take for the Client to realize what had happened. They had some idea where he was based, but he was sure he hadn’t been followed after the last rendezvous.
Still, he wondered. Something was off.
He moved quietly through the parlor to the front door, where he’d placed another tell, a barely visible slice of Scotch tape at the bottom of the door next to the jamb, both inside and out.
A minuscule ribbon of tape lay on the floor. No one who wasn’t looking for it would see it.
But now he knew for certain: someone was here.
101.
I could hear footfalls, the creaking of the wooden floor, the sounds becoming louder, closer. Grasping the pistol in my right hand, the banister in my left, I squatted and looked through the keyhole and saw only the ice-blue light from the computer monitor.
Alexa on the screen. Such advanced technology in the service of such primitive depravity.
He had entered the room.
I saw a leg, clad in jeans, but just for an instant. Walking toward the computer, or at least in that direction. Then he came to a stop.
The man was standing a few feet away. I could see his back: large torso, broad shoulders, a dark sweatshirt.
Did he suspect anything? But his body language didn’t indicate suspicion.
He was standing at the window, I saw now, casually looking outside, a black knit watch cap on his head.
And the hideous pattern on the back of his neck.
The bottom half of an owl’s face.
102.
Dragomir Zhukov entered the back room, peering around at the filthy windowsills and the peeling yellow paint on the walls and the uneven floorboards.
A voice crackled from the small computer speaker. The girl was speaking.
“Nick!” she screamed. “Please don’t go away!”
The pistol was in his right hand even before he’d made the conscious decision to draw it.
* * *
ZHUKOV TURNED swiftly, holding a weapon, an enormous steel semiautomatic with a barrel like a cannon.
I recognized it at once. An Israeli-made .50 caliber Desert Eagle. Made by the same folks who gave the world the Uzi. It was the sort of thing you were far more likely to see in a movie or a video game than in reality. It was too large and unwieldy, so unnecessarily powerful. When Clint Eastwood declared, in Dirty Harry, that his .44 Magnum was “the most powerful handgun in the world,” he was right. In 1971. But since then, that title had been claimed by the Desert Eagle.
I saw his wide angry stare, his strong nose, a sharp jaw, a cauliflower ear.
“Nick, where’d you go? I thought you were here! When are the others coming? Nick, please, get me out of here, oh God, please, Nick, don’t leave me—”
Zhukov turned slowly.
He knew.
103.
Zhukov knew I was here somewhere.
Alexa’s voice, steadily more frantic: “Please, Nick, answer me! Don’t leave me stuck here. Don’t you goddamn go away!”
Zhukov moved with the taut, coiled grace of a cat. His eyes scanned the room, up and then down, ticking slowly and methodically in a grid.
I breathed noiselessly in and out on the other side of the heavy wooden door. Watching through the keyhole.
I’d come to rescue Alexa. But now it was a simple matter of survival.
The hollow-point ammo I was using might have had unequaled stopping power, but the rounds wouldn’t penetrate the thick old wooden door between us. The instant they hit wood they’d start to fragment. If they actually passed through the door, they’d be traveling at such a reduced velocity that they’d no longer kill.
I was all but defenseless.
Nor was my body armor meant to stop the .50 caliber Magnum rounds fired by the Desert Eagle. I didn’t know whether the rounds would penetrate the ballistic vest; they might. But even if they didn’t, the blunt-force trauma alone would probably kill me.
So I watched him through the keyhole and held my breath and waited for him to move on to another part of the house.
Zhukov scanned the room again. He seemed to be satisfied I wasn’t hiding here. I saw his eyes shift toward the kitchen. He took a few steps in that direction.
Slowly I let out my breath. As soon as I was sure he’d moved into the kitchen, I’d turn the knob silently, and step out as noiselessly as I could.
If I got the jump on him I might be able to drop him with one well-aimed shot.
Reaching out slowly, I placed my left hand on the doorknob. Ready to turn it once he was safely out of the room.