his tactical belt, buckled it and strapped the nylon gun holster with its spare ammo clip to his thigh. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then exchanged his leather ones for a tactical brand made of Kevlar. The fingertips contained no extra material to get in the way of a trigger guard. He shut the trunk and locked the car.
Fletcher buttoned his coat as he made his way across the frozen ground. He didn’t need to use his flashlight. The peppering of bright stars provided enough ambient light for him to make out his surroundings. It disappeared once he stepped on to the main trail, but he could see well enough, and he knew where he was going, having already walked this same route twice. Several minutes later, he moved off the main trail and headed up a slope matted with dead leaves and pine needles, the silence occasionally punctuated by the cracks of dried twigs and the crunch of downed branches beneath his boots.
He studied the house using the monocular. Two glowing heat signatures, but only one was moving — the person walking through the ground-floor rooms. The second figure was upstairs and horizontal, lying in one of the first-floor bedrooms facing the garden.
Fletcher watched the figures for the good part of an hour. The person downstairs wandered freely. The person on the first floor didn’t move at all.
According to the schematics Karim had sent him, the alarm system was a standard wireless model that used passive infrared and six glass-break detectors. Fletcher suspected the detectors had been installed on the ground- floor windows. Most homeowners never bothered to install the detectors on the first-floor windows, as they were generally inaccessible.
The back porch had a shingled roof, and there were no lights on the first floor.
Fletcher tucked the monocular back inside his trousers pocket as he moved out from behind the tree, making his way to the garden’s picket fence.
29
Fletcher found the latch for the gate, opened it and walked into the garden. There was no need to run. The owner hadn’t installed sensor lights here. No one was watching him from the windows, and the neighbours couldn’t see him.
The only light came from the porch’s sliding glass door. He could see part of the kitchen. Once he reached the bottom of the wooden steps, he could make out the deep mahogany units and the black-and-white-chequered tile floor. He moved to the left side of the porch, grabbed the railing and pulled himself up. Made of pressure-treated wood, the railing was sturdy, and he climbed on to it, got his feet settled, and then stood and grabbed the edge of the porch roof, his broken ribs groaning in protest. They exploded in pain when he jumped and hoisted himself up. It took a moment for the pain to subside. Nothing worse than broken ribs. No treatment, nothing to do but suffer through the pain until they healed.
Now he crept across the roof, his attention locked on the window he couldn’t access from the roof, the one for the occupied bedroom. Monocular in hand, he looked through the window and saw the glowing heat signature still lying flat and level. A press of a button and the bright and swirling colours gave way to the green glow of night vision. The filmless micro-channel plate and auto-gated power supply with its reduced halo effect provided remarkably vivid details.
A man lay on top of a twin bed. He was bald and barefoot. He wore trousers and a collared shirt. Fletcher couldn’t see the man’s face; it was turned away from the window.
The man didn’t pose a threat. His hands hung above his head, his wrists were bound to the headboard’s spindles with what appeared to be zip ties. Fletcher zoomed in and discovered that that was, in fact, what they were. The man’s left shirtsleeve had been loosened and pulled up across the elbow to accommodate an IV needle, which was connected to a hospital-grade piggyback IV stand holding two bags of fluid.
Fletcher switched back to thermal imaging and turned his attention to the window for the accessible bedroom. No heat signature; the room was unoccupied. He crawled his way to it and then used night vision to examine the window. It contained no glass-break detector or magnetic sensors. The window had a tight seal, and it was locked. He couldn’t use his tactical knife to prise the clasp loose. He tucked the monocular away and stripped off his Kevlar gloves, revealing the latex ones he wore underneath. The latex would allow him to handle the tools he needed.
Fletcher placed a suction cup on the thick pane around the window clasp and, glasscutter in hand, went to work. It took him less than a minute to cut through the glass. The suction cup kept the square-shaped section from falling. He pulled it loose, turned and flung it far into the garden. He didn’t hear the glass break. He unlocked the clasp and used his tactical knife to open the bottom part of the window. It slid open easily. He went in feet first, stood and eased the window shut.
The bedroom door was open; muted voices came from the hallway. Television voices. A man and woman arguing about how the president was bankrupting the nation with his universal health-care programme. The arguing stopped, and was replaced by a commercial for a new medication to treat erectile dysfunction.
Fletcher entered the hall and turned right, the carpet masking his footsteps. The door to the occupied bedroom was also open. He slid inside the room. The man was still lying on the bed, still unconscious. He appeared to be of Hispanic descent, early twenties, and relatively short in size and stature. Not bald but a shaved head thick with stubble. His jaw hung open, and he was breathing rapidly. The damp skin smelled of soap.
The piggyback IV stand was by the side of the bed facing the window. Fletcher moved to it and read the labels in the dull light: a ten-litre 0.9 per cent normal saline in one bag, the other holding a wide-spectrum antibiotic used to treat severe bacterial infections.
Fletcher pressed two fingers against the man’s damp, hot neck. The man did not stir or register the touch. Fletcher tracked time in his head. After a minute passed, he moved his hand away.
The young man had an elevated heart rate, and he seemed to be suffering from a fever.
Fletcher used one of the surgical-spirit prep pads on the nightstand to wipe the screen of his smartphone. He used it again to clean the man’s fingers.
Fletcher pressed the fingertips of the man’s right hand against the screen, holding them in place as a narrow beam of light scanned them. He wiped the screen and scanned the man’s thumb. Then he did the left hand. He sent off the prints to Karim’s private email, traded his phone for his sidearm and moved back into the hallway.
30
Fletcher found the stairs easily in the dark.
His movements were slow and smooth as he crept down the carpet runner, listening for movement and watching for shadows. He reached the foot of the stairs, stepped into the roomy kitchen and waited. No sounds, no movement. He walked across the tiles and followed the television voices, his footsteps whisper-quiet against the floor.
Sidled against a wall, he peered around a corner and found a large living room decorated to resemble a politician’s lair — burgundy-painted walls and dark leather sofas and club chairs arranged on a sweeping oriental rug; side tables holding crystal ashtrays and coasters. He could see part of a bar, the polished mahogany shelves stocked with top-shelf spirits.
In the room’s centre were three faux Chippendale armchairs made of cherrywood. They were arranged around a coffee table. Each chair faced a flat-screen TV above a black marble fireplace crackling with wood. An older Caucasian male sat in the middle chair, watching the TV. Fletcher could see only the back of the man’s head, the carefully combed white hair and the left elbow propped on the armrest. The man held his arm at a ninety- degree angle. Gripped in his hand was a hard rubber blue ball. He squeezed it and then relaxed his grip, squeezed and relaxed, all the while watching the television.
Minutes passed and then the man dropped the ball on his lap.
Now his left hand moved to the side table, which held an ashtray and a column of stacked coins. The man pushed the ashtray aside. His longer fingers gripped the top coin, a quarter. He held it in the air, studying his hand
