if he meant anyone who heard it to live. In fact they knew already; and the mechanic knew that Beth at least had known when she phoned Hanratty. Still, as a matter of principle, McKendrick was pretty sure it was a no-no in the Paid Assassin’s Handbook.
“Where is he?”
McKendrick gestured jerkily toward the door. “In there. Looking…” He swallowed and tried again. “Looking for somewhere to hide.”
The man smiled. He wasn’t a lot younger than McKendrick—forty, maybe forty-five. Lean, fit, but not particularly big and not particularly powerful. Unremarkable. Nothing singled him out from a rush-hour crowd of accountants and estate agents and middle managers. And when he smiled it was almost possible to think he felt some kind of compassion. “That’ll work. Well, you probably want to leave about now.”
McKendrick had got close enough to put his long arms about his daughter’s shoulders. He held her tight. “Do you mean that?”
The man nodded. “Of course. You’ll want to get those cuts tended to. I don’t think they’ll leave a scar—at least, not much of one. Do you have your car keys?”
McKendrick nodded, still scarce believing what he was hearing.
“Go on then. By the time you get anywhere—by the time you call anyone and they get here—it’ll all be over and I’ll be gone. The best thing, from your point of view, would be to say you’ve no idea what it was all about.”
McKendrick made no reply. He steered Beth ahead of him, under the courtyard archway and across the gravel drive toward his car.
Hanratty’s man watched them go. He was also watching the kitchen door. His gun remained in a neutral position. Everything about his stance, at once relaxed and alert, suggested that the moment the weapon was needed, wherever it was needed, it would be there. But there was no sign that the McKendricks had refused his offer, so—still keeping one eye over his shoulder—he went up the kitchen steps into the house.
* * *
He’d been looking for Nicky Horn for eight months. It wasn’t the only commission he’d taken in those eight months, but it was the most important and also the only one he hadn’t managed to complete yet. Of course, neither had the man before him. Though he had a good excuse: he’d been shot dead in Saudi Arabia by a princeling who’d bought himself even better help than the princeling who’d hired him.
So Horn had been something of a thorn in his side. He’d been close on a number of occasions—close enough to draw a bead once, only to have a high-sided vehicle pass between him and the bus where Horn had taken a window seat. By the time the vehicle had passed, Horn had disembarked and vanished into the rush-hour crowd.
The mechanic consoled himself with the knowledge that it wasn’t lack of skill on his part. What kept Horn moving just slightly ahead of him was exactly that—his ability to keep moving. Movement is the best defense against an assassin. If he doesn’t know where you’re going to be, he can’t lay an ambush—and ambush is much the best way to hit a mark. You don’t follow him, you go to where he’s going to be and you wait. What usually happens is that sooner or later the mark gets tired, or complacent, and stops moving. He falls back into a routine. He takes the risk of visiting his sister or turns up at his grandma’s funeral. For a professional, one mistake is usually all it takes.
Horn had been both lucky, if you could call it that, and smart. He had no friends left after what happened on Anarchy Ridge, and he’d cut himself off from his family. He’d had a variety of jobs, but they were the kind of jobs it’s easy to move on from and that’s what he did, all the time. Hanratty’s man had no great difficulty finding out where he’d been, even where he’d been quite recently. He was never able to anticipate where he’d show up next.
Until Tommy Hanratty called him on the special number and said where Horn was two hours ago. The mechanic had been an hour’s drive away—it was mere luck that it wasn’t farther—but that was all right because nothing had changed by the time he arrived. He knew this because he’d phoned Beth McKendrick before approaching the house.
So he knew that the girl was willing him to succeed, prepared to help him. It made it easy to set up the tableau under