Exit Strategy (20 page)

I shook my head. “I’d love to, but I have to consider my guests. I could get someone who’s allergic and they wouldn’t appreciate a house filled with dog dander.”

“You have dogs? Growing up?”

Another shake. “My mom loved cats. Personally, I can’t see the attraction. You feed them, pamper them, clean up their crap, and they still act like they’d be gone in a second if they got a better offer. Call me needy, but I want a pet that wants me back. I brought a puppy home once but…It didn’t go over too well, so we had to get rid of it.”

According to Brad, my mother had shipped the dog off to the pound while I was at school, though she’d told me it ran away.

“How about—?” I began, then stopped.

“How about me?” Jack said. “Pets, you mean?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Wouldn’t ask anything I minded answering myself.” He stretched out his legs, earning a grunt from Scotch as he invaded her space. “Had barn cats. Don’t really count as pets. Found a dog once. Should say, my older brothers found it. Gave it to me.”

“That was nice of them.”

“I thought so. Till I realized they just wanted someone to do the work. Feed it. Brush it. Take the blame if it caused trouble. Dog played with all of us. Didn’t care who ‘owned’ it.”

I laughed. “Smart brothers.”

“Yeah.” He smiled, then went quiet, traced a finger around the circle his mug had left on the table. “Yeah, they were.” Jack swiped away the condensation mark with his hand, then waved at Ginger, who was still sucking up my attention. “No reason you can’t get a dog. Build a good outside kennel. You’re outside most of the time anyway.”

“I suppose.”

“Should have one. At least for protection. That caretaker you’ve got? He’s, what, seventy? Not much help. No security system. Fuck, I tried the front door once. Two a.m. Wasn’t even locked. Then there’s your jogging. You take a gun along?”

“Where I live—”

“Doesn’t matter. You need to be careful. Those deserted roads? I remember—” Jack shook his head. “Wouldn’t believe what guys can pull off.”

“Such as?”

He lifted his brows.

“Come on. You set up a story, now carry it through. You’ve still got”—I glanced in his mug—“half a cup left. Tell me half a cup’s worth of story and we’ll call it a night.”

And, to my surprise, he did.

HSK

He pecked at the keyboard with his index fingers. Slow but steady. His philosophy for all things, or so it had been…

What was the cliché? You can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Of course you could, so long as you provided the twin keys to change—motivation and desire. He’d never be a sixty-word-a-minute typist, but his two-fingered method suited his purposes just fine.

Five years ago he didn’t even know how to turn on a computer. But then someone showed him how useful a tool it could be and so, with motivation and desire, he’d taught himself how to use it. Now he couldn’t imagine how he’d survived all those years in the business without it.

There were places down there, deep in the Web, that most Internet-savvy criminals scorned and mocked. Places inhabited by interlopers in the criminal world. Wannabes—that’s the word they used these days. Computer geeks who set up shop in the underworld and tried desperately to be part of it.

He could picture them, caffeine-hyper beanpoles with bad skin and thick glasses, surrounded by pizza boxes and Coke cans, fingers flying across the keyboard, ferreting out every bit of underworld gossip and lore, endlessly searching for some tidbit that maybe, just maybe, would impress someone in the business, someone who’d seen dead bodies that weren’t just video game carnage. They lived in that hope, so they worked ceaselessly, improving their network of contacts, their data banks of information.

Ego being what it is, no success is a success unless it can be admired and envied by others. Lacking the audience they desired, these moles of the underground found another forum for their braggadocio. They talked to one another.

Tonight, as he sat in the Internet cafe, nursing a coffee, he’d prowled through three such chat rooms, ostensibly to get a heads-up on the investigation, hear the leaks, the rumors, the speculation. Perhaps, if he was being honest with himself, he’d admit to the thrill that came each time he saw his alter ego appear on the screen, each time someone typed the words “Helter Skelter killer.”

In one of the chat rooms they’d been debating some esoteric angle of the crimes, something about the randomness of good and evil. A doctoral dissertation in the making. He’d snorted, and glided from the chat room unnoticed. In the fourth one, though, he’d entered in the middle of a conversation that made his fingers freeze on the keys.

He read slowly, deciphering their cyber-shorthand as he went.

DRAGNSLAYR:
…getting together and going after this guy.

RIPPER:
Going after HSK?

The three initials were what made him stop. His acronym. The Helter Skelter killer.

DRAGNSLAYR:
Who the fuck else are we talking about?

REDRUM:
You mean other assassins are going after this guy?

DRAGNSLAYR:
Isn’t that what I said? Fuck, maybe I should go find people who can read.

RIPPER:
Who’s your source?

REDRUM:
Hey, guys, wouldn’t that make a cool movie? Assassin versus assassin.

RIPPER:
Been done.

REDRUM:
When?

DRAGNSLAYR:
Heard it from 22TANGO. Said those twins—Shadow and Sid—were going around to the brokers, asking questions, seeing if anyone hired this guy.

REDRUM:
Shit. So why are they going after him?

DRAGNSLAYR:
Who cares? It’s a great fucking story.

REDRUM:
Bet it’s a job. HSK whacked the wrong guy. Now they’re going to whack him. Man, that would make a great movie. You sure it’s been done?

RIPPER:
How about you go start writing it now?

REDRUM:
Piss off.

