“His eyes aren’t blue, Victor, they’re brown.”
“Yeah? How do you know that, Lissy?”
“He’s all big and dark; no blue eyes for him.”
Bernie opened his brown eyes and stared up at Victor. He didn’t have to fake looking dazed. “What?”
“Hey, were you trying to fake it? Or are you still knocked stupid?” Lissy punched him in the belly with her fist. He barely responded. “See? He’s still stupid. I hit him so hard his cop brains arc still scrambled.” She leaned down and whispered in his ear as her palm flattened out on his stomach. “Hey, Mr. Agent, I like the feel of your gut. No fat, good muscle tone. Let me see.” Lissy jerked his shirt out of his pants, ripped the buttons off, and spread it open. “Wow, Vic-tor, look at our buff cop here.” She stroked her hand over his stomach, and, to his horror, Bernie felt her fingers slide down into his shorts.
He tried to jerk away, then coughed, wheezed.
Victor jerked when he saw her hand. “What are you doing, Lissy? Stop that, you hear me? You don’t even know him. Stop it!”
Lissy laughed, pulled her hand out of his pants. “That’s the way to wake up a cop, Victor. All you gotta do is touch their brains.” And she laughed again. “Hey, that’s true of any guy, isn’t it? From what I could tell, our cop here’s got a pretty good brain.”
Victor looked at her like he hated her, then kicked a rock on the ground beside him. “Why’s it taking them so long to come out of the house? Forget the forensic crap. There’s no way they know we’re here; they’ve got to figure we’re gone. So where are they?” But Victor didn’t really care at that moment what the federal agents were doing because his heart was still pounding at what Lissy had done—she’d actually touched another man, she’d actually
Bernie heard the shrillness in Victor Nesser’s voice, knew he was furious, near violence, at what Lissy had done. He had to calm things down. He said matter-of-factly, “Since I’m not in the house, they’re checking everywhere for clues. They’re thorough, so it takes time.”
“Our pretty boy here is right,” Lissy said. “There’s been time for a whole battalion of cops to get here, but no one’s come to save their butts. I think they’re still looking around, still looking for
“We’ll get them.” Victor saw she was in pain and smacked his fist against his leg once, twice. “We just didn’t have time.”
Lissy said, “I could have killed all three of them when they came running out, exploded their heads right off. But you were saying wait, wait, wait.” She frowned. “Too bad that redheaded woman is going to eat one of my bullets. Her hair is cool; I want to know how she makes it look like that. She must be Savich’s partner. Do you think they’re sleeping together? Hey, pretty boy? Savich and that redheaded woman, they doing the dirty?”
“I don’t know,” Bernie said, and hoped it sounded believable.
Victor said, “Look, Lissy, you need to focus. Listen, I stopped you from shooting at them because it was too big a risk. Why take chances? If you missed even one of them we’d be in a deep crap pit now. No, this is better. We’ll wait. When they come out of that front door, not expecting a thing, we’ll take them down, take them all down, because we’ll be ready. It’ll be like shooting those Coke cans off tree stumps in your backyard, remember? Don’t forget, we’ve got their buddy here, and they’ll figure it out eventually. He’s a big, important FBI agent. He gives us an edge, if we need it.”
Lissy said suddenly, “Wait, what if they’re worried we could be out here waiting for them? What if they go out the back door?”
Victor said patiently, “There’s no reason for them to go out the back door. There’s nothing back there but miles of woods. Why would they do that? They haven’t figured out a thing. Stop your worrying and keep your eyes on the front of the house.”
Bernie was praying Lissy would listen to him.
Lissy got to her feet. “I’m going to jump out of my skin if I have to wait here another minute. I’m going to check it out. I can circle around through the woods, get right up to the back door.” She kicked Bernie with her toe. “You think they’re still looking for clues? Dusting for fingerprints on the kitchen floor? Maybe using one of those fancy machines that shines blue and shows up bloodstains? It takes they long? They’re up to something, Victor. Hey, if I come in through the back maybe I’ll catch them all by surprise, shoot ‘em before they even know I’m there. Maybe I can talk to that redhead about her hair. I’ thinking she must use some special hair products.”
“Open your eyes, lover boy, say good-bye.”
Bernie opened his eyes and said to the beautiful fresh-faced teenager who was anything but, “Good- bye.”
She laughed and blew Victor a kiss, looked again at Bernie’s belly, and said, “Keep him close, Victor, you never know when you’ll need yourself a shield.” She smacked her lips and laughed. “If he’s still alive tonight, I might have myself some fun with him. You know, give him an IQ test.”
Victor didn’t say anything to that until Lissy disappeared into the trees. Then he bent down to the man lying bound at his feet, and stuck his gun against Bernie’s mouth and shoved his lips apart. “You’re never going to touch Lissy,” he said. Bernie nearly gagged at the barrel close to the back of his throat. There was nothing he could do. He thought of Jessie and his boys.
Victor got himself back under control. He pulled the barrel slowly out of Bernie’s mouth, shrugged, and eased down, his back pressed against an oak tree.
Bernie thanked God it wasn’t Lissy who was enraged, because she’d have shot him without a thought. He tested his wrists again. He wasn’t going to get himself free, his hands and feet were tied too tight. Victor held a gun on his lap, which meant Bernie was a half a second away from being dead. There was nothing he could do, nothing except pray, and that’s what he did.
He prayed Savich and Sherlock and Cully had realized what was happening, prayed this insane Lolita wouldn’t come in through the back door, laughing like a maniac, and empty a clip into them.
Victor said in a meditative voice, never looking away from the front of the house, “Do you know I’ve never killed anyone myself? That’s why I drove the van for my aunt. I told her I didn’t want to do that. A couple of days ago I shot a highway patrol officer woman in the chest. Lissy was yelling at me to shoot her between the eyes so she couldn’t rat us out, but she was looking up at me, you know? And I shot the ground next to her head. I really didn’t think she’d live; there was blood all over her chest.” Victor leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “I guess Lissy was right, that woman cop did live, and she did rat us out, she told them exactly who we were. It was all over the car radio news, this big news bulletin about us.”
Victor turned to look at Bernie. “But you, buddy, you’re coming on to Lissy, and that makes me mad. Maybe I could kill you and not feel bad about it.”
65
PEAS RIDGE, GEORGIA
When Ethan managed to open his eyes, he was lying on his back on a soft, pale blue rug, staring up at a white ceiling. He managed to sit up. He was in a nice-sized room, with a large bed with a pale blue coverlet, a desk that looked like an antique, and shelves built in behind it filled with books and what looked like journals. There was n gooseneck lamp on top of the desk, next to a computer. He saw a door that probably led to a bathroom.
The room looked like a superior hotel accommodation. There were raised blinds over the glass window in the
