style into the overgrown perimeter shrubbery that surrounded the farmhouse and lay low, razor at the ready.
When it came time, he felt no great adrenaline rush; to the contrary, he found a quiet stillness within himself, an immediacy that led him into a graceful movement, a silent, one-man ballet, choreographed to deliver death.
A moment later it was over, the deputy gaping soundlessly like a beached fish, his body twitching and sparking through the throes of death as he bled out from the neck. Paolo considered taking the man’s gun but, recalling the barking dog, decided against its use for fear of alarming a neighbor. He did take the dead man’s cell phone, but disconnected the battery. He would study it later for programmed phone numbers, call lists, and might even use it for a call or two.
Now, for the time being, he assumed the role of the circling deputy, picking up where the man had left off. He came around the front of the old farmhouse, ears alert for any sounds whatsoever inside. He heard only the yap-yap-yap, pause, of the baying dog.
Charged with exhilaration, Paolo headed straight for the tree behind which he hoped to find and kill the second agent. Only at the last moment did he realize he’d chosen wrong as the agent stepped out from behind the tree to Paolo’s right… not where he expected him.
“What’s up?” this deputy asked in a whisper. In the thick black of night, both figures were silhouettes.
Paolo said nothing, having no idea what voice to mimic.
“Hey! What’s up?” the deputy tried again, his voice clear and tight, more strained than before, perhaps sensing, as some animals can, his own demise, even before taking precautions against it.
Paolo took two last strides, suddenly much longer strides than he’d used in his approach, so as to throw off the deputy’s timing. One moment he was a smudge in the ground fog, the next a blur of arms and limbs, a slicing blade behind extraordinary leverage and strength. The deputy managed two defensive blocks, both of which cost him long gashes down the palms and wrists of both hands. As he opened his mouth to scream, Paolo’s hand flashed before his face, slicing his tongue and lower lip. Containing him in a choke hold, Paolo spun the man, drove his right knee into the man’s lower back, bending him backward, and in that moment of pas de deux, drew a hot, angry opening across the man’s jowls and larynx, issuing a sound like a steam pipe bursting behind a crimson spray that joined the fog and painted the tree bark scarlet.
He dropped the man like a bushel of apples, not looking down to see if the job was complete. He knew his work. Instead, his back to the bark, he opened his senses like a flower to the sun. Every sound, every swaying branch and rattling leaf was a part of him. He waited for the backup, for the threatening glow of an infrared rifle sight tracking the tree and trying to find a kill spot on his body. He anticipated surprise, braced himself for the unexpected.
He kneeled, glanced once at the dead man, and pulled open his windbreaker. He found the man’s weapon, chambered a round, and shoved the gun into the small of his own back. This for inside, if needed.
The dog stopped barking, as if somehow silenced by the scent of fresh blood on the wind-Paolo pissing on his territory; the dog wisely unwilling to challenge. Well off in the distance, he could make out the low, insect hum of interstate traffic. A jet rumbled. Fallen leaves tumbled and rolled and swirled at his feet, offering faint applause.
Paolo sensed there was no backup coming. He would face one more inside the house, and beyond him the prize. At any second, any minute, the deputy inside would attempt his scheduled contact with those on perimeter duty. Never longer than ten- or fifteen-minute intervals.
Paolo moved through angular shadows, dodging across the lawn toward the farmhouse.
The dog started up again, his nose revealing the truth. Only the dog, far off in the distance, stood witness to what had been done.
Larson drove all but the last mile with the retrofitted light system in play, his parking lights, taillights, and headlights alternating right to left and left to right in a dazzling display that identified him as an emergency vehicle. From inside the car’s front grill, bright blue and white bursts of warning marked him as law enforcement-not fire or medical.
He’d called for backup-federal, not local-not knowing how traffic would affect his ride. As it happened, he reached Orchard House first.
He pulled off the road a quarter mile short of the farm and set out on foot.
Paolo ducked and crossed below the window, intent on reaching the front porch as quickly as possible. The ground floor would not only be highly secured, but would be where the remaining agent would keep himself. Herself was more likely, he thought, since they were protecting a female witness. This gave him more confidence.
