Whenever she allowed her attention to wander from the task at hand, no matter how briefly, the crime-scene photos of Lester Meyers’s ruined flesh haunted her. Shook her resolve. Whispered at her to turn around before it was too late.
And every time that happened, she reacted the same way: by putting the pedal to the floor and moving forward-ever forward-her headlights slicing through the storm.
In the kitchen, Engelmann rose to his full height and cocked his head in puzzlement. Sitting in the middle of the floor was a portable radio, probably thirty years old, of the type associated with break-dancers and the like. Ghetto blasters, he thought they called them. He hadn’t seen one like it in ages. It was practically an antique. And as he looked at it, a strange sound emanated from its speakers: a dog’s whine, accompanied by a woman, quietly crying.
“Disappointed?” Hendricks asked. Engelmann looked up to find him framed by the arch that separated kitchen from dining room, some fifteen feet away, backlit by the lightning flickering through the sheet that covered the French doors. He was dripping wet and panting-the former perhaps from time spent in the torrential rain, the latter no doubt from playing the same game of call-outand-double-back that Engelmann had. “She’s not here,” he said, his right foot inching forward to distribute his weight evenly between the balls of his feet. “I got them out hours ago. You want to get the drop on me, you’re not going to do it flying commercial.”
“Disappointed?” echoed Engelmann as he shifted his own stance, too. “Quite the contrary-I’m impressed. Our encounter in Kansas City left me wondering if perhaps I’d overestimated your abilities. Had we not been interrupted, I think I might have gotten the best of you.” Hendricks shrugged as if to say We’ll never know. “But now, it seems, you’ve rallied nicely. I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to this.”
Lightning showed blinding white through the gaps in the drawn curtains, a clap of thunder on its heels. Evie’s house trembled at the sound of it.
“Is this the part of the movie where you say ‘We’re not so different, you and I’?”
Engelmann laughed. “Oh, no, Michael. You and I are little alike. You require a reason to kill, a motivation, one sufficient to allow you to soothe your conscience-to overcome your hesitation. And you’re prone to forming attachments, to people such as Evelyn, or dear Lester. For me, the killing is in itself enough. How is Lester, by the way? Dead, by now, I should think. If you like, I’ll arrange to have you buried alongside him, so your guilt for the pain you’ve caused him may sustain you for all eternity.”
“Sometime, you’ll have to tell me how you tracked him down,” said Hendricks, jaw clenched. He said it more to keep Engelmann talking long enough for him to regain his composure than because he expected any answer.
“Oh, it’s hardly a secret-I asked a lovely Federal employee named Garfield for your file, and he was more than happy to oblige. I’d say it’s funny your tax dollars pay that turncoat’s salary, but then, he’ll no longer be drawing one- and you don’t pay taxes anyway, do you?”
“I’ve paid my share,” Hendricks said.
“While we’re chatting,” said Engelmann, “what is the story behind this wretched stench? It’s as if you left a grocery store to rot in every room.”
“Place was like that when I got here,” Hendricks deadpanned.
“You’re a fool to’ve come, you know-a slave to your own sentiment.”
“I would have been a coward not to.”
“Perhaps. Tell me, how did your dear, sweet Evelyn and her husband react to your return? I understand that she’s with child.”
Hendricks said nothing.
“A shame, that-but if it’s any consolation, you won’t be around to wallow in regret much longer.”
Hendricks held the kitchen knife in his right hand at the ready. It glinted in the storm’s flickering light. “Maybe,” he said. “Either way, I say let’s get on with this.”
Engelmann raised his pistol. “Oh,” he said, his grin seeming in the near dark to take up half of his rain-slick face, “I think we’ve tested one another’s knife skills to my satisfaction. And my knee, unfortunately, still troubles me; I’m afraid close-quarters combat would place me at a disadvantage. So please forgive the anticlimax, but…”
Engelmann’s knockoff Ruger spat.
In the millisecond before it did, Hendricks cracked the faintest smile.
And prayed.
Thompson spied the Walkers’ mailbox, and beside it, a dirt drive disappeared into the trees. She yanked the wheel, spraying twin tails of mud behind her as her tires sunk in and finally bit. She only made it fifty yards up the winding driveway through the rain-driven muck before the night was torn asunder by a fireball four stories high, which spread warm across her face and buffeted her car with debris.
In an instant, she realized what it would take her backup team an hour to confirm.
The Walker house was gone.
Hendricks lay singed, bloody, and wincing atop the stack of mattresses on the deck. His chest hurt like hell from Engelmann’s gunshot, but Evie’s cast-iron griddle stopped the bullet and dispersed the blow enough to only bruise- not break-his ribs. Chunks of wood and bits of shingle rained down from overhead, pelting him occasionally, but he didn’t mind. He was just happy to be alive. Truth be told, he never thought his plan would work.
He laid his head back on the mattress in exhaustion, but lifted it again in pain as soon as it connected. When he probed at the injured area, his fingers came back red. A piece of glass was wedged into his scalp, thanks to his trip through the French doors. Not for the first time, he wished he could’ve knocked the panes of glass out ahead of time, but then the gas would have escaped, and all his preparation would’ve been for naught.
He had to hand it to that Genovese hitter-his trick had worked. Between the gas oven leaking steadily once he’d blown out its pilot light two hours ago, and the propane tanks Hendricks had scavenged from the grill, the house was so full of noxious fumes, moving around inside it was difficult-he wound up dizzy, disoriented, euphoric. But as it turns out, the odorants they add to gas so folks can tell they’ve got a leak only work if people realize what they’re smelling. Saturate the air with potent scents-like whiskey, or pickles, or rotting garbage-and the warning scent of rotten egg is masked. Handy if you’re a hitman trying to make someone go boom.
Also helpful were the cans of gasoline Hendricks had stashed in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink, and the microwave full of aerosol cans beside it. He’d turned Evie’s kitchen into an IED. Engelmann’s gunshot served as the detonator, and the force of the explosion-guided as best as Hendricks could manage by the doorway to the dining room and the bits of plywood he’d rigged up on either side to channel it, a large-scale version of the countless shaped charges he’d employed while in Afghanistan-had thrown Hendricks clear as if he were the bullet and the house were the gun. He’d staved off the worst of the burns he might’ve sustained by dousing himself with a bucket of cold water just prior to his little showdown. Heat boils off moisture before flesh-the explosion left him red and tender, but unblistered and intact. Engelmann, at the center of the explosion, was not so lucky. Investigators would no doubt be picking charred bits of him from trees a mile around.
Stuart, Evelyn, and Abigail were holed up in the root cellar, protected from the blast by a layer of stone and earth. He’d told them not to come out for any reason until an hour after they heard the sirens. That way, even if he’d failed and Engelmann had bested him, they would have still been safe-and if his plan worked, he’d have time to get away. To disappear. To leave Evie to pick up the pieces of this life she’d built for herself-a better life than he ever could have provided her.