The Overseer (45 page)

“Check around to the side and secure the area. I want a sweep of the entire grounds.”

The three men stopped, her escort holding tightly to her arm as he looked at the other two for instruction. The smaller man shook his head, placing a finger to his lips and raising his gun, a non-too-subtle suggestion to Sarah that she keep quiet. Within half a minute, the footsteps outside faded to the distance, another voice, this time from a radio strapped to the smaller man’s belt, breaking through. “You’re clear.” The man lowered his gun and moved to the door. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked a small box on the wall, punched in a sequence of numbers, and listened for the dead bolt to
disengage
. Ten seconds later, he slowly pushed the door open, the dank air of the subterranean corridors lifting at the invitation of a mild night outside.

Thick walls on either side shrouded the first ten feet of the ramp in
darkness
, creating a channel barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast. The remaining five feet rose in half shadow, just to the left of the high beams that flooded most of the grassy expanse above. Sarah tried to move, but she was held firmly at both arms. She watched as the smaller man
nodded
for the three to move through the door, the two at her sides sliding their guns into their belts before emerging to the night air. At the same time, the smaller man pushed past her—back to the door—pulling it shut behind him, the sound of the dead bolt reengaging a moment later as she was maneuvered up the ramp.

Once again, voices from above froze all three. In near-perfect unison, each man grabbed one of Sarah’s shoulders and pressed her back up against the wall, simultaneously flattening himself at her side. The man to her left drew a knife and placed it under her throat. Silently, the trio listened to the disembodied conversation.

“I’m sure there’s been some sort of mistake.” It was Tieg, no hint of strain in the voice. “As you can see, I’m in no danger whatsoever. I keep these lights on as a security measure.”

“We’ll determine when the area is secure, sir.” The words were official and smacked of law enforcement. “These lights have been on all night?”

“Yes. There’s nothing back here—”

“Let
us
determine that, sir. As I said, the call came from Washington, and the Bureau’s not likely to have sent us on a wild-goose chase if there wasn’t reasonable cause.”

“I appreciate that—”

“I’m sure you do, sir. And
we’d
appreciate it if you’d let us do our job. The other men inside—”

“As I said, close friends who prefer not to be involved.”

“For whatever reasons, Washington believes you might be a target. There are enough crazies out there who think your show—”

“My television show? You’re not trying to convince me some lunatic—”

“I’m not trying to convince you of
anything
, sir. My orders came from—”

“Washington. Yes, you’ve said that.”

The agent now took a different approach. “I understand that this seems like a mistake, but I can assure you, you’ll sleep much easier if you let us come to that conclusion. Even if we don’t find anything, we’d still like to leave a man or two here just in case. Bureau policy.”

Tieg audibly exhaled before answering. “Very well. I’ll take you through the house, but I’m sure you’ll see …” His voice grew fainter as he and the agent moved off, Sarah still pressed to the wall. It took her less than a
second
to realize what had happened.

Stein. Genius.
It had to be Bob. Somehow he had realized she’d walked into a trap. Somehow he had known she was in trouble, and what better cavalry than federal agents to cause a little confusion?
Confusion—always the best remedy.
It was her only chance for escape.
Tieg a target. Brilliant. That’s
why they had replaced their guns.
That’s
why she was being shuttled out the back. They needed the house empty of any unexplained guests and, more important, they couldn’t do anything that might draw attention. As the men at her sides listened for the conversation to fade to nothingness, Sarah heard another voice—an internal voice that had no intention of
waiting
with them.

She swung her elbow upward into the throat of the man to her right, his grip momentarily loosened, enough to leave her fingers free to tear across at the hand of the second man. Slicing her nails into his wrist, she twisted the blade away from her neck as she pushed him against the far wall. At the same time, she kicked backward, driving her foot down onto the kneecap of the first man, her heel smashing upward into his chin as he fell forward. Head snapping back, his body collapsed in a clump at the base of the ramp. The second man—only stunned—now grabbed Sarah by the hair and threw her against the wall, both of her hands tearing into his wrist, using his momentum to pull him into the wall after her, his chest careening into her raised knee, the collision forcing his body to double over. In that instant, his fingers relaxed on the knife, hers quick to grab the handle, and with one final thrust, she swung the blade up, for some reason veering it away from his chest and into his shoulder, the thick piercing of skin and sinew heavy in her hands as his face contorted from the agony. But not a  sound, only a mouth gaping in anguish, eyes staring into hers as her hands released the knife and cleaved down onto his collarbone, the snap of
breaking
bones a momentary prelude to the drop of his body to the cement.

Sarah gasped for breath, eyes squinting shut to combat the throbbing in her head.
You wanted to kill him. You
wanted
it. And yet you couldn’t. Why?
No tears this time, no regrets—only the relief of survival.

With her back against the wall, she scrutinized the brightly lit expanse between ramp and trees—her only means of escape. Not more than ten yards long, it remained unapproachable, men roaming the area, others no doubt positioned at the windows above to thwart any attempt. The light had to go, and it had to go in a hurry. Staring straight ahead, she saw the small locked box, keypad and electronic wires no doubt within.
Wrong choice!
The voice was adamant.
Short out the circuits? Think! Would he have been so careful with his wine and so foolish with his wiring?
There seemed only one reasonable choice. Stooping to the man whose chest now
resembled
a concave oval, she took his gun and began to frisk the body—one round of ammunition, wallet, credit cards, cash, and driver’s license.
Slipping
them into her pockets, she scampered to the edge of the ramp—still in shadow—checked the silencer, and fired five shots into the high beams forty feet above her.