The second story looked best. Even if it came down to breaking glass to gain entry, the time it would take a deputy to respond would be in his favor-he’d be inside and at the ready before anyone could make it upstairs.
Once onto the porch, he climbed atop the railing and pulled himself up a column, leprous white paint flakes peeling away and floating to the autumnal vegetation like moths that had ventured too close to the light. He climbed with all the sound of a snake, slipping up onto the porch roof, and from there the steeper main roof, to the first of several dormered windows, all pitch-black. He moved carefully and slowly, one window to the next, feeling vulnerable. The construction was old. Rope-and-weight double-hung windows. A barrier had been hung just on the other side of the glass-some kind of blackout material. He hoped this fabric might mute the sound of breaking glass. When the windows proved impossible to jimmy open, he drove his elbow just above the lock. Pieces of glass tumbled down, caught by the blackout curtain.
The window opened. His razor led the way through the rubbery vinyl covering, and he squeezed through the slit, into the interior.
The room was dark. A simple bed, made. A corner sink from a hundred years ago. A mirrored dresser. No suitcase. No clothes. He crossed to the door, soundlessly, ears alert for the sound of a guard rushing up the stairs.
Nothing.
For a moment-only a moment-he allowed himself to believe the woman was not here, that this accounted for the informal patrolling of the perimeter, that these two had not been protecting someone but defending a structure. Another possible explanation for this complete silence was so tantalizing that he barely allowed himself to consider it. Were there only the two guards, not three? Had they adopted the format of one moving, one stationary because of these minimal numbers? Was the witness here, armed perhaps, but all alone?
It seemed plausible. The Service could be in chaos. How many deputies could they spare for a single witness when thousands of witnesses were at stake? But this optimism got interrupted by a second thought: The remaining deputy could be more clever than he’d given him credit for. Perhaps he was not the type to charge upstairs and force an encounter. What if he/she was lurking somewhere inside, ready to spring a trap and gain the element of surprise? Added to his sudden uncertainty was the idea of timing. Payment for his killing the two deputies outside would come due. With communication lost, the Service would respond, either by helicopter, car, or both. He might have five to ten minutes. After that, he couldn’t be sure. It was a big house.
He went to work.
Through the whine in her ears that whistled like a teakettle, Hope thought she heard something. Larson’s warning had tightened the screws at her temples, fixing her jaw to where she ground her teeth, her prickling skin feverish with fear. She’d worked so hard all these years to control such reactions, but this time, isolated in a strangely familiar place, without Penny for company, she panicked.
Outside. Close by. On the roof?
A location. She’d thought of little else since his call. In her various residences over the years she’d always created clever hiding spots for herself and Penny. Not panic rooms, but a nook or cranny, a false wall at the back of a closet, cleared out shelf space in the kitchen cabinets. But here, in this place? She considered the back bedrooms, for they gave her a shot at the back stairs if she heard someone coming up the front. She thought she might even engage in hide-and-seek by using both stairways and constantly keeping on the move. But Larson had told her to seek out a spot and stay put, and as much as she resisted being told what to do, she knew instinctively this made sense.
When she heard the muted but distinctive sound of glass breaking, she moved without further thought. The point was to find someplace out in the open yet hidden-how many times had that been drummed into her? Not a closet or an attic.
She spotted it that same second, her imagination fast at work given the breaking glass. She grabbed the bolster in this first of the two back bedrooms, the room having been converted into a television den. She unzipped the zipper the full length of the long round pillow that sat atop the twin bed converting it into a makeshift couch. Inside was a tube-shaped filler that she quickly hauled out and wrestled into the room’s only closet, pausing as she found herself faced with two buckets of cleaning supplies, and on the shelves, in typical government fashion, another six cans of each cleaning product, all neatly lined up like little soldiers. Deodorant. Toothbrushes. Aspirin. Tylenol. Tampax. Toothpaste. Hand cream. A mini-pharmacy. How many times had she schooled Penny on using readily available household items as weapons?
The words on a green-and-white can jumped out at her: Oven Cleaner.
Paolo opened the bedroom door a crack, his back against the wall and away from the door in case someone threw shots blindly. He sneaked it open to where he could get an eye out.
