sides-is designed to be unseen. It's what you don't see that you need to worry about.”
“That sounds good, Garcia, but I can't make my decisions based on what I don't see.”
“Keep this in mind, ”Burden said. “Those people who handled you tonight have been here a month or more, and during that time you saw nothing, knew nothing. They came into your house, many times, planting bugs, familiarizing themselves with your security system, sniffing you out, and you didn't have the slightest idea about it. Until Luquin himself told you what he'd done.
“And don't forget this: What you saw of Luquin's operation tonight you saw only because of what we did, my people and you. We drew him out, and he didn't even know what was happening. As powerful as he is, we were able to do that. Right now we're processing that information in our computers, and after I add in what I learned from you during the last hour or so, we'll have a pretty good picture of the number of people we're up against.”
Burden took a sip of his coffee and glanced at Rita before he spoke again.
“You haven't done the wrong thing, Titus. Don't start second-guessing yourself now. We sure as hell don't need Ruby Ridge or Waco tactics here. We've come a long way in a short time in understanding how to deal with the Luquins of the future. What you're seeing are the rough edges. The slicker stuff you won't see at all. We don't want spectacle. We want invisibility… and silence.”
He paused. “One other thing: Remember our conversation in San Miguel? Once we've committed to this thing, there's no turning back. I'm holding you to that. We're sleeping with the serpent now, Titus. The only way we're going to live through the night is to be very still and very quiet until it's dead. If we wake it, it'll kill us.”
David Lindsey
The Rules of Silence
FRIDAY
The Fourth Day
Chapter 30
An hour after Titus collapsed into bed and instantly fell asleep, despite the adrenaline high of his ordeal, his assistant, Carla Elster, rolled over in her bed several valleys north and looked out the window at the pale dawn. The radio alarm had just come on, and she listened to Bob Edwards on NPR intone something about a congressional hearing. She let herself stay in bed until the end of the story, which couldn't have been more than three minutes long, and then threw back the covers.
She reached for her cotton robe on the chair beside the bed, slipped it on, and tied the sash in a slipknot. She padded into the bathroom, where she washed her face, brushed her hair, and then brushed her teeth with her left hand on her hip as she examined her face in the mirror and assessed the impact of the years.
Telling herself to hell with that, she turned and went out into the hallway and down the stairs to the kitchen, where the coffee would just be finishing. She poured herself a cup, added half-and-half from the refrigerator, and carried the mug with her out the front door to get the paper.
Back inside, she sat at the kitchen table and read the headlines of The New York Times. She couldn't concentrate on the articles because her mind kept going back to Titus, as it had throughout the night. She couldn't stop worrying about him. Something was seriously wrong. She didn't believe the bad investment story, of course. But the most remarkable thing about it was that whatever was happening, Titus thought it was necessary to ruin his own reputation to cover it up. That must have killed him, and it pained her deeply that he felt he had to do that.
And those guys with the headphones, were they checking for electronic bugs? That's what it looked like, and Titus had completely ignored her pointed questions about it. Even more curious was his immediate insistence that his financial worries were personal. That made her suspect they weren't.
She changed into jogging clothes, still thinking of Titus and Rita. Although Rita's disturbed behavior was understandable, given the death of Charlie Thrush and the news about Titus's financial troubles, she seemed more agitated and abrupt than distraught.
At the bottom of the stairs she stopped by the secretary's desk in the front hallway to pick up her epinephrine injector, which she kept in a small sack and wore on a string around her neck when she jogged. She checked her watch as she headed down the front sidewalk and then hit the street, taking off at a slow lope.
There were sections of West Lake Hills, an incorporated town on Austin's southwest side, that felt almost rural, their narrow, winding lanes climbing the heavily wooded hills and then twisting down into the valleys. The homes themselves were often hidden from the lanes, and it wasn't unusual to jog for many blocks without seeing any of the homes at all.
Carla's route was a secluded course, and she looked forward to her peaceful early morning regimen. She liked the time alone, because once she got to CaiText it was nonstop until she returned home exhausted in the evening.
Twenty minutes into her run, as she rounded a corner at an intersection, a man was warming up at the entrance to his drive that led deeper into the woods. He fell in behind her for half a block back as she turned into a smaller street. Another half block ahead of her a woman emerged from a hedge flanking the front sidewalk of one of the homes and began jogging in front of her, though at a slower pace.
Just as Carla was about to overtake her, she heard the man coming up fast behind her. She slowed just as she was approaching the woman so that the three of them wouldn't be three abreast on the small lane as the man passed.
But he didn't pass. The woman whirled around and embraced Carla and spun her around. The man was on her instantly, stuffing a ball of foam into her mouth, and then the two of them literally carried her into the dense woods that crowded up against the lane.
Stunned, Carla didn't even know how much she struggled, but she was aware of fighting, though she was soon pinned down. The woman pulled down the neck of Carla's sports bra, and the man produced a net bag that emitted a sound that horrified her: a constant, quavering buzz.
Carefully the man placed the opening of the bag next to her left upper breast, and she went berserk. But she just wasn't strong enough. The hornets stung her repeatedly before the man moved the net down to her bare stomach, where he held it firmly against her as they stung her again.
That was all.
Then the man and woman simply held her. The man looked at his watch, and they all waited. The welts on her breast and stomach burned fiercely, as though hot coals had been spilled on her, and because she was already sweaty, they itched wildly.
They lay there, the three of them, in the tall grass a few yards into the woods, in a weird, mad embrace, waiting. What was happening? Why were they doing this? She could smell the man's aftershave, and she could feel the woman's soft breasts against her bare shoulder. The mind-numbing why of it was as stupefying as was the terror of waiting for the allergic reaction to kick in.
This was incomprehensible.
She tried to see their faces, but she couldn't. Why wouldn't they let her see their faces? If they were trying to kill her, what would it matter? Kill her?! Was that… could that really be their intent? That's what they were doing, but was that what they meant to do?
That made no more sense than if one of them were a butterfly.
Her allergy was acute, so the symptoms struck quickly. She began to feel her throat close up, and then her lungs seemed to collapse, as if they couldn't retain enough oxygen. She felt the quiverings of panic and coughed through the foam ball. Her stomach began to cramp, long, hard contractions of her muscles. She felt light-headed, and her heart revved up to an incredible speed.
She felt one of them remove the epinephrine injector from around her neck. Were they going to save her after all?
Suddenly she felt as if time had accelerated at an incredible velocity. She knew she had twenty minutes at
