She stopped in the living room so he could just catch sight of her in the corner of his eye, then moved toward the big leather couch along the far wall in front of the bookcases. She heard a sound—the scrape of his chair, then heard him get up, his feet coming across the kitchen floor, through the dining room, then onto the carpet. She kept her back to him, as though she had heard nothing.
“Wow,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder at him, smiled, and gave her bottom a comical little wiggle. “Oh, Mr. Turner,” she said in a fake southern-belle voice. “What can you be thinking?”
He seemed to swoop, coming across the room without sound, or enough time elapsing, and he had his arms around her. She enjoyed the powerful effect she had on him. He never spoke again, he simply made love to her. There was never anything routine or perfunctory about the way Paul Turner was with her, but this time he was irresistible. At times he was tender, gentle, and then he would be ardent and passionate, almost too physical, so she felt small and weak. It wasn’t that he seemed to be taking her against her will, but that her will was irrelevant because when she felt this way, he could make her want to do anything.
When it was over, she lay still, her muscles all relaxing, letting her heartbeat slow. She opened her eyes and was mildly surprised to remember that they had never left the living room. He was on his side, leaning on his elbow and looking down at her.
“What were you doing before I came in here to distract you?” she said.
“I was cleaning rifles. That pair of .308s we bought last year in South Carolina.”
“I had forgotten we even had those. I remember we sighted them in on the range, and never fired them again. Why did they need cleaning?”
“They didn’t, actually. It was just something to do while you were asleep. I’m glad you decided to get up.” A small self-satisfied proprietary smile formed on his lips.
She forgave him for the smile, even though she deserved every bit of the credit and considerable gratitude for what had just happened. That, she supposed, was another aspect of long marriages. When they had first found each other years ago, she had not been able to read that smile, could not have detected that mixed with the admiration was pride of ownership and self-satisfaction.
Sylvie got up and walked into the bedroom suite. She tossed the skimpy nightgown into the bin for delicate wash and stepped into the shower. She hummed, then sang in a quiet voice, because she was happy.
When she was out of the shower, she pulled on a pair of comfortable jeans and a T-shirt. She walked into the kitchen, and poured herself a cup of coffee. Paul was just reassembling the second rifle, and she could see why she had forgotten he had bought this pair. She and Paul had at least two other pairs built on the Remington Model 7 pattern, all with dull gray synthetic stocks that wouldn’t reflect light or hold a fingerprint. There were a pair in .30-06 and identical ones in .22, so they could practice without spending tons of money for high-powered, deafening ammunition that made the gun kick her shoulder until it was bruised and sore.
She and Paul tried to get in lots of practice sessions. The thought reminded her that when she and Paul had gotten together she used to call it “rehearsal,” and he used to laugh at her. She watched him as he picked up the two guns and carried them toward the spare bedroom he used as an office, to lock them in the gun safe. She supposed there were things about her that annoyed him, but he almost never mentioned any of them. Maybe that was why she had bouts of free-ranging anxiety: She would notice signs in his face and body that signaled irritation, but since he hadn’t said anything, she had no way to limit what she imagined might be bothering him. It could be anything about her—or even everything—so she became defensive.
When Paul came back into the kitchen, she put her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss. “Well, what can I make you for breakfast?”
“Nothing. I’ll take you out to breakfast.”
“No, thanks. I want to be in my own house for a while and bask in blissful domesticity. How about some eggs and bacon?”
He shrugged. “Sounds good.”
She went to the refrigerator and took out the eggs, butter, and bacon while he cleared the table of his cleaning rods, patches, gun oil, and rags, and began to set it for breakfast.
She broke one egg, then another into the pan, dropped the shells into the sink and looked back at him. “Before you answer the next question, I would like you to take a minute to think, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Do we really have to collect on Wendy Harper?”
He sat quietly for about five seconds, then said, “Yes. We pretty much do.”
“Pretty much?”
“That means yes. It’s a lot of money. We spend a lot, so we need to make a lot. And it’s a job for Michael Densmore. He’s been our best source of jobs for the past seven or eight years.”
“That’s true, but think about it a minute.” Her spatula lifted the eggs expertly and slid them onto a plate without breaking the yolks. “Do we actually need this money? We own this house free and clear. We paid cash for both cars. We each had savings from before we met. We have the money we’ve saved together, and we still have all of the money Darren left me about fifteen years ago, don’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s got to add up.”
“Of course. We could quit now, and probably live a very comfortable life until we die.” He grinned. “Or until I die, anyway, which is all I need to worry about.”
“You’re so sweet.” His toast popped up, and she plucked it out of the toaster, dropped it on the plate, and set it in front of him.
“Seriously, we’re probably fine, as long as nobody gets sick, there’s no unforeseeable disaster, and all that. We have some investment income that we’ve been reinvesting for years. If you don’t like working, I’d be willing to stop after this job’s done.”
“Why not before? Why not today?”
“Because we took this job. Once we’ve met with the middleman and heard the whole story, we’re in. We’re obligated. We know too much to walk away.”
“Densmore knows us. He knows we won’t tell anybody anything. We killed that black girl, and the cop south of San Francisco, and the couple in the hotel. If we spilled everything, he might get ten years, but we’d get the death penalty. That’s his insurance.”
“His point of view would be, we’ve fucked up the job so far, and therefore we ought to clean up the mess.”
“Can we at least try to talk to Densmore?”
“Let’s think about it before we do that. What if he insists that we finish it? Is it possible we’ll alienate him and still have to finish the job? And don’t forget: He’s just a lawyer, a go-between. We don’t know anything about the actual client. Do we want to give the client the idea that we’re not reliable, and that maybe he has to worry about us?”
“Since we don’t know him, we can’t do him any harm,” she said. “And since he doesn’t know us, he can’t do us any harm. What’s to stop him from calling somebody else?”
“It would have to be somebody who could drop whatever he was doing, get here, and go right to work. He’d never have seen Wendy Harper or Jack Till. And it has to be done now—in the next day or two—while she’s in the open. All she’s got to do is see the DA, and she’s gone again forever.”
“Okay,” Sylvie said. “We’re not doing this because we care if she lives or dies, right? We’re in it for money. They hired us because we’re professionals.”