Padilla nods and shuffles off to the adjoining study. Deleting evidence seems to be a habit of Radack’s, a habit that will prove useful.
As Padilla sits at the computer, the watcher brings up another screen. From inside the system, he sees the previous night’s footage vanish from the net video recorder application. The watcher notes the precise time of Padilla’s meddling — 15:31. The archives already look like Swiss cheese, showing an extensive history of holes where Radack has ordered illicit activity excised from the record.
Back to the live feeds. Radack is walking down a long hall. He enters the screening room. Leanne jolts upright and turns off her iPad. Radack crosses his arms.
“You e-mailed your mom to get you a plane ticket,” he says.
The air leaks from Leanne; she seems literally to deflate on the bench. Her fingers twist together in her lap, tugging.
“I’m a software visionary, you dumb cooze. Do you really think you can do anything without me noticing?”
Her words are almost too quiet to be picked up by the speakers. “Why don’t you let me go?”
Radack leans back on his heels, appeals to the upholstered ceiling. “I don’t want to break up with you,” he says. “I want to ruin you so no one else will ever want you.” He wipes at his nose with finger and thumb. “What do you have to say to that?”
She has nothing to say to that.
He points through the wall. “Kane and Padilla, they are my blood brothers. My guard dogs. Wherever you go, they will hunt you down. And bring you back to me.”
She says, “Go to hell, Steve.”
He moves like a flash, two quick strides and a backhand, and she is sent sprawling off the couch. On all fours, she gropes for her broken glasses.
He stands over her, wide-postured, legs spread. “Hell ain’t a place. It’s a state of mind.”
He walks out. She waits frozen for a few moments and then clamps a palm over her mouth and sobs into it. Finally she rises, weak on her legs, clutching her shattered eyeglasses. She pokes her head through the doorway, then moves quietly down the hall and turns left. The watcher loses her, not knowing which feed to pick up. He finds her in the maid’s quarters, where the housekeeper looks stunned to see her. Leanne asks her to read the Bible with her, and the woman nods. They kneel together at the side of the bed before the worn book. Leanne holds up one intact lens to read through. She laces her free hand in the housekeeper’s.
In the living room, Radack gathers his H&K 94 and his bodyguards. They head to the screening room first and find Leanne missing. They begin a march through the house, prowling, opening doors.
Leanne reads faster. Her body tenses. Her eyes squeeze shut. The housekeeper looks terrified.
The hunting party nears. The door to the maid’s quarters opens.
Radack says, “Go home, Marisol.”
Marisol rises. She has to pull her hand free of Leanne’s. Marisol nods respectfully to Radack and slides out through the men. Rushing down the hall to the foyer, she begins to weep soundlessly.
In the room, Leanne has still not looked up. Her eyes remain closed; her lips are moving soundlessly. Radack steps forward and places the muzzle of the submachine gun to her forehead.
The watcher knows now. She is the one.
She is the catalyst for his reinvention.
Leanne’s lips stop moving but even now she does not open her eyes.
“The killings in Rwanda,” Radack says. “Know what the Hutu tribesmen did? They made their victims buy the bullets they’d be killed with if they didn’t want to get hacked to death.”
Behind him, Kane laughs at the thought of this.
“So,” Radack says. “What do you say, Leanne? Wanna buy a bullet?”
Leanne remains very still for a long time, maybe a full minute. Finally she shakes her head. He clocks her with the barrel of the carbine, knocking her over. Then he tugs down his pants and advances. The bodyguards look on. He finishes and rises. There are smiles and high fives.
As Radack exits, he says, “Have a go.”
The men are willing. They step forward, already unbuckling, and set upon her like dogs. The watcher does not flinch. He does not look away.
When it is over, he turns to the window. It is night.
Night is good.
He packs up, walks downstairs, and checks out. The receptionist says, “How was everything?” and he smiles and says, “Fine, thank you.”
He drives over to Radack’s estate, abiding the speed limit, and parks on the quiet street behind the compound. A check of the laptop shows Radack shirtless, playing a first-person-shooter video game in the living room, the real submachine gun resting on the cushion beside him. He has seemingly ordered Leanne to the facing couch, for she lies there fetally, shuddering. Padilla mixes margaritas on the kitchen island behind them, and Kane patrols the halls. Both bodyguards wear satiated grins. There are white lines on the coffee table before Radack and white lines on the granite slab of the island and the three men’s motions have more zip than seems standard.
The watcher applies Superglue to his fingertips, covering the prints, and then pops the hood and trunk. He climbs out, removing the floor mat and hanging it over his open door. He takes the battery from the engine and jumper cables from the back and throws them over the fence. He pays the security cameras no mind; he will make sure later that no footage from tonight exists. In the archives, it will appear as though Padilla shut down the security cameras altogether during his visit to the study at 15:31.
The watcher slings the floor mat up to cover the spikes and scrambles over the fence.
The wet wind is blowing out, buying him time before his scent travels. He slices through the maze of the gardens, darting between pea planting beds. Emerging from a row of corn stalks, he sprints for the fish pond.
At the bank, he kneels. He has just attached a jumper cable to the positive terminal on the battery when he hears the dogs’ snarling approach. He slings the other cable into the pond and trawls it, a few paralyzed fish rolling up to the surface.
The Dobermans explode into view. He drags the cable clear of the water to preserve the battery for his ride to Los Angeles, and puts the pond and its offerings between him and the dogs. Sure enough, they catch sight of the fish and their interest is diverted. They wade heavily into the pond, dip their snouts, and come up with dinner. He walks boldly between them, signaling his fearlessness. They pause from gnawing, their eyes rolling to track him.
“Sit,” he says in a low, hard voice.
They sit.
He walks to the house. The front door opens, Kane ambling out onto the porch, already shouting: “Thor! Zeus! C’mon, b—”
Kane stops, on his heels.
The watcher is ten feet away.
Now five.
Kane’s hand flies to his shoulder holster and the revolver is out, swinging toward the watcher’s head. Hopping the step onto the porch directly into the path of the muzzle, the watcher grabs the gun around the wheel, clenching so the cylinder cannot rotate and the weapon cannot fire. For a split-second, he is staring straight down the bore. Kane is still tugging the trigger, confused, when the watcher torques Kane’s gun hand, forcing him to spin to keep the elbow intact. The watcher slides neatly behind him. His free hand hooks to Kane’s front right pocket and he rakes the Emerson knife free, knowing that the shark-fin hook riding the blade top will snare the pocket edge and snap the knife open. Kane is arched backwards, his vitals bared, and the blade work is direct and efficient. The scents of tequila and deodorant are joined by a fresh, coppery tang.
The watcher eases the collapsing form to the concrete and pivots to the door, his momentum barely slowed.