50
Winter Massey locked the gate to the closed-down clinic, then waited for Alexa to leave. She had the damned phone to her head before she was fifty feet away, probably calling Clayton Able for advice, no doubt begging him for some intelligence that would negate the necessity of Winter’s trip to Laughlin’s. Winter wasn’t going to run everything he did through Clayton, or wait for him to toss Winter some eleventh-hour bone. Winter didn’t care for men who sat at computers playing with human lives that were no more real to them than some teenage sorcerer in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Clayton was working with Alexa, but the man had worked for Military Intelligence. He gave Winter the creeps, and every bone in his body told him not to trust him.
Something else was bothering him more than Clayton Able or Click’s imprisonment. He couldn’t shake a feeling of unease, a feeling whose source he couldn’t put his finger on. Winter had never gone against his gut without being sorry he had. Right now his gut felt hollow and hot.
He hadn’t wanted Alexa to come with him from Click’s house because he didn’t want her undermining what he was doing with Click. He had told himself that she was better off not being involved in anything that was heavy- handed or illegal due to the consequences to her career. She might want to let go and get down in the dirt with him, but she couldn’t. Still it troubled him that she would bring him in to do something and then block him from doing it.
Winter picked up his own cell phone from the console and dialed Sean.
“Hello, Tiger,” she answered.
“You say that to everybody?”
“Just if caller ID says they’re using your phone,” she replied. “How’s it going?”
“It’s picking up steam,” Winter told her. “I borrowed one of your padded cells. Hope you don’t mind.”
“No,” she said. “If you need it, it’s fine.”
“Your liability paid up on it?”
“Yes. Winter-Is everything all right?”
“Peachy keen. How’s everything at the ranch?”
“There’s a leak in the roof and water is running down the stone fireplace. Olivia has the sniffles. Rush saddled his horse without Faith Ann’s help. Faith Ann cooked speckled trout dinner and it was excellent. Hank’s complaining about everything because he wishes he was with you. This bed is so cold and lonely.”
“Well, if things work out, I’ll be back in it tomorrow night.”
“You’d better be. This hot water bottle doesn’t keep me as warm as you do.”
“I’m glad you need me for something.”
“Massey, I need you for everything. You know that, don’t you?”
“Sure I do.”
“You’d better be careful. You get injured and I’m going to be very angry with you. Is Alexa with you?”
“She’s gone back to the hotel to meet with someone.”
“Who’s watching your back?”
“Doesn’t need watching. I’m just driving around in the rain.”
A horn blared. Winter, realizing he had drifted close to another vehicle, swerved back into his lane. A van sped by, the driver holding his hand out in the rain long enough to give Winter a hand signal not covered in the North Carolina driver’s manual.
“What was that?” Sean asked.
“A Toyota, I think,” Winter said.
“Winter, stay focused,” she chastised.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“That’s not funny. You hang up and don’t split your attention again for a minute.”
“Okay, babe. Go back to sleep.”
“Know what, Massey?”
“Yes, Sean, I certainly do.”
“You’d better.”
He waited until after she hung up to end the call. After this was over, he would tell Sean about the machine- gun attack at Click’s. No sense in giving her something concrete to worry about. He had come within a split second of being cut to pieces. It was nice to know that retirement hadn’t put cobwebs in his reflexes.
If the phone book was correct, Ross Laughlin’s house was a large Tudor near Queen’s College on a tree-lined street where other stately homes were surrounded by manicured lawns. The windows of the lawyer’s home were all dark except for the ones on the back corner of the first floor-probably the kitchen. Laughlin’s outdoors lighting was pooled for dramatic effect, designed more to show off the landscaping than to offer security. Winter assumed Laughlin had at least as good a security system as everybody else on the street. Perhaps, being a criminal as well as an attorney, his was better than anything his neighbors had. Winter didn’t like the setup. There was no good place to park without letting himself be exposed as he approached the house from the front. He kept going and turned the corner and found a narrow service alley that ran behind the houses.
Winter went around the block and spotted a house that was being renovated, one end of it a yet roofless skeleton made of two-by-fours. A large container jammed with debris had been plopped down in the rutted disaster that would become a yard. The house was protected from its neighbors by a stand of bamboo. Winter cut his lights, turned in, and parked his truck behind the loaded dumpster.
He speed-dialed Alexa on the cell phone she’d furnished him.
“Yeah?” she answered.
“I’m here.”
“You sure you want to go this route? Not too late to change your mind.”
“I’m here, Lex. Unless you have something from Able that makes this unnecessary.”
“Anything I can say to stop you?”
“I can’t think of a thing.”
She was silent for a few long seconds. “Don’t do anything without weighing it against possible consequences. You’re wide open, Massey.”
Winter ended the call, reached behind his seat, and pulled out his hooded foul-weather camouflage jacket.
He set the cell phone Alexa had given him to vibrate and dropped it into his shirt pocket. He put the coat on, took the SIG out of his shoulder holster, and slipped it into the right front pocket of the coat. He opened the door and climbed out, locking the truck and pocketing the keys.
Winter decided that with current events under way, the lawyer might have special security measures in place, so Winter needed to be extremely cautious approaching the property. He had to let his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness so he could see using what little ambient light there was.
He used the stand of bamboo as a shield, waiting several minutes before he crossed the street and dodged behind a big home that backed up to the alley that ran behind the Laughlin house. Winter moved the way he stalked deer-slowly and deliberately, using the shadows and foliage and avoiding open spaces. Unlike deer, humans didn’t have a sense of smell that would allow them to pick him out. The falling rain covered the sound of his footsteps. He reached the back of Laughlin’s property, which was protected by a brick wall. Going over meant exposing himself and dropping into an area he didn’t know anything about.
His eyes lit on a section of ladder leaning against an oak tree in the backyard of the home closest to Laughlin’s. It was a godsend. He could climb up high enough into the tree to reconnoiter Laughlin’s property from a safe place.
Something about this conveniently abandoned ladder that had looked so perfect now chilled him. Slowly, he backed deeper into the shadows. He put his hands in his pockets, froze completely, and concentrated on the ladder, his mind drawing lines and angles around it.
