Centered on the lower half of the face, in elaborate script font, was:
Bradshaw Fine Clocks
Bristol, England
Earlier, Adriana had told him she and her son worked for Bradshaw Incorporated. She hadn’t been able to tell him what her employer manufactured, and Silence hadn’t found the company listed in the phonebook.
He remembered how she’d casually, almost imperceptibly, glanced to the side, toward the clock, when she’d begun her story. She’d quickly found a random name to inject into her fictitious bullshit.
I just spun him a story, Adriana had told Hardin.
Silence scoffed.
His fingers went rigid, the tips curling in. More of that anger rippled through him, this time directed at himself.
He was good at reading people, so why hadn’t he sensed Adriana’s deception the first time he sat in this room, listening to her woes, watching her weep?
Years prior, when he’d been a police officer, there had also been times when he’d been fooled, and he blamed his damnable tendency toward believing in people’s decency. When he’d expressed his frustration to C.C., she’d told him it was an asset, not a liability, this humanity of his.
Sometimes this quality still presented problems, even as a paid killer. But Silence was quick to correct his errors.
And did so well and fully.
A sound from outside. Footsteps tapping on the front porch, a person’s weight bringing squeals from the boards. A key being inserted.
Silence returned the clock, placing it next to the framed photo of Adriana and Benito on the latter’s graduation day. There was a small clank as the crystal met the glass table topper. He returned his hand to the Beretta.
The thumb turn on the front door’s simple deadbolt lock—that Silence had easily picked a few minutes earlier—clicked into the unlocked position. The door creaked open. Adriana entered. Two steps in, and she jumped, gasped, came to a halt. Her eyes went to Silence’s gun.
And his eyes went to the door behind her, a non-verbal indication.
“Shut it,” he said.
Her arm quivering, Adriana reached behind her and closed the door.
They looked at each other. Adriana’s breaths were loud, wispy. Her body shook.
“Cash,” Silence said.
No clarification necessary; she immediately went to the small bookshelf on the opposite wall, opened an antique cigar box.
“Slowly.”
She slowed her movements and raised her free hand into the air, an extra display of submission.
When she retrieved the stack of one-hundred-dollar bills, she held it up for him to see.
“Toss it.”
He lifted his left hand, kept the right on his pistol. She tossed the cash. He caught it and laid it on his lap.
“I wondered why you would leave me here alone, earlier this evening when you took off,” Adriana said, her voice cracking and small, barely a whisper. “You didn’t fully trust me. You were watching me, weren’t you? Monitoring me.”
Silence nodded. “Talk.”
A few sputtering attempts at words came out. She licked her lips. Tried again.
“He’s my boss. Hardin. I work in his home. He approached me. Told me his plan to create panic in the city, to make Sizemore look bad, how he’d brought Lowry onboard to burn down homes and businesses, make it look like they hadn’t made protection payments. Hardin thought he could give the narrative a more human touch if his own housekeeper was one of the people Lowry attacked. Hardin’s a powerful man, and he asked me for help. What was I supposed to do?”
Silence just stared at her, not blinking.
“I don’t have a son. There is no Benny.” She pointed to the frame beside him. “That’s Adam, my nephew. But just because I don’t have children or a man doesn’t mean I don’t want something more than all this.” She did a big sweep of her head, indicating the humble surroundings. “They were gonna burn it down, and I’d get a big insurance check. I had my shot at a better life, given to me by a city commissioner. How could I turn it down?”
Silence watched her.
“Are you going to kill me?”
Silence still didn’t reply.
“Listen, none of it was real.” Her voice cracked. She watched him, unblinking. Her lips closed. She swallowed. “The company that doesn’t exist, the son I don’t have. No one was gonna get hurt because none of it was real!”
Silence twitched his finger over the trigger guard.
Adriana shuddered, wide eyes staring at the gun.
A sharp sound in the distance. Police sirens.
Silence focused on her, narrowing his gaze. A small grin of cold satisfaction materialized at the corners of his mouth.
The sirens grew louder.
Silence was an assassin. But not every criminal he encountered needed to die. He didn’t always have to squeeze his trigger. Sometimes he just needed to make a phone call.
A call to a Specialist. Someone with a normal voice, not Silence’s destroyed growl. Someone who could use the Watchers’ technological advantages to place an encrypted, untraceable call to a local police department.
The sirens wailed outside. Closer.
Silence stroked his trigger.
Adriana shook. Her eyes pleaded with him. “I’m telling you, none of it was real!”
Red and blue lights burst into the room through the drapes.
“Those are real,” Silence said, nodding toward the window.
Adriana whipped around, looked through the drapes and saw cop cars zooming up to the house, coming to screeching halts.
“What have you done?” she said.
Silence didn’t reply.
When Adriana turned back to the chair, it was empty.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Silence still had to pay his bill.
He stepped through the door into Bobbie Sue’s Family Restaurant. There was the hum of late-night quiet. No customers.
Halfway across the dining area, Val was cleaning a table.
And she was crying.
One hand flung a dingy, wet rag over the tabletop; the other brushed tears from her cheeks with crumbling dignity.
She saw Silence. Her wet eyes went dark. A forearm gave a vicious final wipe to her face, then she stormed toward him.
“You!”
She stopped a foot away from him, glared up into his face,
