He made himself a cold roast beef sandwich with a slice of cheese, mixed a drink, and went out into the main hall. He stood in front of the Edo shield and spear, eating and drinking as his eyes roved over the familiar lines of the artifacts.
When Elise had not shown up by nine-thirty, he knew that she was either working on a night filming assignment or was out to dinner and a show with friends. She would probably not get back until midnight or after.
In the den he picked up Smith and Wan-go's China: A History in Art, but his mind kept wandering, and his eyes would not focus on the printed words. He put the book aside and switched on the television set.
Watching the screen without actually paying attention to the images moving upon it, he began to think about those two bloody bodies in the mall's business office. He shuddered uncontrollably and felt nauseous. He always tried to set up a job in such a way that no killing was required. He was not quick to point a gun, and he rarely used one. In the past he had found himself incapable of extreme violence except when it was absolutely necessary to save his own life. That had happened only twice. The first time, he had been forced into a corner by a crooked and brutal cop who wanted to cut himself in on a piece of the action-Tucker's piece; and once there had been a partner who had decided to kill Tucker and avoid the unpleasant ritual of splitting the take from a robbery. Both times, Tucker had taken the only option that they had left open to him: he had killed. But the nightmares had haunted him for months afterward, and the guilt was still with him. Although he had not had a hand in the deaths of Keski and the bodyguard at Oceanview Plaza, he knew he would always feel some responsibility for them. There would be new nightmares.
Suddenly the color picture on the television screen came through to him for the first time-and there was Elise spraying perfume on her slender wrists and pretty neck. As the male voice-over sold the product, Elise smiled at the camera, smiled at Tucker? She seemed perfectly real, not an image on a strip of film but a flesh-and-blood woman.
Tucker wanted to reach out and touch her. When he had been sitting at the bottom of the pool in Oceanview Plaza, he had been worried about losing her, and he was plagued by the same anxiety now. He needed her more than he had ever previously admitted to himself. She had nursed him through those nightmares and through so much more. When everyone else was considered, she was his only friend.
The commercial ended. Elise vanished.
Before his thoughts could slip back to the dead men in his past, he went out and mixed himself another drink. He stood by the spear and shield in the main hall. There, he could turn and look at Elise the moment she came through the front door, which could not be too soon.
Brian Coffey is the pen name of a young American writer whose fiction has sold over two million copies throughout the world.
Surrounded is the second (the first was Blood Risk) in a series featuring Mike Tucker, a man with two identities and a Robin Hood attitude to crime.
