Killer Move

Dad lost his cherished future by himself, dropped the ball one night in his sleep, and probably didn’t even realize it until it was too late. Maybe he never realized it. It could be that on the day he bent to pick up those two big old cans of paint, part of his mind was still noodling around the perfect little French fishing village, and how to convince his wife that now—finally, the kid having left home—was the time to make the move.

But I doubt it. Dreams are immortal, fickle, self-possessed: the cats of the subconscious. Once it becomes clear that you’re not going to step up to their demands, they desert you and go rub up against someone else.

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.