An empty hallway. No guards.
Razor in his left hand, the borrowed gun now in his right, he moved down the hall, his back to the wall. He paused. He tried the next door. A bathroom, longer than it was wide. Empty of people, but not of their presence-a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, both new, on the sink.
Another bedroom, next door, near the top of the stairs, its bed made, but ruffled. Someone had lain there. The air smelled cleaner, less dusty, less trapped, and Paolo could picture Hope Stevens airing out the stale air ahead of the blackout curtains being hung.
He took a glimpse down the staircase. With the hallway being empty, if there were other guards they were downstairs. Was she down there with them, or had he missed her somehow? But the woman was most likely upstairs. He retraced his steps, hurrying down the hall past where he’d come from, only to discover an unexpected hallway that emptied quickly into a television room.
He stopped cold. He smelled her: the sharp tang of fresh sweat. The pungency of woman. Close now.
He raised and lowered the gun as he stepped toward the room’s closet.
He yanked it open, gun now aimed into the darkness. Found a string dangling and yanked it. A bare bulb flashed on, revealing two plastic buckets and some rags on the floor. All kinds of personal items and cleaning supplies on the shelves. A regular storehouse. A long white pillow, like a bolster.
Paolo jerked his head to his right: the bolster on the bed. Misshapen.
He followed along the zipper with his eye. A small gap at the very end, the zipper not quite closed.
There.
Weapon in hand, Larson accidentally smeared the doorknob with Marland’s blood as he cracked open the farmhouse’s back door and slipped inside. Panic had invaded him and he couldn’t shake it. He left the blood-smudged key in the lock to avoid making any more noise than necessary. Settle down, he told himself, but he found it impossible. He’d come across the body of only one of his fallen deputies. It had been too dark to identify him, though he believed it to be Marland.
He’d abandoned Hope here. Left her. Again.
He moved, cautiously and alertly, through the kitchen. Clear.
He surveyed the living room. Clear.
As he passed through it and crossed the hall and continued into the small study, the structure’s old floorboards creaked beneath him with every step. No matter how fancy he got with his attempts at delicate footfalls, the boards still complained, some loudly. He decided distraction wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He cleared the study, now focusing on the staircase to the second floor. Climbing those stairs would leave him exposed and vulnerable.
His lower back pressed against the handrail, his shoulder blades dragging on the peeling wallpaper, Larson started up the stairs.
They announced his every step.
With the first of the sounds, the reluctant bending of unwilling wood, Paolo turned toward the improvised hallway and the second-floor banister beyond. Someone was coming.
Hope saw the intruder fix on her. He’d not so much as given the bolster a second look until he’d seen the pillow that belonged in it at the bottom of the closet floor. Then he turned and looked right at her-right at the tiny gap in the zipper through which she looked. Right into her eye.
He took a cautious step toward her. Then another, to the edge of the bed.
As a sound in the hall distracted him, she made her move. With her left hand, she stripped the zipper open. With her right, she pushed the can of oven cleaner out of the bolster, sitting up simultaneously.
He sensed her and turned.
She threw herself forward, aimed for his face, and pressed the button, the can issuing a hiss of white spray that grew into foam as it contacted his skin. The cleaner covered the right side of his face, bringing a scream of pain, and she kept spraying.
The burning began at once.
With the pain, Paolo’s finger involuntarily flexed on the trigger and the weapon fired wildly. Its recoil sudden and more than he’d have expected, his wrist was jerked violently back and, as he reached to stem the agony in his right eye, he dropped the weapon completely.
He lashed out blindly with the razor in his left hand, transferring it effortlessly to his right, and continuing to slash the air. The back of his calf caught the low coffee table and he went down backward, first to sitting, then rolling off the table.
Footsteps charging up the stairs.
The burning in his eye and on his nose and lips was more severe than anything he’d imagined and only grew worse. More spray hit him and again he lashed out at his attacker. Coming to standing, he caught blurry sight of the open door to the next bedroom and, feeding down from it, a second stairway-a back stairs. Everything inside him resisted turning his back on someone approaching. The person would shoot him dead.
