13

I AWOKE TO THE BAREST SOUND. I didn’t move. It was a footstep and then the slightest click of a door closing.

I was bait, and someone was hooked.

I could lay still. I could get up and see who it was. I could wait for one of Howell’s rookies to crash in the door and save my ass. But Howell, for all his warm words to me, didn’t need me alive after the bait was taken. If this was someone from the scarred man, he could dispatch me and the watchers could catch him later. I wasn’t sure the shadows were even listening to me since I’d tossed them their bugs.

Or maybe it was someone like August had said, ridding the Company of their great embarrassment.

I listened for the next footfall. Didn’t hear it. I got up from the bed with enormous care, scooted the pillow where I should be, moved on cat feet to the corner of the room behind the door.

I heard nothing else. Maybe I had dreamed the footfall. I stood in the darkness and a crazy thought wormed its way into my head: It’s Lucy, come home, finally she’s gotten away and she’s found me. It was lunacy to think it, but I did.

The air conditioner kicked on. The soft, somnolent hum masked the intruder’s movements. I had no weapons. Nothing. I waited.

I expected the intruder to kick in the door and lay a round of fire into the bed.

Didn’t happen.

Slowly—as slowly as a door opens in a nightmare that floods you with dread—the door opened. The hinges moved in silence. I waited.

No convenient glow of moonlight lit the stage for killer or victim; the dark in my bedroom was nearly total.

Then a tiny flash of light sparked, seeking the bed. A snap of silenced bullet hitting the mattress.

I slammed the door into the intruder. Hard. I heard him fall back onto the floor and in the thin gleam of light from the den window he swiveled the gun toward me. I powered my foot into his wrist and the bullet skimmed along the expensive hardwood. I kicked the gun loose, then away.

The intruder stayed as silent as his gun. No yell, no cry out. He was taller than me, and I felt hard muscle power into my chest as he drove me back into the bedroom. We landed on the bed and he, with crisp efficiency, yanked a length of sheet around my throat. I hardly heard his breathing increase in heaviness from the exertion.

He started strangling me and I seized the pillow and pressed it hard into his face. Silent standoff as the oxygen deprivation kicked in for both of us. The darkness deepened. I let go of the pillow and he tightened the sheet around me with a renewed vigor. I pile-drove fists hard and sharp into rib cage. Harder. Sixth blow I felt bone crack, and the intruder gasped and eased on the strangulation. I was sick and dizzy, struggling to breathe, but I launched myself free of the sheets and aimed a shattering kick into his face.

The intruder fell off the bed and I grabbed at the lamp. I missed, and my hand closed on the bartender’s book Ollie had given me. I slammed its five-hundred-page hardcover spine hard against the intruder’s throat and pressed downward as he struggled on the floor. He tried to kick me loose, but now I had breath and I had fury; there is a primal flutter about killing someone who comes into your house intending you harm. Awful atavistic shudders; I could feel waves of energy pouring from the ganglia at the base of my spine, that ancient seat of instinct. I gritted my teeth.

Harder. His struggles grew more frantic. I put all my weight onto the bartender’s book. I pressed my knees against him. I wanted him unconscious so he could wake up bound and answer my questions. But then I felt his windpipe break and the crack sent a sick tremble up my arms.

The kicking stopped and I yanked the book off him. The intruder said his first words, just a gurgle of breath. Maybe he called for his mama; maybe he called me a bad name; maybe he cursed whatever boss sent him to his death.

I expected Howell’s rookies to crash in if they’d eavesdropped on murder but no, no one was coming. They hadn’t put in replacement listening devices. I went and stood in the corner on my bedroom and looked at the splayed body and considered the problem. After a few moments my head was clear.

I had a dead body in my apartment. I dragged him into the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the light. I eased him into the bathtub; easier to clean. Dead bodies release stuff.

I had never killed a man before. Ever. The body count on my jobs had been, well, zero. I fooled people into telling me things and then I left them. I did not kill them. I never had need.

I am a killer now, I thought, and another calming voice rose in my head: Stop it. You did what you had to do. Keep doing what you have to do.

Killing slices your life into a before and after. I was firm in the after, because the alternative was to be the body lying in the cool porcelain tub.

I leaned against the wall and let my gaze focus on the intruder’s face. He was around my age, midtwenties. Olive-skinned, with dark, short hair. Big ears, a wide mouth, a Roman nose that I’d broken with my kick. He wore black jeans, a black T-shirt, a black denim jacket. Dark, heavy boots. I searched him. A heavy knife in the boot he’d never had a chance to go for, of Swiss manufacture. An extra clip for his gun in the jacket pocket. A cell phone, small, light, not packed with features, just a plain, cheap model that was practically disposable. No passport, no ID, so presumably he’d left those stashed someplace. On his upper arm there was a small, delicately crafted tattoo. A stylized blue nine, in a curving beauty. The top curve of the nine was an orange sun, with short spiky rays.

Nine and sun. Nine suns. Novem Soles. My head felt a little swimmy.

I checked his wallet. A wad of dollars, another wad of euros. Wedged in the folded corner of one of the euro bills I found a rail ticket, used, from Paris to Amsterdam.

The ticket was three days old. He’d come to Amsterdam from Paris and then here, one could presume.

A man, sent from Europe, to kill me.

I had a problem. Someone had taken the bait. Howell would want to know. But given August’s warning, maybe this guy wasn’t from the scarred man. He could be Company, stationed in Europe, dispatched by one of my detractors who still thought me a traitor.

I opened his phone. The only referenced activity was a text, sent from the phone six hours earlier. The text read: Arrived at JFK. I recognized the country code for the Netherlands. I pressed the number to send another text. What the hell.

Let’s play, I thought.

Capra done, I typed. But problem. Followed by surveillance. Clear now but they may have seen face.

Within one minute the phone vibrated in my hand.