Before padding to his bedroom, he went to the locked trunk at the bottom of his office closet. Opening it, he retrieved a Beretta nine-millimeter pistol and a black shoulder holster. The gun was U.S. military issue, a gift from Dick Henna to replace the one Mercer had lost in Hawaii last year. Henna had also given him a permit to carry the weapon anywhere in the United States except on commercial aircraft. He closed the trunk, tucking the loaded gun and a spare clip under his arm. This was the first time he’d felt he’d needed it since Henna had given it to him, and its presence was a powerful reassurance.
The courier came for the steel fragment ten minutes after he’d gotten out of the shower. The bruises on his body were mottled dark rose and purple. Ignoring his bed, Mercer had been sitting at the bar, staring at the cryptic remnant when the courier arrived with the agent who was to take the first shift guarding his house. After handing over the steel plate and conferring with the guard for a few minutes, Mercer fell into a deathlike sleep.
Dick Henna called two hours later.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it appears Howard Small is dead. A neighbor who’d been watching Small’s house said she hadn’t seen Howard since he left for Alaska. There was no luggage, and the answering machine had about two dozen messages on it. A closer examination turned up a bullet hole in the floor and traces of blood on a carpet that matches Small’s, and what appears to be the body of a cat lodged in the drain under the kitchen sink. The house had been professionally sanitized, no prints, no tire treads, nothing but the blood, the bullet hole, and the cat.”
“Then it’s no coincidence. We’re being hunted.” Mercer’s voice was thick with unfocused anger.
“Looks that way. The piece of steel was just delivered to Quantico and Dr. Goetchell said she would have a preliminary report by late tomorrow morning. As soon as I get it, I’ll let you know, and then I want you to vanish.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be the invisible man.”
Mercer was woken again, just past six o’clock. This time it was a pounding at the door that dragged him from the blissful embrace of oblivion. The skylight over his bed was a darkening square, the sky above swollen with rainclouds. He threw on a pair of jeans and a shirt and spun down the stairs. His injuries had stiffened, so he moved like an old man, shuffling and slow.
He looked through the peephole and saw Special Agent Mike Peters standing next to someone he thought he’d never see again. He swung open the door with a tired smile.
“I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but this woman insisted that I tell you she was here.”
If Aggie Johnston was beautiful in a designer dress, she was absolutely enchanting in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, her hair tucked under a baseball cap. Her face had the clean scrubbed look of a college coed, except for the enticing pout of her lipsticked lips that drew attention to her understated sensuality.
“You’re quite a surprise,” Mercer said, catching her green eyes.
“I came over with some dinner.” She held up a plastic bag emblazoned with Chinese dragons and characters. “The next thing I know I’m being felt up by this guy. What’s going on here?” She paused when she noticed the bandage on Mercer’s cheek. Her voice softened. “Oh, my God, what happened to you?”
Mercer turned to Agent Peters. “You frisked her?”
The big FBI agent looked sheepish. “I had to make sure she wasn’t armed.”
“Lucky boy. I think if I’d tried that, she would’ve torn me limb from limb.”
“Mercer, what happened to you?” Aggie cut in impatiently.
“You might as well come in. I’ll tell you all about it.”
He moved aside to let Aggie enter, tossing a wink at Peters as she crossed the threshold.
“I didn’t expect this.” Aggie eyed the tall atrium. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you. Come on upstairs. I’ll fix you a drink.” He followed her up the staircase, his eyes luckily at the level of her tight backside as she took the steps with long-legged grace.
She paused in the library, scanning the titles, her fingers running along the spine of one of the twenty-eight volumes of Denis Diderot’s eighteenth-century Encyclopedie Methodique. She looked at the shelves with the rapt attention of a true bibliophile. Many of the books in Mercer’s collection were early editions of some of the great works on geology and mineral sciences. She went to one shelf and withdrew Earth in the Balance by Al Gore. “This is one book I would never have suspected of you,” she teased.
“It was a gift,” Mercer defended himself quickly. “I swear to God I never read it.”
In the bar, Aggie ran her hand along the massive mahogany bar top, surveying the delicate woodwork that made up much of the room. “This is more what I expected from you. Masculine, overbearing, and dedicated to alcohol.”
“Your father must have a higher opinion of me than I thought to give me such a glowing review. I assume he told you how to find me?”
“Actually, I sneaked your address out of his Rolodex.” Aggie put the bag of food on the bar and sat on one of the stools, cocking one leg so it rested on the seat with her. Her pose unintentionally rucked her jeans into the juncture of her thighs. Mercer had to drag his eyes away from the alluring sight. “The estimate of your personality is all mine. Now, are you going to tell me why you’re limping and have a bandage on your face?”
She had been teasing Mercer since the moment she entered the house, but there was real concern in her voice that softened her jibes.
Mercer ducked behind the bar. He’d offer her a drink, but he felt it more important to put a little distance between himself and Aggie Johnston. The physical barrier of the bar, he hoped, would help him build a psychological barrier between them. In his chaotic life, the last thing he wanted was to succumb to the attraction he felt building toward her.
“White wine all right?” he asked, reaching for a bottle in the fridge.
“I’d prefer a stinger.”
Mercer cocked an eyebrow in approval as he reached for the brandy and white creme de menthe. “After I dropped you off last night, I stopped at a bar just up the street to have one more for the ditch.”
He set the drink in front of her and dribbled a healthy shot of brandy into a snifter for himself. There was an ashtray on the bar, used primarily by Harry White, which Aggie took as de facto permission to smoke. She left the pack and the gold Dun-hill next to her drink.
“I left a couple of hours later, pretty mixed, I might add. Anyway, a guy tried to mug me as I was walking home. He did a good number on me, as you can see.” Mercer touched the bandage on his cheek. “This was from a pistol whip.”
“Jesus!” Aggie exclaimed. “What happened? How did you get away?”
“I didn’t. I ended up killing him.” Mercer waited for a squeamish reaction from Aggie, but he remembered that she was Max Johnston’s daughter. It would take more than the death of a criminal to rattle her. “I’d left the bar with a couple of beer bottles. I smashed them against his head, and the next thing I knew, I’d stabbed him with the broken neck of one. I passed out and came to in the hospital with a nurse cleaning blood off my face.”
Aggie was silent for a moment; this was not one of those stories that demanded some immediate soothing response full of feigned emotion. At last she asked, “Are you still in pain?”
“Only when I laugh.” Mercer smiled. “Actually, the worst part about it was the high-grade hangover all morning.”
“If you were the victim of a mugging, why is there an FBI agent guarding your door and pawing your guests?”
“I didn’t know he’d be pawing, I swear, but he’s there as a favor to me. I thought there may have been someone else involved in the attack. I’m just being a little paranoid about possible revenge.”