The response was immediate. The sudden sea of black beyond the ramp exploded in a burst of voices and movement. Sprinting from her cover, she darted across the rays of light still pouring from the living room windows, enough to provoke a storm of gunfire to her right as she zigzagged her way closer and closer to the trees. Flashlight beams began to whip across the grounds, one or two inadvertently giving her a point of reference, glancing off several branches to guide her steps. As she reached the fringe of trees, a sudden flash of light burst from behind her, dousing her in its predatory glow, able only to catch her head and neck as they slipped out of sight, her body falling willfully along the rutted slide of the muddy slope.

Her rate of descent was furious, somehow her back and legs finding a path among the gnarled stumps and trees, nothing to guide her but the mountain’s natural seam. She couldn’t be sure how many were following, her ears lost to the thundering brush of leaves and branches that swatted at her, her hands held as funnels to her face, knuckles battered in an
unrelenting
frenzy. As the gradient began to level, she slowed, enough to find her feet, arms now slashing out in front of her, the sound of water rising below enough to quicken her pace. Once again, lights from above streaked the trees around her, everything growing denser, the nooks less tangible with each step, only the sound of the water prodding her along through the clawing scrape of woods.

How many minutes passed, she couldn’t tell, but her knees began to ache, her feet slipping, shoulder and side slamming to the brambled ground with a violent crash. Only the immediate arrival of another steep descent saved her head from certain impact, this time the trees less
intrusive
, the sudden appearance of stars and moon the first indication of
clearing
. The trees continued to thin as she tried to peer over her careening legs, her eyes seeing what she had hoped to find—an endless pit of black vacancy less than thirty feet in front of her. With a sudden release, she felt the ground disappear, her body tumble forward, aware for only an instant of the rush of moving water everywhere before it enfolded her.

All bearings vanished, everything in slow motion, eyes searching for the surface as her arms struggled against the current. Nearly a minute passed before she broke through the water. The full moon flooded the scene, her body twisting round to examine the walls of soil perhaps thirty yards apart that were funneling her away from the lighted beacon of Tieg’s hillside perch, now a good hundred yards behind. No sign of pursuit broke the stillness, her head just above the surface, her eyes fixed on the area just below the house as flashlight beams suddenly appeared, laserlike in their probing. One or two skimmed the water, Sarah quick to duck under,
waiting
as long as she could before resurfacing, the lights slipping from sight as the gorge began to bend her away from the glare. Her legs, only a short while ago burning from the strain, now began to numb under the embrace of the water. Scanning the shore, she maneuvered herself to within fifteen feet of the far bank, arms and legs wading before depositing her on a bed of silt and rock. Pausing for a moment, she pulled herself to the shore, dropped to the mud, and caught her breath, the water less comfortable dripping from clothing and hair, though tempered by a mild evening breeze.

Three minutes later, she reached the plateau above, a new gathering of trees lining a more gradual incline as she silently pulled string after string of leaves from the branches. Nature’s insulation. With the pile sufficiently high, she removed shirt and pants and began to wring out the excess water, nestling within the leaves for warmth. Two minutes later, she removed her underwear, slid her legs and arms into the clothes, and began to stuff shirt and pants with the foliage. Prickly, but efficient.

As she buried her underwear, she took stock of the last fifteen minutes. Belt, shoes, and wallet had miraculously survived. The gun was gone, but at least she had gotten a jump on the agents who would soon be swarming the area looking for … for
what?
The thought forced her to pause. A
man?
A
woman?
The question suddenly dawned on her. How much could they have possibly seen? And with how much accuracy? Those details, she knew, would all depend on Tieg and his desire to protect Eisenreich.

Which meant she could take a chance. Grabbing the leaves, she crawled up to a small furrow surrounded by a hillock of high grass. She would be safe there, hidden. A place for sleep.

 

The New York skyline was a welcome sight, clipped rays of light broken by an angularity of steel and glass driving upward through the early March afternoon. Xander peered through the plane’s porthole and saw the city as it was—hard, distant—not as a refuge but as a reflection of himself, silent and alert, eerily calm, struggling to mask the dissonance below the surface.

But it was more than just a part of himself that now stared back. Much more. It was the chaos itself, not as the arbitrary collision of time and
circumstance
, but as the essential and ongoing tension that sustained the vitality of each force and that lay at the core of real strength.
Chaos as power’s fuel, power as chaos’s parameter, both meaningless without the other.
In the city, in its controlled mania, he saw the relationship that made one the lifeblood of the other. In that moment, staring out at the buildings, Xander came to understand one very basic truth, a truth he knew Eisenreich had never fully grasped. Power craves chaos as the object of its own control; chaos seeks power as the arbiter of its own limitations. Without the one, there can be no other. Each survives through that tension. Each dominates through that unity.

Xander continued to stare into the distance, more and more aware of a similar strength growing within himself, a detached self-mastery made
possible
only by his own inner turmoil—power as a response to that confusion. Entranced by the stark patterns below, he realized he had become more accustomed to the game, the voice inside less a command from Feric or Sarah than from himself. Slowly, he was beginning to cultivate the instinct, to create a reality that made sense of the last week, an internal will that both frightened and relieved him. The episode on the subway had made certain of that. He was discovering a strange duality of needs—one that sought to contain the mayhem, the other that looked to incite its frenzy so as to ensure a constant challenge. The last ten hours had granted a momentary respite from that struggle—even with the change of planes and the nervous few hours he had spent at Heathrow. Thirty thousand feet above the chaos, he had had time to think, to evaluate, but not in the ways he had relied on in the past. Theory had no place now. Eisenreich had made that all too clear, the last two days altering his perception completely.