So was his hiding place in the goddamn garage closet. He'd been here for hours, and he was stiff and bored. He glanced at his watch. The targets should be arriving soon, if things went as the contact had assured him that they would. The explosives were in place. The list of instructions had the feel of a code. Not that he wanted to decipher it. The less he knew, the happier he was. He was only a pen, writing a message with fire and blood. He was paid to keep that ink flowing.
Ah, at last. The garage door rumbled up. Headlights glared into the garage under the secluded house. Adrenaline squirted into Rolf's body. He shifted into combat readiness, cracked the closet door, peered out. In his black ski mask, he was just another shadow in the dark.
The door of the van cracked open. Voices. A light flipped on. A man turned around, tall, round-shouldered, wearing a felt cap. He lit a cigarette. Yes. Double chin, big nose. Matthieu Rousse. His first target.
The passenger door opened, and a big, chunky woman got out. Helmet of gray hair. He didn't even need her to step into the light to identify that big jaw. She was the second target, Ingrid Nagy. She said something sharp to the man, in a guttural language Rolf didn't recognize. The man replied, sulkily, dropped his cigarette, and crushed it out. They went to the back of the Volvo van and opened the doors.
Rousse reappeared, carrying a limp, blanket-wrapped figure in his arms. Rolf caught sight of a slack, sallow face, balding brown hair. Target number three, the comatose man with no name.
Rousse carried him easily. The inert figure was as slight as a boy. Rolf watched silently as Nagy grabbed a metal valise and followed Rousse and Coma Boy into the house, bitching all the way.
He slithered up the stairs after them, toward what he knew was the kitchen, from his recon earlier that evening. Nagy was getting further, her scolding voice receding up the stairs. A woman chewing a man out sounded pretty much the same in any language, poor bastard. But pity was wasted on him. His pain was at an end.
Rousse was clattering down the stairs, probably heading back to the garage to get more gear from the van. The door at the top of the stairs burst open. Rousse didn't even have time to speak; just a surprised widening of the eyes, pop, pop, pop with the silenced Glock, and down he went. Thud. Eyes still open, in eternal surprise.
Nagy was still yelling from the upstairs. She wasn't moving toward him yet, but since Rousse wasn't going to respond any time soon, she would get pissed off and come looking for him soon enough. He followed her shrill voice up the stairs, toward the lit-up door at the end of the corridor. She charged out the door, and he took her out before she even finished winding up for her bellow of rage. Pop, pop. Dead before she saw him. That was how he liked it. So far, so good.
Now came the weird part. The part that made his flesh creep.
He walked into the room and stared down at Coma Boy. The open valise beside him was full of medical supplies. A plastic bag of glucose and what all lay beside him. A hypodermic needle. She must've been yelling for Rousse to bring her the IV rack. Coma Boy lay there, his head dropped to the side, mouth open, limp and helpless.
Rolf had been ordered to remove the plastic-coated adult diaper, to take the valise, needles, IV rack, stretcher, all evidence that Coma Boy was not a normal, healthy person. If any scrap were left, the contract was void. He did as he was instructed, glad of his leather gloves. Touching the man's limp body made his gorge rise. He searched through Nagy's pockets to make sure there were no clues there, bundled everything back in the valise, hauled it all back to the garage. The Volvo was full of machines to hook up to Coma Boy. He would dispose of them later.
He went back upstairs, stepping over Rousse and Nagy, and pulled out a knife to attend to the final details. His hand stopped.
Rolf was surprised at himself. Coma Boy wasn't going to weep and beg for mercy. Rolf would've almost preferred it if he had. It would've given him something to push against. It would've made sense.
This creature, so utterly passive, baffled him. Weakened him.
Rolf steeled himself, and used a trick that he'd thought he would never need again. He divided himself. There was a part of him that did not mind slicing off the first joint of Coma Boy's right index finger, and then the ring and pinky finger of the same hand. He'd been given a diagram explaining exactly how much of each finger to cut. He'd studied it carefully. Part of him did not balk at putting a bullet in Coma Boy's brain, and five more in his chest. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. That strong part of him squeezed the trigger. The other part of him shrank away, like a snail into its shell.
He gathered up the fingers, put them in a plastic freezer bag he'd put in his pocket for that purpose. He tucked the bag into his jacket. He pulled out the small bottle of accelerant, and soaked the body with it.
The hard part was over. Now for the mopping up.
Rolf pulled up his rented vehicle from the hiding place in the shrubs, and got to work on the van. Not one scrap of medical equipment left in it, or the contract was void. He packed the machines and boxes and medicines into his own vehicle, and examined the Volvo inside and out with his flashlight. Clean and nice. He was done here.
Now the part he was looking forward to. He pulled away to a safe distance, took a deep breath, and pushed the detonator.
The house exploded. Rolf watched the expansion, the slow-motion fall of blazing debris, the licking flames, with dumb relief. Fire purified.
He drove to the cliff top he'd chosen the day before. The sea heaved and crashed below. He pitched the materials he had taken over the cliff. He threw the bloody Ziploc bag and its contents.
The terms of the contract were satisfied. But he didn't get into his car and drive away immediately, as he should have done. He stared out at the sea, thinking about what he had done. Always a mistake. He was a man of action. Not reflection.
AH things considered, it was good that the pay was so high. Because after tonight, he was ready for a long vacation, someplace very far from here. The sky had begun to lighten before Rolf got into his car and headed back toward Marseilles.
Chapter Nineteen
Erin was still buzzing with nervous energy hours later. It had been a long, trying evening. Her mother had insisted on taking Cindy to the emergency room, where the doctor had checked Cindy out, asked several probing questions, and sent them home with much the same advice as Sable had given to Erin: make Cindy drink a lot of water, sleep it off, and stay the hell away from whoever had gotten her into that condition. And drug counseling went without saying.
Mom and Cindy were finally asleep, in Mom's bedroom. Mom had pointedly not invited Connor to stay in the guest bedroom. He'd gotten the hint, and was outside in his car. She leaned against her bedroom window. The fog circle of her breath widened and shrank as she stared at the Cadillac parked outside. Banished from the house, and still he stuck by her, to guard her while she slept So stubborn and gallant and sweet. Just thinking about it touched off that melting feeling again. She fought it down for fear she would start crying. She'd bawled all evening with Mom and Cindy. She was tired of it. Her sob muscles hurt.
She missed Connor. She started to pull on her jeans, and then looked down at her thin gauze summer nightgown with the embroidered pink flowers. She thought of his reaction to . her baggy Victorian nightdress. "A calculated cocktease," he'd called it.
Hmm. Well, then. She would just have to see if he liked the skimpier version just as well. No one was awake to see but him.
She crept barefoot down the stairs, disarmed the alarm, and stepped out onto the porch. The night breeze was damp and chilly, whipping the thin fabric around her thighs. She felt Connor's eyes lock onto hers, through the car window, across the dark lawn. She was very conscious of her nipples, pressing against the thin fabric.