"You came here looking for DeVries?"
He let the question pass. "I see you found him first."
"Somebody found him." She surveyed the carnage, paling as her eyes glanced off the other riddled bodies. "What the hell is all of this?"
"It's overkill," he answered, holding Susan with his eyes. "Somebody must've thought DeVries was granting interviews."
"You're here for Hal," she countered, sudden understanding in her voice. "I should have known."
"What brings you here?"
"Could be the same. I haven't had a chance to make up my mind yet." She nodded toward the body of DeVries. "We never got that far."
Outside, a rising babble had resolved itself into the sound of cautious voices. Bolan didn't have to understand the words to realize that neighbors would be edging closer, gaining confidence as silence swallowed up the echoes of the firefight. Someone was certain to have called police, several calls would be more likely, and the squad cars would be on their way by now. A glance told Bolan that the lady was already putting two and two together, and she beat him to the punch.
"I move we finish off this conversation in a cooler atmosphere," she said, "before somebody else drops in to interrupt."
The soldier didn't argue with her. He was stepping through the shattered sliding windows, past the shrouded corpse of one assailant, when he noticed Susan hanging back, intent on gathering some photographs and papers that were scattered near the couch. She caught up with Bolan on the flagstone patio, in lockstep with him as they put the house of death behind them.
As Bolan led her back circuitously toward the parking lot, avoiding contact with the neighbors who were popping out of condos on every side, his mind was on the papers in her hand. He hadn't noticed them in the excitement of the firefight, the surprise of seeing Susan Landry rise from cover. But if the lady cared enough to bring them with her, shaving precious seconds off their getaway, they might be worth a closer look.
Whatever they contained, they were his only hope of getting information from DeVries now that the man himself had been irrevocably silenced. Scattered papers, glossy photographs... and Susan Landry. It made some sense.
Susan had been with DeVries before the raiders struck. There was a chance that he had spilled some measure of the manufactured case against Brognola, speaking carelessly, perhaps, or out of cold deliberation, playing to his audience. Most frames looked better in the media than in court, Bolan knew, and he was betting that DeVries had planned a series of strategic leaks to stain Brognola's reputation. Someone else had vetoed the idea with bullets, and the Executioner could only hope that something might be salvaged from the ruins before it was too late.
Except, he told himself, it might already be too late.
Conditioned toward ignoring hopeless odds, he pushed the defeatist train of thought away. It wouldn't matter what the scattered papers said or who might be depicted in the photographs, if the two of them were swept up by police responding to the shooting call. Before he could protect his friends, the soldier knew it would be necessary to protect himself, to put some ground between himself and five fresh corpses that would have to be explained.
He had no explanation for the carnage yet, but it was coming. He could feel it in his gut. If only he could recognize the answer, seize the truth before it throttled him.
She watched him as he finished with the printouts of Brognola's phone calls, passed them back and started riffling through the photographs a second time. Was that a frown of recognition? Of concern? The silence stretched between them like a taut piano wire, and Susan Landry clenched both hands together in her lap to keep from gnawing at her nails.
He looked the same... or did he? Finely chiseled features, so unlike the face that she had known in Cleveland, but she recognized him well enough from their encounter on the eve of his defection from the Phoenix Program, from another meeting in a Texas cell block.
She wondered if those eyes had seen so much of blood and fire that they could never smile again. She stopped herself before the maudlin train of thought could take her any farther. She was on a story, dammit, and the man beside her was a part of it. If there had been no solid handle on the thing before, she had it now. One federal officer accused of bribery and worse, a second murdered in his home by contract killers — and the Executioner in Washington. Again.
Despite herself, she felt a certain awe in Bolan's presence and she realized that it could rob her of her objectivity if she permitted it to go too far. The man had saved her life on two occasions — no, three; she couldn't just forget about tonight — and in return she studied him as if he were some kind of laboratory specimen, examining his actions, scrutinizing motive and effect. It was her job, and yet she owed him so much more.
The man's arrival was coincidence, his brisk elimination of the four assassins done before he even knew that she was in the room. It scarcely counted if you put things in perspective properly.
But yes, the man had saved her life. Again.
He finished with the photographs but did not pass them back to her at once. When several heartbeats passed in silence, Susan took it on herself to break the ice.
"Familiar faces?"
"What?" It seemed as if her voice had brought him back from somewhere. He shrugged. "A few."
"I guess they're syndicate."
"Does that come from DeVries?"
She nodded, wondering how much she could afford to give away.
"I don't know how much else he had, but he was banking on indictment and conviction."
"Any names?"
"He didn't have the time. I planned to trace the numbers through Ma Bell."
Had she said planned! Why was she talking in the past tense? Nothing she had seen so far tonight had changed her mind.
"I'd like to show these to a friend," he said, so softly that she almost had to strain to catch the words.
"Brognola?"
She had hoped to take him by surprise, but Bolan only frowned, the graveyard eyes unflinching, locked with her own. "I can't go into that."
She felt the sudden anger flaring, made no real attempt to rein it in. "For heaven's sake," she blurted, "I've already spoken to him once. And just in case you missed it, I was almost murdered earlier tonight."
"While working on a story."
"No!" She hesitated, startled by her own response. She had been working on a story, hadn't she? When she spoke again it was as if in answer to herself. "Not just a story."
"Oh?"
"I thought I could help... somehow."
"You didn't help DeVries."
"I didn't kill him, either. But I'll bet my life that someone in those pictures did."
"Don't bet with anything you can't afford to lose."
"You think I'm wrong?"
"I think I'd like to run these past a friend and hear him out before I make up my mind, either way."
"Okay, let's go."
There was a trace of humor in his smile. "I'll drop you at a pay phone. You can take a cab back to your car, but you'd be smart to wait a while and let the bluesuits finish up."
"I'll stick with you."
"It's not an option."
She turned away from him and faced the darkness, concentrating on her own reflection in the windowpane and trying to collect her thoughts.
"You owe me one," she said. "You wouldn't have those pictures if I hadn't gone to interview DeVries."
"I'd say we're even."
"There are ways that I can help you... and your friend."