you know your current might be down for a little while. Five, ten minutes at most. There’ve been some brownouts in the area… nothing major, just some spotty fluctuations… and we’re trying to trace the source of the problem.”
“Oh.” Cynthia gave him a questioning look. “I noticed the van heading up toward our kennels.”
He nodded. “Your lines look okay, but the couplings are pretty old. That’d be on the poles
Cynthia gave him a crooked smile.
“I think you might be too late,” she said. “Don’t know whether it’s related to any trouble with the electricity, but my telephone seems to be out of commission.”
Anton looked appropriately unprepared.
“Oh.” He frowned a little. “Are you sure?”
Cynthia nodded.
“I’ve been trying to make a call,” she said. “No dial tone.”
Anton stood there by the door another moment, looking thoughtful. The raindrops continued to dribble off his hard hat.
“Suppose we could have loosened a contact by accident,” he said. “Hopefully it’ll be something our crew can straighten out right away… you’ve already checked your inside connections, right?”
Cynthia nodded again.
“Just before you buzzed me,” she said.
Anton put on another smile.
“With a baby in the house, I sort of figured it’d be your first reaction. Kids always getting into things and all,” he said. “If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to give it a quick check for myself. Otherwise it becomes an issue with the phone company techs in case we nicked a cable and have to contact them.”
Cynthia adjusted Laurie against her shoulder. “Do what you have to,” she said, and moved aside to let him in. “It’ll get you out of the rain for a few minutes, anyway.”
Anton stepped through the doorway, wiped his boots on the mat, let her guide him to the kitchen, and held the receiver to his ear as she stepped back to give him some room.
“Nothing,” he said, and made a small show of examining the jacks. “It’s out for sure.”
She shrugged.
“I was just about to feed the baby, walk up to the center, and ask my husband’s assistant—”
“Julia…”
“Right, I almost forgot, you met her the other day,” Cynthia said. “Anyway, she has a cell phone, and I’m going to need to make an important call.”
Anton abruptly hung up the phone and turned to her.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” he said.
His tone flatly declarative.
No expression on his face now.
Cynthia stood there in baffled silence, looking as if she was certain she had misheard him.
“Excuse m—?”
“I said you can’t do that,” Anton broke in, and then flicked his right hand into the utility pouch on his belt and produced the weapon he had chosen for the job. A Sig P232.380 ACP. White stainless-steel frame, blued barrel. Powerful, accurate, and easily concealed.
Her eyes wide, her lips a wide circle of confusion and fear, Cynthia stared as he raised the pistol, stared uncomprehendingly at the terrible black hole in the center of the gun barrel. She instinctively pulled Laurie close, arms wrapped around her, backing away until she came up short against something hard. The table, a chair, a counter, Cynthia wasn’t sure what in her fear and incomprehension.
That gun. That great black hole pointing at her. Aimed at her from across the kitchen.
“No,” she said. Clasping the baby tightly against her chest. Laurie crying now, sensing her terror. “Whoever you are…
Anton cocked the hammer of his pistol, a sound that sent a physical jolt through Cynthia.
She held her daughter close.
“No,” she repeated in a breathless moan, waves of desperate panic sucking the air from her lungs. “Please… take anything you want from me… please,
Anton leveled his gun at the spot where the screeching infant was clenched in her mother’s protective embrace, the small body against her chest, their hearts pressed together, beating together.
“It won’t hurt,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
Kuhl heard the dogs start to bark moments before Anton radioed him from the house.
“Phone lines are down,” Anton confirmed. “Everything’s cleaned out in here.” A pause. “The robin has a cellular.”
Pulled to a halt in front of the rescue center, Kuhl listened to him over the van’s radio and then had Ciras contact the two men posing as utility workers back on the road. They had strung a chain across the foot of the drive to bar access. The signs hung from its temporary posts — one facing the eastbound lane, one facing west — advised visitors approaching the center that it was closed for the day due to emergency electrical repairs. Anyone who attempted to disregard the warnings and somehow tried to enter the drive would be verbally redirected by the men or, if required, stopped by more extreme means.
Kuhl stared out at the rescue center for perhaps thirty seconds, rain beading his windshield, drumming on the roof of the van with increasing rapidity. The silver Honda Passport belonging to Julia Gordian was the only other vehicle in the dirt parking lot. Inside the center’s front door were two signs, one of particular interest to him.
Customized in the shape of a greyhound, the sign on the upper portion of its glass pane read:
WELCOME TO THE IN THE MONEY STORE
A smaller changeable message board below it read:
BACK IN 15 MINUTES
It was the latter that held Kuhl’s eye.
He regarded it silently as the penned dogs downhill continued their raucous barking. He had expected his target to be inside the shop. The operation, then, would have been a fast and uncomplicated piece of work — his team entering as utility men, catching her off guard. Instead, they had found her sign on the door. And yet she must be on the premises even now. If not in some backroom of the shop, then certainly on the grounds. Her vehicle was here. She had not been seen leaving the drive on foot. And he doubted some unknown exit from the property existed… where could it lead? There was little but woodland for miles in every direction.
Kuhl listened to the husky, agitated barking of the greyhounds. He must assume the Gordian daughter had also heard it and could not wait for her to become alarmed.
Very well, Kuhl thought. Very well.
He shifted in his seat so he could see Ciras as well as the pair of men behind him.
“Prepare yourselves,” he said. “We take her now.”
Julia had been giving the rescues some exercise out back when the first droplets of rain sent the squeamish dogs into a mass retreat from the yard… all except Viv, who’d continued to play the role of devoted sidekick, sticking to her like glue even as the rest of the greys piled up against the cinder-block structure that held their kennels.
Conceding defeat to the weather, Julia let the dogs inside and returned each to its individual stall.
She had no sooner left the kennels, Viv close at her heels, when she heard the barking down at the house. A loud, excited commotion that abruptly gave her pause.
