“ The beauty of this pistol is that it’s almost silent,” Mansfield said.
“ That’s good,” Lila said, “because it’s a single shot weapon. I’ll have to reload before shooting again, so doing them in their sleep is best.”
“ Yes, you wouldn’t want to wake them.”
“ Don’t worry, I won’t.”
“ There’s a half dozen darts there.”
“ I’ll only need two.”
“ Take them all, just in case. You never know what might come up.”
Home, she booted up her computer and smiled. This was going to be the easiest money she’d ever earned. Amy Eisenhower was only a few blocks away. Her car was anyway. She checked her watch, 5:45. Too early, besides she liked to work late. In this case, 4:00 in the morning would be perfect, they’d be asleep. She could shoot them in their beds, bind them and drive them over to Mansfield’s at first light.
Chapter Six
Izzy lay awake in the king size bed. So much bed for only one person. Too much bed for her to fall asleep in. Besides, she wasn’t the least bit tired. She wondered why, because she hadn’t had any sleep since she’d walked out of the morgue twenty-four hours ago. She should be dead to the world.
Maybe it was her new found youth. Maybe her young body didn’t need as much sleep as she’d been used to. Or maybe she was never going to sleep again. She hoped that wasn’t the case, because lying in the dark, listening to the quiet, was dull going.
If she were home, she could get up and read or watch television, but she hadn’t thought to raid Alicia’s library and she didn’t want to turn on the television that was on the bureau opposite the bed, for fear she’d wake the girls in the next room.
Girls in the next room. That bothered Izzy. Alicia only had two beds in her large house. She’d converted one of her four bedrooms to a gym and another to a computer room. So Amy had to decide who to sleep with and, since the girl had spent the first four years of her life sleeping with Izzy, Izzy assumed they’d be sharing the big bed. But Amy said she’d be more comfortable sleeping with her friend.
Izzy never would have suspected someone as beautiful as Alicia of being gay. She looked like every man’s fantasy. And she never would have known if the girls hadn’t told her how they’d tricked Tucker Wayne into letting Amy go without a fight.
She smiled up at the dark ceiling. That was actually pretty smart. Tucker had probably been flattered. She could just see him with his chest puffed up, bragging to his friends about this gorgeous lesbian who had chosen him to straighten her out.
She wondered if Tucker could call Lila off. And if he could, would he? He’d said on the phone that they were even now, so Izzy thought not. Amy had stolen from him.
“ Damn,” she muttered. She’d left home so quickly, she’d forgotten to take her guns. She hated guns, was thought of as an anti-gun nutcase by all who knew her, even though she’d been born into a family of hunters. Her father and brothers had all carried. She’d been shooting as long as she’d been walking. But when she’d helped work on two girls who’d suffered multiple gunshot wounds, during her second week as an intern, she’d changed. Those girls died and along with them Izzy’s love of shooting had died, as well.
But Lee, her husband and the love of her life, was best friend to her brothers, hunted with them, fought with them, loved them almost as much as he’d loved her. When he’d died, she gave her brothers all of his guns, save the Glock, which she kept in her safe. That safe also housed a wallet gun her nephew Jeff got at a gun show in Las Vegas.
Two years ago her family had gathered at her house for Thanksgiving and later that evening, Jeff had had a little too much too drink. When she’d helped him up to the bed in one of her guest rooms, he’d grabbed the pillow, hugged it, rolled onto his side and passed out. She saw the bulge his wallet made in his back pocket, so she took it out, thinking to set it on the nightstand next to the bed, when she discovered it wasn’t a wallet at all. It was a small gun, a little Ruger, cleverly concealed in a leather holster resembling a wallet.
She’d taken the gun, put it in the safe along with her passport, other important papers and Lee’s Glock. Jeff, along with everyone else in her family, knew how she felt about guns, so in the morning he didn’t mention it. Neither did she.
As much as she hated guns, they’d come in awful handy if Lila Booth were to catch up to them. She sat up, heard the dog stir. He’d been sleeping by the side of the bed, but he was on all fours now, alert.
Alicia lived on Ralston, near the university. Izzy could walk over to Sierra, go up a couple blocks, then go through the park and enter her house through the back gate. If she didn’t turn on the lights, anybody who might be watching from a parked car out front wouldn’t know she was there. She could go in the back door, up the stairs to her room, open the safe, get the guns and be back well before dawn, without the girls ever knowing she’d been gone.
She sat on the edge of the bed. It had been a chilly night, but still, and she hated a stuffy room, so she’d cracked the window. She’d been lying awake in sweatpants, sweatshirt and thick running socks, as a hedge against the cold. She pulled off the sweatpants, stepped into her Levi’s. She’d been wearing her favorite Wolf Pack sweatshirt and decided to keep it on. She loved the Wolf Pack, UNR’s football team, and never missed a home game. She’d been going for years and they’d called her their good luck charm. She hoped the sweatshirt would bring her luck tonight.
She picked up her Nikes, then started for the bedroom door with the dog at her heels.
“ No, boy, you’re not coming!”
But the dog was thinking along different lines. As soon as she’d opened the bedroom door, he shot through, scurried down the stairs and was waiting for her by the front door. The door was bolted shut. A sturdy bolt. Izzy thought for a second, she could lock the door after herself, but she couldn’t throw the bolt. Plus, if she did lock up after herself, how would she get back in.
She backed away from the door, went to the kitchen and on into the garage, the dog at her heels.
“ I said you’re not going!”
At the side door, she pulled back the bolt, opened the door and the dog shot out.
“ Well, maybe you are going.” She pulled on her Nikes and followed Hunter out into the night, thinking that at least she wasn’t leaving the front door unlocked. And she’d be back in less than an hour, so she wasn’t too worried about leaving the house unprotected.
Outside, the air was brisk, the sky clear. She looked up, sighed as she spied the Big Dipper. She’d always loved the stars and even at her age, she still gloried in the Star Wars films, even the badly reviewed, “Phantom Menace.” True Anikan should have been older in the film, but even George Lucas can’t get it right all of the time.
“ Beam me up, Scottie.” She hugged herself. Then said, as she’d done countless times before. “I just wish you were out there, that you could take me away.” It had always bothered her that some poor guy from Kansas would complain how he’d been abducted against his will, when she was down here dying to go. If they were out there, why didn’t they pick her? Like life, it was so unfair.
At Sierra, she checked her watch. A quarter to three and the street was deserted. She heard a car coming from the south and stepped behind a tree as it approached. Hunter seemed to understand, because he moved behind her as a police car cruised on by. In her past life, the life before yesterday, she considered the police as friends and protectors. She wasn’t so sure anymore.
“ Come on, boy.” She started up the street, headed in the direction the police car had gone. Two blocks later, she came to the park’s eastern entrance. The park was closed, the gate was down and barred against traffic, but a person could step around it and she did. Hunter did, too.
She’d heard that sometimes kids hung out in the park after dark, but the back of her house bordered on the park and she’d never seen them. Folks said coyotes crossed under McCarren from the hills and came into the park at night, looking to catch the wild geese that hung out there. She’d heard them often enough, but she doubted they caught many of the geese. They were tough birds.
