Suddenly, a dark silhouette crashed through the fading rectangle above, a person diving down to him. He recognized the shape—it was his mother. Now he did concentrate, willing the darkness to draw back as he reached out to her. She always came to save him… but she didn’t always make it.
The darkness fought him, overpowered him, held him. The water was very cold, much too cold for a pool. He tasted salt not chlorine because this was the ocean and his mother wasn’t coming. She wasn’t around any more; neither was his father. This wasn’t Philadelphia, this was a different place and time where he had discovered worse things lying in wait for him. His arms and legs were so heavy he couldn’t even flail, couldn’t scream, not even in his head. He could only keep sinking into the cold and dark.
A high-pitched, continuous whine cut through the silence. Henry knew it was a machine and the noise meant he had flatlined. Not for long, though—he was about to come back. He had been saved but not by his mother. This next part was going to hurt like hell. Just as the defibrillator paddles touched his skin, he woke with a start. His relief at finding himself in his own bed was short-lived; he could still hear that high-pitched whine.
Henry grabbed the iPad on the nightstand and shut off the breach alarm. Someone had set off one of laser tripwires at the edge of his property. If he didn’t get his ass in gear, he was going to flatline for real.
There was a flicker in the mirror on the wall facing the bed, a shadowy movement reflected from the window to Henry’s left. A tiny red light appeared, floating in the dark in search of a target.
Without making a sound, he grabbed his cell phone and dialed as he slid out of bed onto the floor. Please, he begged silently, opening the trapdoor beside the bed and slipping down into the crawl space under the house. The burn bag was right where he’d left it—dusty on the outside but (he hoped) still nice and dry on the inside. The number was still ringing. Please. Please. Please—
“Please tell me this means we’re back in business,” Monroe said by way of hello.
“Where are you?” Henry whispered.
“Surveilling a goddam car,” the beagle said, very unhappy about it.
“Listen to me. Get away from there,” Henry told him, still whispering as he pushed himself over the ground. He had ignored the funny look the builder had given him when he had said he wanted the house two feet above the ground on concrete pillars; builders didn’t have to be ready to make a fast getaway in the middle of the night. “Don’t go home, don’t go to your girl’s house. Get to a bus station and pay for a ticket in cash.Only use cash, nothing else. Steal it if you have to but don’t take any money out of an ATM. Then go some place where nobody knows you.”
“Shit,” Monroe said, shaken. “You’re sure?”
“They’re outside my window,” Henry said. “Sorry, man. I made you a loose end.”
“I’ll be fine,” Monroe replied, trying to cover the fear in his voice with bravado and failing utterly. “But how do I get in touch with you?”
“You don’t,” Henry told him. “Don’t call me if you want to live. In fact, you don’t call anyone. Ever. Least of all the DIA. Just dump your phone. You copy that?”
For a moment, Henry was afraid Monroe might try to give him an argument but he didn’t. Monroe said nothing at all. Instead, there were two loud bangs followed by the sound of a cell phone hitting the ground. Henry squeezed his eyes shut as images of the human beagle whirled through his mind: Monroe as he’d been when Henry had first met him, Monroe showing him that awful photo of Dormov on his phone, Monroe young, happy, and full of himself, sure that he’d live forever and never get old.
Henry rolled his grief up into a tiny ball and shoved it into a deep distant place in his mind. There was no time to mourn. Right now he had to concentrate on staying alive. He opened the burn bag and took a quick inventory: clothes and shoes, check—good thing, because no self-respecting agent would be caught dead shirtless and barefoot in pajama bottoms, not even in retirement. Nestled among the clothes were a few bundles of currency, a passport, a Glock, and best of all, two IWI ACEs. You had to love those Israelis—if you were in need of an assault weapon that would fit in a burn bag without any suspicious bulges, the Israelis had you covered.
He took out one of the rifles, made sure it was loaded, then elbow-crawled his way through the dirt until he was under the deck. Okay, you assholes, come and get me, he thought.
As if on cue, there was a barely audible footstep above him. Henry rolled onto his back and fired upward. The body fell heavily onto the splintered wood; at the same moment, he caught a motion in his peripheral vision, rolled over onto his belly again, and found another attacker through the sight. He fired; the guy fell to his knees. Henry took the head shot, then rolled out from under the house.
Immediately he spotted a third guy on the roof of the garden shed, aiming a sniper rifle at him. Henry fired and saw the scope explode along with his face. You snooze, you lose, he said silently, holding very still as he scanned the area directly in front of him. Was it over now?
Nope—there was a fourth guy, several feet away from the shed, almost invisible in the shadow of one of the larger trees. Almost invisible but not to Henry; he took careful aim and fired. The guy went down, leaving most of his head dripping down the bark.
Again, Henry scanned his surroundings but instinct told him he’d gotten them all. Now it was over.
Only four guys, he thought, dressing quickly, but as always, without rushing. Like four guys had a chance against him. Not even a week since he’d retired and the agency had already forgotten what he was capable of. What was the assassin industry coming to?
Henry jumped into his SUV and headed for the apartment building near Pelican Point.
At first, he thought he was too late, that a hit squad had already been and gone, tossing the place for good measure. Then he heard Danny sigh in her sleep and realized that, no, Agent Zakarewski was simply messy on a world-class level. Her one-bedroom apartment looked more like a dorm room. If he had seen this before he’d gotten the photocopy of her ID, he might have believed she really was a college student. Or maybe not—weren’t grad students more organized?
He went to the kitchen, where the coffeemaker was sitting on the counter. The half-full carafe was still slightly warm. Coffee before going to bed? Oh, right—she would have had to email the agency a report about the evening to tell them her new status was toast. Writing reports was one more thing he wasn’t going to miss.
Henry poured some coffee into a mug, then picked his way through the various things strewn on the floor to her bedroom. The cup made only a small noise when he put it down on the nightstand but her eyes flew open immediately. In the next moment, she was standing on the mattress, pointing a Beretta at his head.
“It’s not gun time,” Henry told her matter-of-factly. “It’s coffee time. Where’s your burn bag?”
“First, tell me what you’re doing here.” Her tone suggested his life depended on the answer.
“Someone just sent a team to kill me,” he said in the same conversational voice. “Since you were too busy being asleep and not skipping town, that means you didn’t know. Right?”
She frowned but didn’t lower the gun. “Of course I didn’t. I would have told you.”