It had changed since the satellite photo had been taken, but he knew where he was well enough. He’d debated getting some drone surveillance but had decided against it to keep from raising suspicion. He left a jammer by the wall and made his way through the maze of courtyards and hedges to the pool area, dropping off jammers here and there as he went. He checked the pool house, looking in each window to be sure it was unoccupied. It was.
The bodyguard would be getting worried at this point if he was watching the monitors. Shaw was at the main house in two minutes, checking through a window with his goggles to see what he could see. He looked into a long room full of couches, comfy chairs, and bookshelves. There were lights on in most of the downstairs, and he heard a TV going somewhere. It sounded like…a cooking show? He couldn’t be sure. There was no sign of anyone nearby. He took off his goggles and got to work.
He identified sensors on the window in front of him that would go off if he lifted it or broke the glass, but they couldn’t communicate with the alarm. He cut through the screen with his knife and cut out a circle in the window with his glass cutter. At that point, he reached in, unlocked it, and raised it. Inside the long, comfortable room, he took stock of his new position.
It was classy. He had to admire Hooker’s taste in furniture, solid and well-made, with natural wood colors and elegant curves, and in art, classic and almost photorealistic. He checked the doors, listened, and went to the next room. There were several sculptures, more comfy chairs, and a piano.
There was a picture on the wall in the room, lit from underneath. It was vivid, compelling, and very Renaissance in style: a moonlit scene with a closed gate in a stone wall. Before the gate was a flesh-colored lump that took Shaw’s mind a moment to process. It was a human skin without a body. Leading away from the gate and the pile of skin were bloody footprints, which terminated in a bloody, skinless human shape walking away from the viewer across a desolate landscape. There was a caption or description etched on the bronze plaque at the bottom of the frame.
“In his frustration, he clawed his way out of his skin and stalked away bloody, leaving it there in a heap on the ground.”
He stared at it, struck by the imagery. What a thing it was. How odd. Would he, when he finally retired and started spending his money, be as odd in his art choices? He shook himself out of the reverie he’d fallen into and got back to business. The TV was still going somewhere on the first floor. It was probably the bodyguard, being none too vigilant. He would take him out first. The next room was the great room, complete with hunting trophies, from deer to moose; a giant TV, off; and the kitchen was beyond, on the other side of the central hall and the rotunda. The sound of the TV was coming from there. A tote-the-note car commercial was playing. He crept through toward the kitchen, Sig ready before him, eyes taking everything in. Something on the wall caught his eye, a camera cleverly hidden in the antlers of the moose head. There was a wire leading out of it into the wall.
He has a hardwired backup security system; that’s how Crenshaw and the others were taken out.
The lights turned off. The TV went silent.
Well, he knows I’m here.
He crouched behind a sofa, pulled the night vision goggles out of his pack, and strapped them on, then advanced into the central hall, crouching in an alcove behind a grandfather clock. There was a footstep nearby. He slipped out of the alcove and risked a quick glance into the great room, where he saw a man wearing bulkier night vision goggles and bearing a pistol moving quickly through it. He aimed and fired, the crack of the shot going off filling the house and echoing off the hardwood floors and the tile in the central rotunda. The man in the goggles went down with a bullet in his head. Shaw checked the room, and it was clear. Hearing nothing else, he entered and checked the body quickly. Pulling the goggles off to see the face, he saw it wasn’t Hooker, but the on-duty bodyguard. He moved away, checking doorways and alcoves for threats.
Hooker was no doubt on guard at that point. He wondered if the changes to the house had involved the addition of a panic room. He advanced back into the rotunda, Sig at the ready. He knew the other side of the first floor had formerly—and perhaps still—included, in addition to the kitchen he’d seen, a large pantry, an elegant dining room, and a ballroom. Upstairs were bedrooms, a library, and Hooker’s office. He decided to head up the stairs. Hooker was most likely up there.
He headed to the front of the central hall cautiously and mounted the stairs to the second floor, checking with ears and eyes for his quarry. The lights switched back on, and he reflexively glanced up at one of the chandeliers. There was a sound behind him from an alcove he’d just checked. He swung around, Sig ready, both hands on the grip. The shadowy figure coming through a door he hadn’t noticed in the alcove swung at him faster than he could react.
The shearing pain at the wrist of his right arm happened too fast to register at first. He felt his right hand and the Sig break free of his left hand and heard them hit the floor, even as a gasp of surprise as much as pain escaped his lips. The blade that had severed his right hand swung up and caught him on the side of his head with the flat. He went down across the rug running along the middle of the hardwood floor, his goggles flying off his face. His vision blurred with pain, movement, and dancing lights. He tried to roll and rise, reaching for his backup Sig with his right hand. The pain was excruciating as he ground the stump of his wrist against the floor accidentally. For a moment, he blacked out.
He came back to himself a moment later with a weight on his chest. The man pressing knees against his chest and left arm was Hooker.
“I’m not fond of killing, even in self-defense, stranger,” the target said, keeping his weight on Shaw’s left wrist as he knelt and checked him for other weapons. He had that huge knife, or cleaver, or sword in his right hand and kept the blade across Shaw’s throat. “I’ll kill a man if I have to, but not for pleasure or sport, or even revenge.” He looked toward the room with the piano, where his bodyguard lay dead.
