hot tub.
“Drop the gun and lose the goggles,” the voice said. “Move very, very slowly. The laser is attached to a Taurus Judge.”
Ben knew the model-a revolver that could be chambered with. 410 shotgun ammunition, rifled to disperse the shot and shred a fist-sized hole from twenty feet out.
In instant mental shorthand, his mind processed the available information. The accent was American, the diction idiomatic. He understood Ben knew firearms, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to count on the mention of the Taurus having the desired effect. He didn't want Ben dead-yet-otherwise he'd be dead already.
So they wanted something from him. He would find out what soon enough. In the meantime, he had a few advantages. Very small, under the circumstances, but better than nothing at all. He closed his eyes.
“Drop the gun and lose the goggles,” the voice said again.
He waited, figuring he'd get one last warning, using the extra seconds to think, to give his eyes more time to adjust to the dark he would face without the goggles.
He understood the nature of his mistake. He'd assumed they would be laying an ambush for Alex, a civilian. Instead, they'd been ready for an operator, him, and adjusted their tactics and positioning accordingly. He was furious with himself for failing to have foreseen this. After they'd lost two at the Four Seasons that morning, they would have known there was serious opposition. They'd outthought him. And outplayed him.
Then he realized. The girl. Goddamn her. Goddamn himself, for letting his guard down. She was plenty smart, smarter than you'd have to be to figure out what he was planning on tonight. She'd made a call, after their little moment in the corridor. And that clueless pat-down in the bar… she played dumb like a pro.
“One more chance to lose the gun and the goggles, and then I put you down.”
Without turning, Ben extended the Glock away from his body, moving very slowly as though trying to reassure the guy of his docility, but in fact giving his closed eyes precious seconds more to adjust. The Glock dropped to the wet grass with a quiet thump.
“Now the goggles. Slowly.”
The empty holster felt like a hollow in his guts. The knowledge that Alex had his backup made him want to puke. Slowly, slowly, he loosened the headgear and eased off the goggles. He opened his eyes. He had a little night vision back. But not enough. Not yet. He extended the goggles to his side and let them fall.
“Where's the one who lives here?” the voice asked.
Thank God he'd put Alex in the extra room. They must have checked the one where the girl thought he was sleeping. It was something, but it wouldn't last. In just a few hours, Alex would wake up and probably knock on Sarah's door. Without Ben to warn him, he'd be toast.
He didn't answer. The guy had given him three tries on the gun and goggles. Now that Ben was disarmed and running blind, the guy could be expected to be at least that patient again.
“Where is he?” the voice asked.
“I don't know,” Ben said.
“We don't want to hurt him. He has something we need. If he hands it over, he walks away. Simple.”
If he hadn't been a hair away from being eviscerated with buckshot, Ben might have laughed. He knew what the guy was doing: helping Ben rationalize giving Alex up. Don't help us, and you die, went the implicit calculus. Do help us, and your brother will be fine. Easy, right?
“I really don't know,” Ben said. He shifted his eyes left, then right. Things were coming into focus now in the faint moonlight. And he knew the layout, knew it by heart.
“Let me tell you how it's going to be,” the voice said. “You tell me where he is. I make a phone call. Some people go talk to him. You and I wait here, in his nice, warm house. When the people call me back to tell me they have what we need, we all go away, and everyone lives happily ever after. Sound good?”
This time, Ben did laugh. “Yeah. Like a fairy tale.”
He was five feet from the corner of the house, a gap that in his present circumstances looked as wide as the Grand Canyon. There was something just on the other side he could use. Assuming it was still there, of course. If it wasn't, even if he made it around the corner, he was dead. But Alex hadn't changed anything else. And regardless, it was his only chance.
“Listen, buddy, you're in a bad spot, I know. But here's the way it is. Maybe I'm bullshitting you. Maybe I'm not. But trust me on this, okay? When I ask you again? This one more time I'm going to ask you? If you don't tell me something I can work with, the thing you'll see a second later, the last thing you'll see ever, will be the mist that used to be your insides.”
Without letting any sign of it come to the surface, Ben tensed to move faster than he had ever moved in his life. Then he laughed, long and hard and with a confidence he absolutely didn't feel. The laughter was inappropriate and incongruous, and no matter how good the guy was, trying to process it was going to momentarily suck up a few precious neurons.
“Something funny?” the voice said.
“For me it is. He's in the tree right over you.”
The instant the last word was out of his mouth, Ben dove for the corner like he'd been shot out of a cannon. And it worked: the laughter, the momentary shift in the guy's focus to what was going on above him instead of in front, and good old action beating reaction-it was just enough. He hit the deck on his stomach like he was sliding into third base and heard the boom of the Taurus behind him, felt lead flying through the air just above his head. He rolled in close to the house, got his feet under him, and dove forward again.
The woodpile. There was always a tarp-covered half cord or cord of firewood here, stacked parallel to the side of the house and two feet away from it because his dad didn't want termites to have an easy jump from the wood to the foundation. And it was still here, thank God, not as much as he remembered but chest high. He scrambled to his feet and turned, his back to the house. He flexed his knees and dropped his hips low, getting his head and body below the top of the pile. He brought his palms up against it, his elbows in, his forehead pressed against the protruding ends of the logs.
And then the guy made a mistake. In his fear that Ben might clear the fence and escape, and in his confidence that Ben was effectively blind now, he followed in too fast. Ben tensed, forcing himself to wait the extra second, to let the guy narrow the gap, and then blasted up and through the wood like an offensive lineman crashing into a blocking sled. Two-foot lengths of hard white oak-splits, rounds, and everything in between- exploded out. Ben charged out behind them. He heard a heavy thud, heard the guy cry out, and then he was on him, wrapping his left hand around the barrel of the gun and twisting hard to the left, driving the other hand into the guy's throat, shoving him backward, slamming him back into the fence. The gun went off again but the muzzle was pointed away from him and then he felt the guy's trigger finger break and the gun tore free. He reversed direction instantly, bringing the gun in muzzle-first in a hammer fist grip, driving it into the guy's temple like he was pounding in a nail. The guy spun away and doubled over, his hands suddenly invisible, clearly reaching for a backup weapon. Ben took the Taurus in his right hand, put the front sight on the guy's back, and rolled the trigger. There was a flash from the muzzle and the gun kicked in his hand. The guy's body jerked as though he was trying to shrug something off, then he dropped to his knees. Ben kept the gun on him and moved in, wanting to shoot him again but hating the thought of the noise of a fourth discharge.
There was no need. The. 410 ammunition had shredded the guy, and in the pale light of the moon Ben could see blood flowing from all over his back. The guy groped a hand around to the gore, then held it before his face. “Fuck me,” he whispered, his tone faintly wondrous, and pitched face-forward to the ground.
Ben moved in, keeping the gun on the guy. He turned him over with a foot and checked for a pulse in this neck. Nothing. He was done.
He retrieved the goggles he had dropped and got them back on, then picked up the Glock. He went back to the guy and pulled the goggles from his slack-jawed face. Caucasian, close-cropped hair, about thirty, maybe younger. That didn't tell him anything. His tactics had been good, though, at least until he'd followed Ben around the corner of the house. But that could be excused-he wouldn't have had a way of knowing how well Ben knew the terrain. And his equipment was good, too. The Taurus, of course; and his goggles were Night Optics, like Ben's.
He crouched next to the body for a moment, sucking wind, trying to clear his head and figure out what to do. A series of snapshot images clicked open and closed in his mind: Tossing a baseball with his dad. Throwing a
