John Gilstrap
End Game
For Joy
CHAPTER ONE
The pounding on the front door meant trouble, a staccato beat delivered by a heavy hand. It bore the urgency of a neighbor with news that the house was on fire. In the living room, just fifteen feet away, the pounding ripped Jolaine’s attention away from her computer search for the best business schools. In one year, her life would look a hell of a lot different than it did now.
She uncurled her legs from beneath her, placed her laptop on the end table, and edged toward the foyer. It was, after all, her job to answer the door, just as it was her job to deal with the emotional turmoil that defined fourteen-year-old Graham, who was supposed to be steeped in homework by now — homework that she knew he wouldn’t be doing because he was one of those kids whose four-oh average came with zero effort. He ranked among the biggest reasons why next year would look so different.
Her heart hammered at least as loudly as the fist on the door as her bare feet crossed from carpet to marble. She considered ignoring it. At nearly ten o’clock, was there really an obligation to answer? The fact that she was separated from her nearest weapon by two flights of thirteen stairs didn’t help at all. Why hire a bodyguard and then forbid said bodyguard to be armed in the house?
The pounding continued. “Bernard!” a voice yelled from beyond the door. “For God’s sake, let me in!”
Jolaine had nearly reached the door when Mr. Mitchell — Bernard — barked, “No!” He’d appeared on the steps behind her.
Startled by the sharpness of his tone, she whirled and was even more surprised to see that he’d armed himself with a tiny MAC-10 automatic pistol. Dressed in the kind of pajamas that she’d seen only in old television shows — light blue with dark blue piping — he held the weapon at the ready, but with the muzzle pointed at the ceiling, his finger clear of the trigger guard. His apparent familiarity with the firearm startled her.
“Step away, Jolaine,” he said as he hurried down the stairs. “I’ll get it.” By the time he reached the foyer, Sarah, his wife, had started down behind him. Her nighttime attire consisted of gray sweats.
Nothing about this was right. Mrs. Mitchell never appeared downstairs after nine. Jolaine took two giant steps backward, into the living room archway.
As the pounding grew more desperate, Bernard Mitchell slowed his gait.
“Bernard!” the visitor yelled. “There’s no time!”
Bernard cast a glance back at Sarah. From Jolaine’s angle, she couldn’t see his face, but the reaction he got from his wife was at once heartbreaking and terrifying. It was a look of surrender, of inevitability. Jolaine fought the urge to ask because in just a few seconds, she would see for herself.
The man on the outside was still pounding when Bernard pulled open the door without even a peek through the peephole. With his MAC-10 pressed to his shoulder, he looked ready for war. Jolaine calculated her escape route.
The instant the door separated from the jamb, a little nothing of a man spilled inside onto the marble floor. Dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, he had a mop of gray hair, but all Jolaine saw in the first seconds was the blood. The front of his clothes shimmered in it, and as he collapsed onto the stone, spatters dotted the tiles.
“Gregory!” Bernard yelled. If Jolaine was any judge, this was not the man that he’d been expecting.
On the steps, Sarah made a yipping sound and glided to the foyer as Bernard cleared the man’s legs from the threshold and closed the door.
“God, what happened?”
“They know,” the man gasped. “I’m so sorry. They know.” Jolaine detected an Eastern European accent, and as he spoke, he passed a bloody slip of paper to Bernard. “Here it is, Bernard. I’m so, so sorry.”
Mr. Mitchell’s hands trembled as he lifted Gregory’s shirt, presumably to find the source of the bleeding. Jolaine looked away. She’d seen enough bullet wounds to recognize the damage at a glance, and she didn’t care to see any more.
“Call an ambulance,” Mr. Mitchell commanded.
Jolaine spun around and hurried toward the phone in the kitchen.
“No!” Sarah said. “Jolaine, go upstairs and get Graham out of the house.”
Jolaine froze. She understood the words, but they made no sense. To get him out meant to take him somewhere, and she hadn’t a clue where that might be.
“Gregory needs a doctor,” Bernard said. His voice broke.
“He needs an undertaker,” Sarah corrected. She fired a look at Jolaine. “Graham. Now.”
“Tell me what’s happening,” Jolaine said. She heard the stress in her own voice — the borderline panic — and the sound upset her. This was not the time to lose control.
“Not your concern,” Sarah snapped. Her face was a mask of something awful. If Jolaine had encountered the same expression in Jalalabad, she would have assumed the presence of a suicide vest. “Do your job, Jolaine. Take my son to safety.”
Jolaine wanted to ask for more details, but realized that they were irrelevant, at least for now. Everything about this screamed urgency of the highest order. Graham had to be roused and dressed. That was step one, and given his personality, it was a big step. Step two and beyond were for later.
The man on the floor was doomed; of that, Sarah was correct. His skin looked like gray construction paper with hints of blue around his nose and mouth. As Jolaine passed him on her way to the stairs, she made a point of not stepping on the blood.
She was living a nightmare. The nightmare. This was what she’d been hired to do, and this was why they ran all their emergency drills, though Bernard had never said why, and Jolaine had always sensed that it was all about an overinflated sense of self-worth. She’d never really bought into any of it.
Her job was to protect Graham while at the same time never cluing him in to the fact that he needed protection. She had a hard time believing that he’d never caught a glimpse of her weapon as she drove him to and from school, or wondered why he needed an au pair at his age, but he’d never said anything — at least not to her — so she’d assumed him to be as clueless as he pretended to be. He had a hell of a surprise in store. First, she had to haul his skinny, cranky ass out of bed and get him dressed.
The silver light of the television disappeared from under Graham’s door as Jolaine approached. It was, she knew, anything but a coincidence, and she wasn’t the least bit surprised to see him sprawled on his stomach, feigning sleep. She slapped the wall switch and right away missed the days of the incandescent lightbulbs with their instantaneous illumination.
“Graham!” she barked. “Get up. Get dressed.”
He made a grumbling sound, and Jolaine realized that she’d misplayed her hand. If she’d ordered him to go to sleep, he’d have leaped out of bed. She didn’t have time for this. They didn’t have time for this. She grabbed the sheet at the line where it draped beneath his bare shoulders and stripped it down to his ankles. Given his recent adolescent obsessions, she felt relief when she saw the flash of blue boxer shorts.
“Hey!” He whirled to face her. “What the hell—”
“We need to leave. Now.”
“Get out of my room! You can’t just—”
Jolaine planted her hand on his chest and pushed him down into the mattress. “Listen to me, Graham,” she said. “A man has been shot and is dying downstairs in the foyer. Your parents are terrified. You and I are leaving this house in one minute. You can be dressed and cooperative or naked and unconscious. I don’t care which.” She bounced him once to emphasize the point, and then she left for her own room on the third floor.