“I think I’m in shock,” Shaw said.
“I’m sure you are, given your line of work,” the man said, removing the second Sig, wallet, and spare magazines before realizing what Shaw meant. “Oh, the physiological condition? Well, that’s to be expected, I’m sure. Cooperate, and I’ll get you taken care of.” He set the bladed weapon on the floor to Shaw’s right, not far from the severed hand. He used his belt to make a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from the stump, then he went through Shaw’s wallet and phone for a couple of minutes. That accomplished, he used Shaw’s belt to bind his left hand to his side, then raised the assassin to his feet. He stuffed the phone and wallet back into Shaw’s pockets.
All the while, Shaw stared in numb disbelief. Finally, he asked a question.
“What is that, a sword?”
“It’s kind of a sword. I guess it’s closest to a Seax, a heavy-bladed short sword or knife used by the Medieval Saxons, but it’s actually just a tool my father made from a chainsaw bar for cutting sapsuckers off tree trunks. March yourself to the front door while I call for an ambulance. I hope you have good health coverage through LEI.”
Shaw stared around him. The target gave him a push, and he walked that way mechanically while the target gave the operator an address and the nature of the emergency.
“Why didn’t you use a gun?” Shaw asked.
“I misplaced it. You caught me at an inconvenient time.”
At the front door, Shaw stopped. “My Sigs,” he said.
“Your what?”
“My pistols.”
“You gave them to me. Thank you.”
“The hell I did.”
“I keep them by right of conquest.” He stepped past and opened the door, keeping it between himself and the outside world, gesturing Shaw to leave.
“I’m coming back for them, and for you.”
“I wish you the best of luck. Leave.”
Shaw stumbled out into the night.
“Keep going u
ntil you reach the gate. I’ll open it from here. The ambulance will meet you on the street.”
“My hand.”
“I’m keeping that, too. It goes on my compost pile. Wait at the curb. If you’re in shock, you should probably lie down with your feet up.” He shut the door.
Shaw looked around, blinking. Numb, he walked in a daze down the long path, across the artistically landscaped front yard, to the gate, which opened as the target had promised. He didn’t even feel the pain, exactly, just weak, confused, and dizzy. He was peripherally aware he’d lost a lot of blood, but more than that, he’d failed. He considered walking out into traffic, but there was no traffic at that moment. He stood at the curb. Not far away, he heard sirens approaching.
“Still alive,” he muttered to himself. “The target is still alive. What do I do?”
His weapons had been taken. He felt naked, and turned to go back in, but the gate was already closed. His guns and his hand were in the house. He looked at the stump of his wrist, staring blankly at the raw, red meat, and the bones of it. He was still staring at it, feeling naked without his guns, when two ambulances and several police cruisers pulled up a few minutes later. The gate opened for one ambulance, while the other stopped in front of Shaw. Two EMTs stepped out nonchalantly and took their time, scrupulously but unhurriedly easing him into the back of the ambulance and seeing to his wounds.
Two officers checked his credentials and verified with LEI that he was who he said he was. Shaw’s phone rang, but he had trouble getting to it. The EMTs were unsympathetic, and he missed the call. It was surely Brenda. Finally, he fumbled it out and saw that it had been. He called her back.
“Shank?” her voice came to him crisply.
“Yes, it’s me,” he said, his own voice unrecognizable to him.
“I take it you failed?”
“I...”
“This was an important client and an important hit, Shank. That’s why we sent them to you.”
“I’ll make another attempt.” It was a stupid thing to say, and he knew it as the words issued from his stunned, mumbling lips.
“Do I understand correctly that your right hand has been severed and is missing?”
“I...”
“You’re off the active list as of now. I might as well tell you now so we can keep this professional, as you prefer. It appears from a report this morning that Methodius Charn is not deceased, as you indicated. Two gross failures so close together are unacceptable. I’m afraid you may be fired and lose protection, and I’ll have to call the client and tell him the hit failed.”
He interrupted her. “That’s bullshit, Brenda. Charn is dead. I did the job right. You know I did.”
She talked over him, hardly pausing when he started speaking. “I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. I’ll have to send this up to Witherbot, and you know how she hates incompetence. It’s a shame you’ve lost your touch.” The connection was severed from her end. He stared at the phone, uncomprehending, and tried to redial with his clumsy left hand.
“We need you to hold still please,” one of the EMTs said. “It’s best if we put the IV you need into your left arm. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“He kept my hand,” Shaw said, still trying to dial the phone. An EMT snatched it from him and set it beside him on the gurney.
“Yes, that sounds about right,” one of them said. “We’ve been here three times now to handle removing you guys, or what’s left of you, from the premises.”
“You think it’s funny?” he asked, but somehow they were unimpressed with the threat implicit in the question.
“Ordinarily, we wouldn’t, but in this case, yes,” the other responded.
“Yeah, it’s pretty damn funny. This guy’s gotten the drop on every one of you so far,” the first added.
