They had made a mistake and assumed that he had some kind of personal relationship with Elizabeth Waring. Maybe they had even gone into the house in the middle of the night, believing that they might surprise him in her room. He supposed that when the others had seen him at her hotel, it had given them a distorted idea of their history.
Why they had made the mistake was probably not important. The thing for him to think about was making sure it was a fatal mistake. He had a perfect chance tonight to get these people.
As he made his way to the back wall of the house, he could feel the tension of the moment. The muscles of his legs, arms, back, and stomach tightened, his breathing grew deeper to load his blood with oxygen. It was the old, welcome feeling again, the one he'd first experienced when he was a boy going out to kill with Eddie. On the first few jobs, there had been such fear and elation that it was almost impossible to separate one from the other. His mind had been activated the same way as his body-more blood pumping through his brain so he thought faster and could see things in sharper, brighter relief. It had seemed to him that he could feel the surfaces he looked at long before he touched them.
After those nights, the feeling had returned to him often. Tonight he felt it again, and it made him feel strong and quick and eager. He stood at the side of the sliding door at the back of the living room and looked in. He couldn't see anybody inside. The alarm system keypad was beside the front door, and he could just see it from here. The little lights on the keypad were off. The shooters must have shut it off somehow to get in. He could see into the dining room from here. One of the chairs at the dining room table had been moved out of line. Behind it there was a pool of blood on the light hardwood floor. Had they killed her already? No. There wasn't enough blood for a bullet wound or stabbing, and far too little for anything fatal.
They must have hit her or knocked her to the floor. It was that kind of blood. They hadn't killed her yet. They were probably trying to get her to say where he was going to be next or force her to get him to come here. He hoped she'd had the presence of mind to lie and buy herself some time. If she did, he still might be able to keep her alive if he moved efficiently and made no mistakes.
He reached into his pocket for his knife, opened it, and slid the four-inch blade between the latch and its receptacle to open the latch, then put away the knife and reached into his coat pocket for the small, flat pistol. He'd had the intention of buying a couple of spare magazines for the gun before he tried to use it, but things had happened too quickly. He slid open the door, stepped inside into the living room, and closed it again. He stood with his back against the wall, his body partially concealed by a baby grand piano.
He stood still. The gun was in his right hand, but not aimed. He simply held it pointed to his right because moving his right hand to his left was milliseconds faster than moving it to the right, and his aim would be surer. His left hand touched the wall so he could feel vibrations, and he let his eyes stare into space so anything that entered any part of his vision would be visible to him. He yawned silently so his ears were clear and listened.
Time passed, but he kept no count of the minutes, only tried to hear and feel where people were in the house. He heard and felt the sound of someone heavy walking above him near the back of the house, and a second later, someone else a few feet to the left. Waring's daughter had to be under a hundred pounds and the son was tall, but thin. And kids didn't wear hard-soled shoes like that at this hour. Waring was maybe a hundred and twenty, so it wasn't her either.
It was two men, both upstairs but at least ten or fifteen feet apart, maybe in different rooms at the moment. Were they searching the place? For what? Maybe Waring and her kids weren't even home. The thought made him feel a tentative optimism, but then he heard Elizabeth Waring's voice.
It was a low "Uh, unh. No. Stop." It came from a nearby room. "Stop, please! I already told you what I know!"
Schaeffer was already moving toward her voice. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the little office off the kitchen. He kept the gun ready. There were three of them, two upstairs, probably guarding the kids. This one was downstairs with Waring.
He came to the doorway and took in the scene. The man had light, thinning hair so Schaeffer could see his pink bald spot from there as the man straddled Waring on the floor. He was in the process of tearing Waring's clothes off. He had already gotten her top off and had her bra around her waist and had her black sweatpants down to her knees, so with her pale, sun-deprived skin she looked like a classical statue that had been broken. He could tell from her eyes that she could see him.
As he stepped forward, she showed a burst of energy and tried to immobilize the man's arms by throwing hers around him in a bear hug. Two more steps and Schaeffer was there. He wrenched the man's head around to the left to break his neck, then pushed him off Waring.
Elizabeth was shaking and wide-eyed, with blood running down in streaks from her broken nose and her split lip, but he put his head close to hers and whispered. "Are there two more of them upstairs with your kids?"
She nodded. "Yes. Two." She pulled up her sweatpants, and he turned and picked up her T-shirt from the floor where the man must have tossed it. Then he handed it to her.
He stood, pulled out his pistol, and moved toward the door.
"Wait," she whispered. "I have a gun in the laundry room."
"Where's that?"
"Stay here." He could see she had a hard time getting to her feet. He could tell her arms and legs were tired from wrestling her vastly stronger opponent. But she went to the door, and he noticed that she was barefoot. She must have been hauled out of bed. She was a mess, just running on adrenaline now, and fear for her kids.
She padded into the room again, this time carrying a Glock 17 pistol and a magazine that he could see held sixteen gleaming bullets.
He took the gun and the magazine, inserted the magazine, and pulled the slide back to get a round into the chamber. He whispered, "Tell me the truth. Are you really good with this?"
"I'm okay. I've kept up my qualification for ten or eleven years."
"Do you have any reluctance at all to kill one of those guys up there?"
"No. None," she said.
"Okay." He handed her the gun. "I think they've got your kids in different rooms. They're probably tied or cuffed. If I go in and kill the guy in one room, his buddy will fire on your other kid. So we have to go in both rooms at once. You don't say, 'Stop or I'll shoot' or 'Freeze' or 'Drop it.' You step in and shoot him. And you have to shoot him enough times so he's beyond shooting back." He held her arm to keep her from going. "If you can't do it just like that, tell me."
"I can do it. I want to do it," she said.
He picked a piece of paper and a pencil off the desk and put it on the hardwood floor where they sat. "Draw me the two rooms. Show the door, the back window, the bed, any chairs."
He watched her draw, then nodded. "You take this one-your son's room. I'll get the girl. First we go up as quietly as we can. If anybody comes out of a room, kill him. It won't be your kid."
He put his arm around her shoulders to help her up and they began to walk. At the doorway he whispered, "Quiet, now. Remember, we step in shooting."
"Let's go." She stepped across the big oriental rug in the living room, letting it muffle the footsteps. When she reached the foot of the staircase, she didn't hesitate. She began to climb. Her bare feet made no noise.
He followed and realized that what he was seeing was probably something she had learned when she'd gone up the stairs when her kids were babies. Nobody knew how to go through a house as quietly as the owner. He was tempted to make her stop halfway up to listen for the men, but she was doing so well he waited until they were a step from the top to put his hand on her shoulder. She stopped and looked back at him. He held his hand up to his ear, and they both listened.