anybody I told you what I’m going to tell you, I’ll deny it.”
“I’m listening.”
“Styer is a professional assassin from the Eastern Bloc who used to trade in seemingly impossible-to-kill targets, first for the KGB’s elite Special Situations Unit, and after the wall came down, for a private murder-for-hire organization. When I sent your toothpick to the lab, I also sent them Styer’s DNA. I got it from a scented toothpick he left in a rental car in New Orleans. I’m having that sample compared to your toothpick, and if it matches, we’re going from bad to worse real fast. I’ve gotten what little I know about this guy from people who know things I don’t. They talked to me because they hoped I might somehow lead them to him.”
Brad crossed his legs at the ankles.
“Paulus Styer was born in East Germany and sent to the Soviet Union where he was groomed to be a weapon of selective destruction. He became a world-class professional assassin-a human chameleon who vanished two years ago after failing to kill me.”
“You were his target?”
“He was told I was his target. The CIA used a hit on me to get Styer in the field so they could take him out when he made his move on me. They underestimated Styer and sent a single professional to kill him, but Styer found out the hit was a ploy and escaped. Faith Ann’s uncle, my friend Hank Trammel, is a cripple, and his wife, Millie, was killed. Faith Ann saw Styer run them over with an SUV merely to manipulate me into a death game. He has a compulsion to show his victims, just before he kills them, how amazingly talented he is. I guess since he can’t show the world his genius, he plays to an audience of two-himself and his target.”
“He tried to kill you and failed?”
“He easily could have, but he decided not to. Look, nothing he does is without purpose. Maybe he killed Sherry Adams for another reason, but he definitely used that murder as bait to get me here. It’s all a game with him. He isn’t part of the same reality normal people share.”
“Seems really farfetched,” Brad said. “He knew I’d go right to you?”
“He is a grand master of manipulation.”
“Can you take him?”
“Only if the playing field is slanted in my favor. Styer is way out of my class. In a toe-to-toe gunfight, I’d have an even chance. But outside that scenario, my odds crash.”
“Could you…I don’t know…contact the CIA for help getting him?”
Winter sat back and shook his head. “Asking the part of the CIA I’m talking about for help is the last thing we want to do. Be like asking a pack of starving wolves to guard your henhouse.”
29
After being kept blindfolded, gagged, and tied up on the mattress in the back of her abductor’s van for what seemed like hours, Cynthia Gardner found her self fully awake and completely alone.
The guy had to be some kind of serial killer or rapist or something.
Although she couldn’t see anything, she knew that he had taken her back to the equipment shed. When he jerked the tarp off her body, she smelled the diesel and the cool earth floor of the barn.
“We’re going to be here for a while. I’ll let you eat and use the portable toilet, but remember my warning. You’ll be spending the night here. You have any problem with that?”
Cynthia shook her head. As soon as her mother figured out she wasn’t at her grandmother’s she would be FTFT-freaking the fuck totally. But if he had let her live this long, she hoped the bastard was going to ransom her, and her mother would pay, and maybe he’d let her go home. She couldn’t believe Jack would get her kidnapped, but he was certainly a man who liked money. It worried her, though, that the man hadn’t bothered to hide his face from her. That could mean he was going to kill her, but it might also mean he was from out of the area and figured she couldn’t identify him because they wouldn’t catch him. Jack was smart and he probably didn’t figure she’d know he was involved. He would probably think she was that dumb, the smug bastard.
She wondered if the man was serious about killing her if she tried to escape. Probably not, but doing what he said made sense. No sense pushing him.
He untied her hands and feet and led her to the toilet. She reached up to free the gag and he slapped her so hard she almost fell. Stunned, tears blurred her vision.
“Nothing you have to say is of any interest to me,” he told her sternly. “Do your business.”
Nodding, she turned with her back to the seat and looked pointedly at him, waiting for him to close the door, but he just held it open and stared back at her. Her bladder was bursting, so she bit her lip, looked at the floor, and slowly undid her jeans.
After she finished, he led her back to the van and retied her. She felt a sharp pain in the back of her arm and realized, when he pulled back, that he was holding a syringe. She protested in a low growl, but the sensation of floating in space killed the sound. She closed her eyes. Oblivion seemed like a good idea.
30
After meeting with the sheriff and his deputy, Albert White spent several hours guzzling coffee while reviewing the camera captures of David Scotoni seated at the blackjack table, and that of the surrounding tables. Nothing he saw indicated that Scotoni was being monitored by anybody who might be the mysterious Pablo. Of course, he erased the eight-minute section of the tape that slowed Mulvane watching Scotoni from every camera that had recorded it.
Albert figured Pablo killed Beals, probably because Jack was nosy, or knew something that the guy thought threatened his future. Professionals hate curiosity-and witnesses. And they could be paranoid.
Several of the cameras covering the parking area caught Scotoni coming from his rental car and returning to it seven hours later. Albert erased the images of Beals following Scotoni to his car, getting into his Blazer, and trailing Scotoni. No cars seemed to have followed Beals from the lot. With selective edits he could leave footage of Scotoni leaving without a tail. He would have given the sheriff the footage of Beals, which could only make the case against Beals stronger-but Mulvane had decided he would tell the sheriff that Beals had indeed been in the casino while Scotoni was gambling-and had left an hour before the young cheater did, even if it gave Barnett a reason to dig deeper. That was better than being caught in a lie. But Albert wasn’t going to give Barnett the keys to his own cell if he could help it.
Legally speaking, whatever Beals had told the kid was hearsay, and what could they prove? Barnett was just a small town sheriff, and he had a department packed with dim bulbs, drinking coffee and making their assholes’ wages aside from what they could make on the sly. Without Beals to testify about Albert’s partnership in picking off a lucky shit-heel here and there, this would probably go away. Anyway, Albert knew that nothing connected the two of them to each other.
Sheriff Barnett had less in common with his two more immediate predecessors than a rooster had with a python. Barnett never came into any of the casinos unless an investigation led him there, and he had enough of his own money to make him risky to try to bribe. Plus he was a straight arrow.
White had never before seen the new deputy who accompanied the sheriff. There was something about the name, Massey, that seemed vaguely familiar, and he had been trying to make the connection by not trying hard to do so. A psychologist once told him that thinking on anything too hard often drove the information deeper into the recesses of your mind.
He made a still print of the deputy, wrote
What made Albert White so valuable to the casino was his commitment to protect the casino’s profits to the best of his ability. He knew how to keep his mouth shut and he made sure he had the
