I gave up and went into the kitchen to see if the feds needed any help with the veggies or squashed potatoes or roast beast. Plates needed to be carried, they said. I began shuttling them to the table.
“Really getting nasty out there,” one of them said when I came back for the last two plates. I had almost forgotten. I looked at the rain hammering the window. Lord, it had turned to sleet! No wonder it was so loud.
“Glad I’m inside and not out in one of those holes,” the other guy said.
I took the plates in, set them down, then came back to the kitchen. The agents were settling down on stools at the counter with their own plates. I joined them and grunted at appropriate points in the conversation. Mainly, though, I listened to the wind and the sleet rattling on the glass.
I played with the food a while — I really wasn’t hungry — and pushed the plate back. Grafton came in shortly thereafter. “Great dinner, gents,” he said to the agents, who were still working on theirs.
He stood at the window looking at the sleet striking the outside win-dowpane, then came over to where I sat.
“If you were Khadr …?”
“Tonight,” I said.
“I think so, too,” he murmured, then paused to listen carefully as a gust pounded the sleet against the window. The sleet was basically soft hail.
After nodding to the other guys and saying something else nice about the grub, he went back to the dining room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When I had hidden in the kitchen for as long as my conscience, and good sense, would allow, I went back into the dining room. Everyone was gone. I got busy bussing the table, and the FBI types helped. As they worked, they talked shop gossip; I tried not to pay attention but found myself listening anyway. I was reminded that everyone has problems. They also weren’t happy that they were at Winchester’s doing what they thought was manual labor when they were highly trained, professional crime solvers.
When that job was done they made themselves coffee and got deeper into FBI internal politics. It was a few minutes after nine o’clock.
I checked that my earpiece was in tight and my belt radio was on, then wandered into the living room. Everyone was there except Marisa. Jake Grafton, Huntington Winchester, Isolde Petrou and Robin Cloyd were into the war on terror, while Jerry Hay Smith sat silently, probably secretly recording their remarks for a future column. Callie and Amy were huddled by the piano with their heads close together, probably talking mother-daughter stuff. After all, Amy had that boyfriend in Baltimore …
I inspected every window and door in the lower story, ensuring they were locked as the wind whispered against the windows. The wind was howling outside, but the house was of quality construction and tight. Goes to show what real money can do.
Went to the basement and looked around down there. One door went out. That Khadr — if he came alone — this basement door would attract him like a moth to a flame.
Still, underestimating him could be fatal for someone.
Would he come alone?
All the possibilities leapt to mind, everything from an assault by a dozen or two fired-up locals intent on earning their way into Paradise to a bomb against the building or a rocket into the house.
Clearly, there was no way to do more than we had done. We had four guys outside, and me, Grafton, Robin and the two pistol-packing pro crime solvers in. I wondered if either of the federal cops had ever been in a gunfight. Or if Robin had. That was our team unless Grafton had cavalry standing by somewhere that I didn’t know about. Even if he did, it was doubtful that they could get here in time to do much good. Whatever happened, if it happened, would happen damn quick.
Ahh.. nothing will happen.
I decided I was jumpy, working myself into a state because I was a little scared. The memory of the adventure in the stairwell was still fresh as newly spilled blood. My ears still buzzed from the gunshots in that concrete sounding chamber. My shoulder still ached from the bullet in London and hurt from the crease last night.
My worst problem was my adrenaline hangover. That and congenital paranoia.
When I finished the basement, I climbed the stairs to the top floor and began familiarizing myself with the layout, doors, light switches, closets, storage rooms, bathrooms, places to hide, furniture in odd places… all the things I would need to know if the power went off. Room by room, I looked at everything. This joint only had a half dozen bedrooms up here — it was really a small hotel.
One of the bedroom doors was closed. Marisa’s, I figured. I stood there for several seconds breathing in and out before I knocked.
Maybe half a minute passed before the door opened. She was wearing an ankle-length nightie. She walked away from me, and I closed the door. The only light came from the little reading lamp beside the bed.
She turned to face me.
“Tommy.. ” I don’t know exactly how it happened, but we wound up in a tight embrace, kissing. Her hunger was a tangible thing; her warmth and sensuality swept over me.
Afterward we lay together between the sheets in the darkness holding each other tightly. She had her head against my chest, as if she were listening to my heart.
I still had the bandage over the drain the doctor had installed in London, plus my new bandage on my souvenir shoulder crease. She ignored them both.
“Sometimes I wish,” she said, “that I were a different person, a normal person, with a normal family and normal problems.”
“Normal problems …” I echoed. “Don’t we all wish?”
“But I’m not.”
A blast of wind struck the house and rattled the window, which was cracked open about an inch. Cold air blew gently into the room through that crack. The sleet had stopped and now was just rain — a lot of rain, I could tell by the sound.
Somewhere a tree limb was rubbing against the house. The gutter, it sounded like. It was a random, scraping sound, whenever the wind blew hardest.
“You aren’t, either,” she said.
My earpiece and radio were on the floor someplace. I thought about putting it back on, yet I didn’t want to move to find it.
“I’m frightened,” she whispered.
“Khadr?” Qasim.
“One is as bad as the other,” I said, trying to sound normal.
She didn’t hesitate. “With our luck, we’ll get them both,” she said bitterly.
I kissed her one last time, as warmly and tenderly as I could, then got out of bed and dressed in the darkness as the wind moaned and rain hammered the glass.
Using the fence line and a little draw, Khadr crawled into the back of the barn. The journey from the fence to the barn, a distance of about a hundred yards, had taken him an hour. He was wet to the skin and cold, but he ignored both sensations.
Khadr was dressed all in black, with a black ski mask over his head and face, with holes only for his eyes, and black gloves on his hands. He killed swiftly, ruthlessly and without remorse, and he was very good at it. Tonight he was armed with a silenced pistol, a knife, a garroting wire and hard experience gained through fifty-five paid kills and six that weren’t. The pistol he carried in a black synthetic holster with the bottom cut out to make room for the silencer. The knife hung in a black sheath on his left side.
The large double door was closed and barred from the inside. Khadr pulled gently on the handle, then moved to the personnel door. It was unlocked. He slipped through into the barn, closed the door behind him and ensured it had latched, then moved sideways into a dark corner and stood waiting with the silenced pistol in his hand. Waiting