“What he’s saying is we hate your type, and we’re sick of cleaning up after you.”
He passed out.
Chapter 5
The Book Signing
The book signing at Poplar Booksellers was late morning. Roger arrived early, knowing Emma wouldn’t get there until after it started, since she had to come on her lunch break, and Granger would only get there about a quarter of an hour before the signing was scheduled. He sat in his car. The temptations of hate and revenge were strong as he waited. The lug wrench in his trunk would feel good in his hands—weighty, deadly. It could smash a man’s face in, break bones, crack a skull, kill.
His imagination conjured Granger’s face up before him. He thought about stepping out of his car and crossing the parking lot to greet and destroy his astonished and frightened nemesis. When Granger saw the wrench, he would cower and beg, and Roger would strike him again and again until he stopped crying out, stopped moving, just lay there bleeding, a corpse as Kilkenny had been, as Roger himself remembered becoming. He popped the trunk, got the wrench out, and sat back in the driver’s seat, holding it tightly in his right fist.
Then Granger’s car pulled into the parking lot. He recognized it by the custom license plate, “DOLFIN1.” He opened the car door and rose out of it, wrench gripped tightly. Granger stepped out of his car not 30 feet away. He turned and reached in for his things. Roger shut his door and walked that way, but slowly.
I can do it. I can kill him and walk away. Who’d ever know? There’s no one looking. But he didn’t move any faster. Granger pulled a briefcase out of his passenger seat, closed his car door, and headed toward the bookstore, oblivious. Roger slowed, stopped, and went back to his car to put the wrench back in the trunk, shaking with suppressed rage. Once he was sitting in the driver’s seat again, he leaned his head against the steering wheel, thinking it over, thanking his guardian angel he hadn’t done it, yet furious with himself for not having done it, or for being about to, or maybe both. What would he have done if Emma had arrived to find the police there investigating Granger’s bloody murder? Would it have been justice, or merely revenge?
What was justice, anyway? Years of Catholic schooling, Bible study, and mass attendance should have availed him there, but his mind was whirling with confusion. As he had the other day, he turned to prayer. Somewhere in the midst of his Hail Marys, the definition came back to him, or part of it. It had to do with rendering to each his due. What was Granger due for his crimes, and as one made in the image of God?
And what can I do as someone who has no legal authority, except to hire a bodyguard to protect me, or a shooter to kill him? I already have a plan, but what does it do except protect me from him, as if that was enough, right?
I suppose I should ask what good will it do him? Isn’t that part of it, that I should love my enemy and seek his good? Isn’t it good that I’m preventing him from doing harm, though it’s against his will? He’ll pay no restitution, though, and see no time in prison, because what he did is legal in this backward day and age.
I could blackmail him. I could add to the threat that he has to donate huge sums to charity from now on. I could walk in there and just say it, as if we were pals who thought it up together. He’d be too stunned, seeing me alive, to say anything about it.
He lifted his head off the steering wheel, wondering how long he’d been there, thinking it over. According to his watch, half an hour. The book signing was in full swing, then. He took a deep breath and got out of the car. It was time to pay Granger his due. He consciously relaxed, assuming an easy-going grin, trying to remember what that was like. It seemed like another lifetime since he’d been easy going, but he knew it had only been last week.
The door was opened for him by a customer on the way out. They exchanged pleasantries as he entered. A lady behind the counter recognized him and waved, smiling. “Here for Granger’s signing, Mr. Charn?” she asked.
“Yep, he’s expecting me. I’ll just nip on back and join the fun.”
“I’m so glad some of my favorite living children’s authors are friends.”
He didn’t trust himself to answer but just nodded as he went toward the room at th
e back of the store where signings were held. Granger was reading animatedly from his new book to a group of children and their mothers, as well as a few fathers. Laughter and shouts broke from the children at moments.
Roger turned the corner and saw his nemesis standing on a table, towering over his audience, gesticulating animatedly as he tried desperately to keep up with his own Seussian tongue twisters. At any other time, the sight would have brought Roger joy, or at least congenial amusement. He knew that. He was aware of it deeply, and it made him pause to look at his enemy that way. Granger wound up to the end and gave the last burst of daring, stumbling elocution. Laughter and applause followed.
Roger squared his shoulders, formulated his thoughts into words, and kept them on the tip of his tongue and the forefront of his mind as he advanced into the realm of his foe as an invader, knowing his opponent was caught in the pincers of doom. Adding his own claps to the general approbation, he walked to the front of the room and offered his hand to the middle-aged man standing on the table, as yet unaware of his presence.
When Granger looked down, he froze. Roger waved up at him, grinned, and offered his hand again. Slowly, Granger took it and dismounted the table.
“Isn’t he great, kids?” Roger asked the audience, some of whom knew him. “He’s still got it, yes. Another round of applause for a classic.”
The audience obliged willingly enough. While they did, Roger, still holding Granger’s hand, drew him close and said in his ear, “Well, introduce me, and let them know that we have a mutual endeavor to announce, and not just the movie script itself, but the generous donations we, especially you, will be making from your wealth from now on, unless you want everyone to know you tried to have me killed this past weekend.”
Shank Page 23
