Killer Move

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.

“What the fuck?”

He has relinquished the steel blue Prada trousers—too tight around the gut for comfort now that there’s no longer anyone around to impress—and changed into nice clean gray sweatpants. He has undone his lilac shirt to the waist. He is holding a heavy cut-glass tumbler. A bottle of single malt stands on the counter behind him, next to a set of keys.

He grunts, presumably a laugh. “This a robbery?” He takes a gratuitously long sip of his drink. “Wrong house, my friend. Wrong house, wrong guy, and you are about to enter a bad, bad phase in your life.”

Hunter’s facial expression doesn’t change.

The man in the sweatpants hesitates then, finding himself susceptible for a moment to a tremor of disquiet, as if dusty neural pathways—or the vestigial sliver of an older, better soul—are telling him to beware.

And also . . . that he might have met this man before.

Hunter sees this flash of recognition, and takes a step into the kitchen.

The other man starts to back away. “You are so—”

The bullet enters his right thigh just above the knee. The gun is fitted with a silencer and makes less sound than the mangled shell when it exits the man’s leg and thuds into one of the kitchen cabinets. Hunter is at the man’s side before he’s even made it down to the floor. The second half of the descent is more a tumble than a fall, and involves a crash against a side cabinet.