Blood Debt - By Tanya Huff Page 0,49

Death in the silvered eyes that held his, he couldn't lie to them. Nor could he look away.

"Do you know who is?"

"No."

With her free hand, she pulled one of the copies Henry'd made of the photos in the autopsy report out of her back pocket, shook out the folds, and held it up. "Have you ever seen this guy before?"

"No." Go on, his gaze dared. Do your worst.

Frustrated, she threw him to the bed. He bounced, rolled across the quilted red satin bedspread, and came up firing the .22-caliber pistol that had been laid out beside his clothes. By the time he'd squeezed the trigger the second time, he was dead.

Switching off the blow-dryer, Jenna Carl threw sun-streaked hair back off her face and frowned. "Sebas?tien?" she asked stepping out of the bathroom. "Did you just... oh, shit."

No stranger to her husband's business, the body on the floor didn't surprise her much. It surprised her only a little more when it turned out to be her hus?band. It surprised her a great deal when she discov?ered he was not, as she'd supposed from his face, lying on his back. Someone...

Or something, a whimpering little voice in the back of her head insisted as she bit back a scream.

... had turned his head completely around.

Leaping over the corpse, she crawled up the bed and fumbled open the safe built into the padded head?board. Everything was there. Breathing heavily, she clutched at the packets of bills and tried to think. She could still get out of this. All she had to do was get Sebastien's body to the foot of the stairs-thank God she'd squelched his plan to build a bungalow. A terri?ble accident. His lawyers would know what to do, who to pay. A quick funeral, and she'd take the money and . .

"I'd never get away." If the cops didn't hound her to death, her husband's business associates would as they ripped his empire to bloody shreds. "Well, screw them."

Twenty minutes later, the safe emptied, her Porsche roared out of the garage and disappeared down Ma?rine Drive.

Haiden and Bynowski stared empty-eyed at the monitors.

The part of Vancouver known as Kitsilano had be?come overtly yuppie as the tag end of the baby boom?ers-stockbrokers, system developers, securities analysts, crime lords-in the prime of their earning years had settled down with a mortgage and kids. For all of that, it was a nice neighborhood and not a place Henry'd expected to be Hunting in tonight.

Gabriel and Lori Constantine were having a barbe?cue. Standing motionless in the shadows, Henry sniffed the breeze and firmly squelched the desire to sneeze at the lingering scent of seared squid. As host, Gabriel Constantine would be among the six lives by the house.

Two cars, each containing a pair of gunmen, and two men who were definitely not a couple walking along the beach, convinced him that he'd best take an oblique approach. A few moments later, he stepped up onto the neighbor's composter, over the fence and into a pool of deep shadow cast by a clump of lilac, lip curled at the smell of dying blossoms.

Their yard could have been any of the yards he'd crossed. The house was only superficially different from the rest on the street. The gathering could have been happening anywhere up and down the block.

Except for the people involved.

Henry suspected the Constantines seldom enter?tained their immediate neighbors. After all, predators have only one reason to associate with prey.

Four large men wearing jackets over golf shirts pa?trolled the yard. Henry waited until one reached the edge of the shadows and came forward just enough to interrupt the constant sweeping movement of the enforcer's gaze. In the instant before awareness dawned, Henry grabbed onto the simple pattern of his thoughts and twisted them into new shapes. "Tell Mr. Constantine there's something he should see over by the fence. Tell him it isn't dangerous, but you thought he should take a look."

Most people caught in the Hunt responded like a rabbit caught in headlights-conscious thought com?pletely overwhelmed by their imminent and incontest-able death. Those susceptible to more overt control were few and far between, but primed to follow orders and only follow orders, the enforcer nodded, turned, and made his way toward the pool. It wouldn't last long. But then, it didn't have to.

Henry, who could hear the heartbeat of the child sleeping in an upstairs bedroom, had no difficulty hearing the conversations at the other end of the yard. Private schools and music