He leaped for the door.
Larson, now at the top of the stairs, ran toward the gun’s report. He slipped on the hallway rug, banged into the doorjamb of the small television room, and an arm came down onto him as a gray blur. Heat penetrated the back of his right hand and his gun fell out of his hand as he realized he’d been cut.
Hope lay on the floor in some kind of sleeping bag, struggling to get her legs out.
A swipe came at his neck.
Larson jerked away from the attempt. He kicked out and connected with the intruder, who slammed against the open closet door but came back at Larson like a boxer off the ropes.
The razor whooshed past Larson’s right ear. He ducked and kicked out again, this time spinning the man.
Larson regained his balance and delivered the tight knot of a fist squarely into the space above the man’s hip bone, pounding deeply for the kidney and bending him backward in pain as he connected.
Incredibly, the intruder spun as if never struck. Their arms tangled. Larson defended against the razor by first blocking an intended blow and then grabbing the man’s wrist. They banged together like a pair of wrestlers, still on their feet. Larson won purchase on fabric and pulled. Buttons flew. Fabric tore. The intruder’s shirt tore open. Two dozen red raised scars screamed from his bare chest. Random lengths and shapes. Some old and thick and hardened, as if recut many times. Some pink and raw and new.
Larson froze. He’d never seen anything like this.
The intruder caught him with a toe in the groin, snapping Larson over in pain. Inexplicably, he did not feel the razor run its course down his back. Instead, he heard the familiar sound of feet fading away from him. A crashing downstairs.
Then, gone, as he glanced at a wide-eyed Hope.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Get the gun,” he said, sliding it across the floor as he retrieved his own. “Into the bathtub for cover-lock the door-now!” His last words faded behind him as he entered the mouth of the stairs and scrambled down into the waiting darkness.
A locked house proved as difficult to get out of as to get into. The intruder-Rodriguez?-made for the kitchen’s back door, but struggled with the antique twist-knob dead bolt, found it an impasse, and turned. This in the same time it took Larson to descend the steep back stairs.
Larson got off a round-given the angle more of a statement of his presence than a kill shot. The bullet took out an old hand-painted plate in the hutch on the far wall. Splintered pottery rained down, tinkling and clinking as it landed. Larson raced down and into the kitchen but slowed as he reached the door that connected through to the front entry in case the killer planned any surprises.
He heard the front door-a rattle of chains and locks. A loud bang as it thumped the wall, reeling on its hinges. The humph, humph, humph of the intruder running off the porch. And then, as the man hurried away, the crackling of sticks… autumn winds.
Larson, like someone late off the blocks in a track meet, now followed behind as fast as his powerful legs would carry him, as fit and as solid as he’d ever been, the morning training on the river engorging his muscles, arms pumping like pistons as his right hand still clung to the weapon, slightly warmer, it seemed, from his firing that shot. A hundred yards and closing the distance, judged only by the sound of the other, the smudge of gray charcoal that might have been a man obscured in the foggy haziness of night.
Larson made it another fifty yards before his own voice, whispering dryly from the back of his brain, asked about Hope and who was guarding her now, asking how certain he was that there’d been only one intruder. With the killer went a chance to find Penny. And Markowitz. Guilt-torn and fearful, his groin aching, his nerves raw from having discharged the weapon, the smell of cordite still bitter in his sinuses, Larson slowed and reversed directions. He pulled out his cell phone but then thought better of it.
Compromised. Rotem had said so himself. How many other such moles? How many secrets leaking from FATF’s splintered hull? He put his phone away.
His priorities certain now, Larson returned to the farmhouse, intent on getting her out of here. Rotem would have to handle the cleanup. He and Hope would sleep, if they slept at all, in a downtown condominium a friend had been trying to sell to Larson since the middle of summer. He’d say he’d picked up a woman downtown, and if there was ever a time for him to demo the place it was on this night of all nights. He would arrange for the key to be left. See no one. Make contact with no one. There would be no more connection made between Hope and him and the Service. They would go it alone.
Some old dog began barking as a car fired up far in the distance.
Thoughts competing in his head, Larson hurried inside and called out for her.