He turned away from the monitor. His colleagues coming after him? There was something vaguely cannibalistic in that, something unfair, even treacherous. Yes, he had to admit, something hurtful. Why come after him? He hadn’t trodden on any toes, hadn’t stolen a job or offed a colleague. His attitude and behavior toward his fellow pros had always been respectful.

And yet…

True or not true, he’d have to take it into account. Maybe it was time to change gears. Consider the possibilities. Savor the power of choice.

One choice niggled at the back of his brain. The most intriguing of the lot.

In this game he’d created, he’d allotted himself a number of special moves. His trump cards. Perhaps it was time to play one of them, an ace he’d been saving in case things went wrong. The game had changed now, though, and it made no sense to play the card. And yet…

His father had been a gambler. Lost everything they owned. Yet his father always swore that Fortune had deserted him when he’d stopped trusting her, when he’d become nervous and started holding his cards too long. A smart gambler, he’d said, knows how to make a surprise play pay off.

A surprise play. He chuckled, then surreptitiously wiped down the keyboard with his sleeve, put on his coat, picked up his disposable coffee cup and left.

TWENTY-ONE

Jack left early that morning. Evelyn and I ate breakfast, then headed out. I’d threatened to burn my Mafia-bait outfit. Now I wished I’d followed through. I was indeed dressed again as a big-haired tight-jeaned boob-plumped Jersey girl. Evelyn swore that what had worked with Little Joe would work with Nicky Volkv, but I suspected she just liked forcing me to do things I didn’t want to do.

After dropping Evelyn off on the way to talk to a nearby source, I stopped to call Emma at the lodge. It was Thursday now, the weekend coming and no sign that I’d be home in time.

Emma assured me that wasn’t a problem—we were only half booked, and they were all fall foliage tourists, most of them seniors, none of whom had booked my extreme sports “extras” or access to the shooting range. She’d just tell any drop-ins that these services were unavailable this weekend, and offer a discounted rate if anyone complained. Everything else—supervising hikes, doling out bikes and canoes, hosting the bonfires—she and Owen could handle. I should just relax and enjoy my time away…and whomever I was sharing it with.

I arrived at the penitentiary just after morning visiting hours began. I parked the car, grabbed my new pleather purse and set out. Between the lot and the building was a postage-stamp bit of green space filled with staff on their smoking breaks and visitors psyching themselves up to enter the prison.

As I walked through the parking lot, my gaze swept across those faces, counting and memorizing. As both a hitman and a cop, you learn to take note of your surroundings. So, although I was still a hundred feet from that green space, I noticed when nine people became ten, and I knew that the tenth had not come out of the prison or stepped from the parking lot, but had simply appeared. That blip made me pay attention.

I sized him up. Burly with a trim light-brown beard and a forgettable face. Midforties. He lifted a half-smoked cigarette to his lips, but the way he held it marked him as someone unfamiliar with the vice. Something told me very few people took up smoking in their forties, and no casual smoker would brave today’s bitter wind for a cigarette.

I saw his gaze slant toward me. His face was still in profile, his eyes cast to the ground, but shifting in my direction. Measuring the distance.

I forced myself to take three more steps. His left leg turned, toe pivoting to point my way, knee following, hips starting to swivel. I stopped sharp and winced, delivering the best “oh, shit, I forgot something” face I could manage without slapping my forehead. Then I wheeled and quick-marched back to the car.

I glanced into the side mirror of each vehicle I passed on the way. The first three times, the angle was wrong and I saw nothing. On the fourth try, I caught a glimpse of the man, following as casually as he could manage.

I reached into my purse and pulled out my prepaid cell phone.

“Hey, Larry, it’s me,” I said, voice raised, as if to compensate for a poor connection. “You won’t believe what I forgot.”

Pause.

“Okay, you guessed. I am such a ditz.”

Pause.

“Well, you don’t have to fucking agree with me!”

As I talked, I kept glancing in the mirrors. The man started dropping back, then disappeared, unwilling to attack while I was talking to someone. I scanned the parking lot, making sure he wasn’t doing an end-run around me.

I recognized his intentions as clearly as if they’d been screen-printed across his jacket. If I hadn’t turned around, he would have headed into the lot, his path intersecting mine as I walked between the cars. A tight passage, a quiet shot to the heart and I’d fall, too far from the building to attract attention.

Once inside the car, I locked the doors and took a deep breath, calming that part of me that was screaming “what the hell are you doing?” Escaping, taking refuge, turning down a fight—not things I was accustomed to. I had to clasp my hands around the steering wheel to keep from throwing open the door and going after him.

But in this case, the instinctive choice wasn’t the wise one. So I glued my butt to the car seat, eyes on the mirrors, making sure no one snuck up on me, and concentrated on planning my next move.

Would he try again? I wouldn’t. Even if the mark appeared unaware of the situation, an aborted hit meant a failed attempt. I’d try another way in another place. But, having seen him head back toward the building, I guessed he wasn’t leaving yet.

If he was staying, then so was I.

I backed out and found the exit, then sandwiched the car between a minivan and an SUV, and waited.

Now came the big question. Who was trying to kill me? Start with “who knew I was here?” First, Jack. While I didn’t like the idea of suspecting him, that didn’t stop me from working it through objectively. But he’d only known Evelyn and I were visiting a former Nikolaev thug at a jail. We hadn’t given him a name or location, and he hadn’t asked. He’d also thought I was coming here with Evelyn, so if he set a hitman on my trail, it would be to kill both of us, which made no sense.