I had no intention of letting mine do the same.
Bill Moore is not that kind of guy.
Bill Moore is a verb.
Believe it.
Steph returned carrying a couple more glasses of wine. She’d changed out of her dress in the meantime, put her long blond hair up in a ponytail, and was wearing a thin robe and nothing else. She looked tall and slender and beautiful.
“The day just keeps getting better,” I said.
“Don’t make any promises you can’t keep,” she said, smiling as she handed one of the glasses to me. “You’ve not stinted on the wine already, tycoon-boy.”
I stood, meaningfully. “You ever known me to break a promise?”
“Actually, I have not,” she admitted, coming closer.
Afterward we cooled off in the pool, not saying much, content to float around in each other’s orbits and look up at the moon and stars.
Suddenly it was late. Steph headed upstairs to the bedroom around one thirty. I went through to the kitchen to get us a couple of glasses of mineral water. As I poured them from the bottle in the fridge I noticed a small manila envelope propped against the coffee machine.
“What’s this?” I called.
After a pause, Steph’s voice came down from the gallery. “What’s what, dearest? Damned telepathy’s still cutting in and out.”
“Thing on the coffee machine.”
“I have no idea,” she said. “Came in the mail after you’d left. Oh, and will you get me copies of the pictures you took at Helen’s party? She’s baying for them. I need a CD, or can you at least throw up a Web gallery so she can pick the ones she likes?”
“Will do,” I said.
“Really, this time?”
“Really.”
I picked up the envelope. Tore it open, and found a black card inside. I flipped it over.
On the other side, there was a single word: MODIFIED.
CHAPTER FOUR
He waits in a car. He has been here three hours already. He doesn’t know how much longer it will take, and it doesn’t matter. It has taken John Hunter three weeks to get this far. He bought the car a hundred miles away, dickering about the price just long enough to remain unmemorable. By the time he left the lot, steering the car accurately into midmorning traffic, the salesman would already have been hard-pressed to describe him. For the last four days he has been staying in local motels, a single night in each. He pays with cash earned during a two-week stint of manual labor in another state. He behaves at all times in a manner so unexceptional that no one has any reason to mark his presence, or his passing.
He has spent his time watching a man.
Hunter has observed this person leaving the house in the mornings, and then been a distant, unmarked presence on the periphery of his every waking hour. He has seen him take meetings and supervise work on two building sites, watched him drive between venues in his understated but expensive car, and observed him enjoy lunches on the terraces of upmarket restaurants. The man drinks red wine with clients but switches to beer as soon as they’ve gone. He laughs, shakes hands, remembers the names of spouses and children. He is a little overweight, fleshy, with the confidence to ignore the zeitgeist’s strident views on body mass indices. He is a normal, unexceptionable man . . .
Except in all the ways he is not.
Several times Hunter has passed close enough to overhear his quarry on the phone. One of these conversations did not concern business. The man’s voice was quieter this time, more conspiratorial, and he half-turned from other patrons outside the unnecessarily expensive café where it occurred. He asked if a meeting was to go ahead and sounded pleased when it was confirmed. The audible pleasure was there merely to flatter the person on the other end of the line. He had known the meeting would take place as planned. He was used to people doing what he wanted but smart enough to occasionally let them think it had been their choice.
The man’s fate was already determined. The overheard call only helped Hunter choose a convenient when and how.
Two nights later, the man drives to a midscale neighborhood on the northeast side of town. As he parks outside a private residence, his shadow drives past, stopping fifty yards up the street.
And there he has waited.
At a quarter after two the door of the house opens and the man comes out. He says good-bye to the woman standing in a robe in the doorway, and strolls away to the curb. He unlocks his car with a cheery electronic blip-blip—forgetting or not caring that she might prefer him not to be observed by neighbors who know she is married. She retreats inside.
Hunter waits until the other car has pulled away from the curb, then starts his own engine and follows. He does not bother to tail his target closely. He knows where they are going.
Twenty minutes later the other man pulls off the road and up a driveway. Hunter parks his car a hundred yards farther along the highway, in the rear lot of an Italian restaurant closed for the night. He has already established that any car lodged here cannot be seen from the road. He walks back to the man’s property and up the curving path to the house. He stops at the gates and takes a pair of surgical gloves from his jacket. He snaps them tight, then removes a set of tools from another pocket, along with an electronic device bought on the recommendation of a kid he befriended in his final year in prison. The kid knew a great deal about new technology and was very grateful for the protection of an older and more experienced inmate, especially one who didn’t want to have sex with him.
Hunter works methodically, following instructions gleaned from a seedy corner of the Web. He knew about the Internet before he got out, of course. They have it in prison, along with—should you wish to consult it—a rolling, 24-7 master class in how to do just about everything that people are not supposed to do.
Twelve minutes later the entry pad has been disabled. He opens the gate wide enough to slip inside. He walks across the paved area beyond, a space large enough to hold several cars in addition to the one presently in position, its authoritative German engine ticking in the still, dark warmth. Hunter does not concern himself with the security camera that observes this space. All it will record is a person in dark clothing moving purposefully toward the side of the house, his face angled away. The man inside will not be watching it, and by the time anyone else has cause to do so, it will be too late.
Hunter makes his way around the house, skirting the well-tended palm trees, past a frosted window that runs along the side of the house’s epic kitchen area. He can hear a radio or CD player playing within: orchestral trivia, of a style favored by those who do not like or understand classical music but would prefer other people to think they do.
One of the glass doors at the rear of the house has been slid wide, to let in the sound of the waves—celebration of the house’s position and, implicitly, its cost. This is the major failing of security systems. The owner hands up his or her safety to a technological higher power. In common with all such agencies, the protection it affords is imaginary. Higher powers don’t care if you drink. They don’t care if you have a shitty day. They don’t even care if you die.
Hunter slips inside the house. He walks into the center of the room—which is large, carpeted in a camel color, and luxuriously furnished. The lights are low. After a moment’s pause, he continues toward the kitchen. Once there, he pushes its door open wider, and waits.
The music is louder here, but no better. The house’s owner is doing something noisy with ice cubes. After a couple of minutes he happens to turn in the direction of the door, and does a decent job of not looking startled.