I looked at my watch, pushed the door open silently, and stepped inside. The air was cool; he hadn’t even turned the air-conditioning down. I listened for five seconds. Apart from the preliminary warning beep-beep-beep of the alarm, there was nothing except the distant hum of air-conditioning and faint burble of the aquarium. In the light of the entryway, the fish glided ghostly and golden. I put my finger to my lips and pointed at the floor. Julia nodded. I trod softly to the wall by the kitchen where the alarm box sat at chin height. Ten seconds down, twenty to go. I pulled out two lengths of black-jacketed wire, one with crocodile clips, the other with soft-tack connectors. I popped the lid off the box, took one look, clipped on one wire, cut another. The beeping stopped. I looked at my watch. Seventeen seconds. I ran up the beautifully carpeted, silent steps to the guest bedroom, opened the closet door, and opened two breakers. The air-conditioning stopped. If I had done this wrong, I only had eight seconds to find out and cut the phone lines.
From the top of the stairs I saw a faint, very faint light from the aquarium. No noise of bubbles. I relaxed. The battery was almost drained, which meant the alarm system wasn’t getting any power at all. Terrible security.
I padded downstairs, put the screwdriver, wire clippers and extra wire back in the satchel, hung the box cover back on, but loosely, and beckoned to Julia.
The kitchen was clean and empty and shadowy beyond the single dim lamp. A Sony answerphone blinked greenly from a countertop. I flipped up the lid, popped out the tape, and handed it to Julia. She opened her mouth. I put my finger to my lips, then took out the Walkman, and gestured for her to use it to listen to the tape. She nodded. I pointed to myself and the doorway, to her and the floor. She nodded again.
A quick check around the ground floor behind wall hangings, in desk drawers turned up no safe, no cache of interesting papers. I hadn’t expected it to, but it was always best to be certain.
Back in the kitchen, Julia was tugging the earphones out and giving me the thumbs-up. I put one plug in my ear, played the tape back. Some man talking about the lawn; another leaving a message to call Harry; then Julia; then his sister. I wound it back to the very last phrase from Harry, then played it again, timing Julia’s message. I rewound back to Harry and stopped it. I pulled my tape, connector, and a piece of paper from the satchel, scribbled, Record my tape onto his for exactly two minutes and twenty seconds. Listen to check. Wind tape to end of current messages, put back in machine. She had to hold the note up to the light coming through the windows to read it properly. She nodded. I pointed at myself then at the stairs and before I’d finished she rolled her eyes, pointed at herself then at the floor. My turn to nod.
I ran up lightly, listened at the foot of the second flight. Nothing. What I wanted was the inner sanctum, the room where Honeycutt and his cronies had gathered Saturday night. It had to be up there.
The third floor was very dark. A short hallway and four doors. I opened the first. Cold, hard floor, scents of soap and toilet cleaner: bathroom. The second led to a dark space with the empty feel and dead air of a guest room. The next was a storage closet. Then scents of leather, very faint expensive perfume; thick carpet underfoot; utterly dark. I stepped inside, pulled the door to behind me, and Move! shouted my crocodile brain, just as my skin registered the warmth of a body standing to one side, the light swirl of air that was another stepping towards me.
It unfolded like a stop-motion film of a blooming rose: bright, beautiful and blindingly fast. And I wanted to laugh as I ducked and lunged; wanted to sing as I sank my fist wrist deep in an abdomen, whipped an elbow up, up, through a fragile jawbone, slid to the side of a thrusting arm and took it, turning it, levering it, letting the body follow in an ungraceful arc. My heart was a tireless pump, arteries and airways wide. I was unstoppable, lost in the joy of muscle and bone and breath. Axe kick to the central line of the huddled mass on the floor; disappointment at the sad splintering of ribs and not the hard crack of spine. Mewl and haul of body trying to sit; step and slam, hammer fist smearing the bone of his cheek. Latex slipping on sweat. Body under my hands folding to the floor, not moving. Nothing moving but me, feeling vast and brilliant with strength, immeasurable and immortal.
A bellow from downstairs and the world snapped and reformed and I was running, running, taking the steps three at a time, four, and a woman was standing in the hall, bathed in the yellow entry light because the door was wide open. Her head was back and her eyes huge. A woman. Julia.
“I hit someone.”
“Yes.” I stopped four feet away.
She shook her hand at her side, lifted it, looked at it. “I hit him. He came down the stairs and I hit him. I really hit him. I’ve spent years wondering if I could, wondering what I’d do if it happened to me, if I’d been the one in front of that theatre….” She looked at her hand again, fascinated. “I hit him, and he ran away.”
The realization of what she had done, the exhilaration of her own strength rushed into her, like champagne rushing to fill lead crystal. She shimmered with it, she fizzed. I wanted to lift her in both hands, drink her down, drain her, feel the foam inside me, curling around heart, lungs, stomach.
I stepped closer. She lifted her chin. Closer still.
“Wolf eyes,” she whispered, and I could feel her breath on my throat, “so pale and hungry.”
A car roared into life behind the house and headlights sliced through the window and doorway, then away and towards the road. She turned slowly, blinking in their light, their undeniably real light, and the exaltation faded. My left wrist ached slightly and breath was harsh in my throat. Just under the ribs on my left side, my shirt was cut and wet.
“The tape?”
She shook her head.
“Finish it.”
I ran back up the steps. The den door was open. I closed the curtains and found the light switch: thick green carpet; two men, both in dark clothes, one still holding his stained knife; a desk, under which lay the other knife and on top of which sat a computer, screen blank and dead. A drawer hung broken and empty from the middle. I knelt, felt for a pulse in the first body, found it. The second one was breathing audibly so I didn’t bother. I checked them over. Gloves, clothes with brand labels cut out. In one jacket pocket a small sheaf of papers covered in strange-shaped letters. I tucked them inside my own jacket to examine later. No scars or other identifying marks. Both knives were broad-bladed, serrated on the upper edge, black composite handle: standard manufacture, available in any catalogue. I wiped the thin thread of my blood from the blade still in one man’s hand.
Something bleeped, and bleeped again. The computer. A red light on the minitower flickered. I felt around for the screen switch and pushed. The cursor blinked by the c: prompt and the cheery message Reformatting complete. Hoping it didn’t mean what I thought it meant, I tapped in dir /p. Nothing. All gone, wiped in the hard drive reformat. No sign of any diskettes.
I searched the rest of the room quickly but methodically. No safe. Filing cabinets full of personal papers, each hanging file carefully labelled in blue ink, presumably by Honeycutt. Two hanging files labelled BANK and INVESTMENTS were empty. Honeycutt’s doing, or the man who got away? I pulled off the first one’s gloves, dabbed his hand on the arm of a chair upholstered in leather, put the glove back on. Took off the gloves of the second man, pressed his hands, one at a time, against the broken drawer.
The door creaked. I whirled. Julia, swaying. “Are they…?”