“Yeah, it was you. You saved Senator Dashworth’s life. Pretty impressive.”
“You shouldn’t know about that,” Adam said finally, frowning at Rollo. “You really shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, well, I’m an insider, I can’t help it if people tell me everything.”
“I never heard anything about that,” Becca said, her antennae up. “What are you talking about?”
Rollo just grinned at her and said, “Did you find out who tried to off him?”
“You don’t know about that, too?”
“Hey, I’m an insider, but the spigot was off when it came to the particulars.”
Adam shrugged. “Well, who cares now? The guy who wanted the senator dead was his son-in-law. Irving-that’s the guy’s name-had sent him threats, all the usual anonymous bullshit. The senator called me. It turned out that Irving had become a heroin addict, didn’t have any more money, and wanted the senator’s inheritance. The senator managed to keep it from the media, to protect his daughter, and so we got the guy into a sanatorium, where he belonged, where he’s still at. I guess there are only a few insiders who know anything at all about it.”
“You run some sort of a bodyguard business?” Becca said, frowning at Adam over a spoonful of baked beans. “I thought you did security consulting.”
“I like to keep my hand in a lot of different things,” Adam said.
“What I’d like to know,” Sherlock said, handing Rollo another hot dog with lots of down-home yellow mustard slathered on it, “is why you didn’t find out who it was right away. The guy was an addict? That kind of thing isn’t easy to hide.”
Adam actually flushed. He played with his fork, didn’t meet her eyes. He cleared his throat. “Well, the thing is that the son-in-law wasn’t around for those three days I was checking things out. His wife was protecting him, said he had the flu, that he was really contagious, et cetera. She swore to me and to her father that Irving wouldn’t even consider doing something like that, no, it had to be a crazy, or a left-wing conspiracy. She was so-well-damned believable.”
“Good thing you were there to deflect the guy’s knife,” Rollo said.
“That’s the truth,” Adam said.
Rollo sat down at the kitchen table, squeezing in between Savich and Becca. Adam said on a deep sigh, “I just heard that the wife is trying to get the husband out of there. It could start all over again.”
“Well, shit,” Rollo said. “Not much justice around, is there?”
Then Chuck came in and Rollo, still half a hot dog left, saluted and went back outside.
“It won’t be long now,” Savich said. “I feel it. Things will happen.” He took a last bite of a tofu hot dog, sighed with pleasure, and hugged his wife.
Things didn’t happen until later.
They were all in the living room drinking coffee, planning, arguing, brainstorming. There was no activity outside. Everything was buttoned down tight, until at exactly ten o’clock a bullet shattered one of the front windows, glass exploded inward, carrying shreds of curtain with it.
“Down!” Savich yelled.
But it wasn’t a simple bullet that came through the window to strike the floor molding on the far side of the living room, it was a tear gas bullet. Thick gray smoke gushed out even before it struck the molding.
“Oh, damn,” Adam said. “Back into the kitchen. Now!”
Another tear gas bullet exploded through the window. They were coughing, covering their faces, running toward the back of the house.
They heard men’s shouts, sporadic gunfire, sharp and loud in the night. The front door burst open and Tommy the Pipe ran in, his face covered with his jacket. “Out, guys, quick. Through the front door, the back’s not covered well enough.”
“He shot tear gas bullets,” Adam said between choking coughs.
“He’s probably using a CAR-15, behind our perimeter. Come on out.”
They coughed their heads off, tears streaming down their faces. Savich found himself with Becca’s nose pressed into his armpit.
“We’ve got to get him,” Adam shouted, coughing, choking, his eyes streaming tears. “Just another minute to get over this and we’ll start scouring.”
It took another seven minutes before they headed out in the general direction of where the tear gas bullets must have been shot toward the front windows.
They found tire tracks, nothing else, until Adam called out, “Look here.”
Everyone gathered around Adam, who was on his haunches. He held up a shell casing that was four inches long and about an inch and a half in diameter. “Tommy the Pipe was right. He used a CAR-15-that’s a compact M16,” he added to Becca, “stands for carbine automatic rifle.”
Savich found the other shell casing and was tossing it back and forth.
“But how can tear gas come from a gun?” Becca said. “I thought they were canisters or something like that. That’s what I’ve always seen in movies and on TV.”
“That’s real old-hat now,” Adam said. “This smaller M16 is real portable, you could carry it under your trench coat. It’s got this telescoping collapsible barrel. The SEALs use this stuff. What you do is simply mount an under- barrel tubular grenade launcher and fire away with your tear gas projectiles. It’s wicked.”
Sherlock said, “He’s obviously connected and very well trained. Got all the latest goodies. And just where would he get all this stuff?”
And Adam thought:
No one said anything.
They got back to the house forty-five minutes later. It was late, and everyone was hyped. Adam said, as he shrugged into his jacket, rechecked his pistol, “I’m going to take one of the first watches.”
“Get me up at three o’clock,” Savich said.
“I’m outta here,” Adam said. He looked over at Becca, saw that she was white-faced and couldn’t help himself. He walked to her and pulled her tight against him. He said against her hair, “Sleep well and don’t worry. We’re going to get him.”
Becca didn’t think she’d be able to slow her heart down enough even to consider sleeping, but she did, deeply and dreamlessly, until she felt a strange jab in her left arm, just above her elbow, like a mosquito bite. She jerked awake, her heart pounding wildly, and she couldn’t breathe, just pant and jerk. She was blind, no, it was just dark, very dark, the blinds drawn because nobody wanted him to be able to see into the house. She saw a shadowy figure standing over her, gray, indistinct, and she whispered, “What is this? Is it you, Adam? What did you do-?” But he said nothing, merely leaned closer and finally, when her heart was slowing just a bit, he whispered right against her face, “I came for you, Rebecca, just like I said I would,” and he licked her cheek.
“No,” she said. “No.” Then she fell back, wondering what the silver light was shining just over her face. It seemed to arc toward her, a skinny silver flash, but then it just wasn’t important. A small flashlight, she thought as she breathed in very deeply, more deeply than usual for her, and eased into a soft warm blackness that relaxed her mind and body, and she didn’t know anything more.
19
Her heart beat slow, regular strokes, one after the other, easy, steady, no fright registering in her body. She felt calm, relaxed. She opened her eyes. It was black, no shadows, no hint of movement, just relentless, motionless black. She was swamped with the black, but she forced herself to draw in a deep breath. Her heart wasn’t pumping out of her chest now. She still felt relaxed, too relaxed, with no fear grinding through her, at least not yet, but she knew she should be afraid. She was in darkness and he was close by. She knew it, but still she breathed steadily, evenly, waiting, but not afraid. Well, perhaps there was just a tincture of fear, indistinct, nibbling at the edges of her mind. She frowned, and it slipped away.
Odd how she remembered perfectly everything that had happened: the jab in her left arm, the instant terror, she remembered all of it-him licking her cheek-with no mental fuzz cloaking the memories.
The nibblings of fear became more focused now, she could nearly grasp it. Her heart speeded up. She blinked,
