Lethal

Honor pulled her feet up to the edge of the seat, looped her arms around her legs, and propped her chin on her knees. Quietly she said, “They’ll kill you.”

He bit into another cookie, saying nothing.

“Doral or one of the Hawkins clan. Even the honest policemen, who only see you as Sam Marset’s killer, would rather bring you in dead than alive.”

“Hamilton’s told everybody I’m already dead. Wonder how he’ll wiggle out of that one.”

“How can you joke about it? It doesn’t bother you that you could be killed?”

“Not particularly.”

“You don’t think about dying?”

“I’m only surprised that it hasn’t happened yet.”

Honor picked at a cuticle that had been torn loose while they were working on the boat. “You know how to do things.” She glanced at him. He was looking up at her curiously. “Survival things. Lots of things.”

“I don’t know how to bake cupcakes.”

For the first time since she’d found him lying facedown in her yard, he was teasing her, but she wouldn’t let it divert her. “Did you learn all those skills in the Marine Corps?”

“Most of them.”

She waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “You were a different kind of Marine than my father-in-law.”

“He’s a recruiting poster?”

“Exactly.”

“Then, yeah, I was different. No marching in formation for the kind of Marine I was. I had a uniform, but didn’t wear it but a few times. I didn’t salute officers, and nobody saluted me.”

“What did you do?”

“Killed people.”

She had suspected that. She’d even deluded herself into thinking she could hear him admit it without flinching. But the words felt like tiny blows to her chest, and she feared she would only feel them stronger if she heard more, so she carried the subject no further.

He finished his last cookie and dusted crumbs off his hands. “We need to get to work.”

“Work?” She was so exhausted her whole body ached. She thought that if she closed her eyes she would fall asleep where she sat. Stained mattress or not, she looked forward to lying down on it beside Emily and sleeping. “What work?”

“We’re going through it again.”

“Through what again?”

“Eddie’s life.”

Chapter 26

Diego approached the property under cover of darkness, rain, and dense, sculpted shrubbery. Bonnell Wallace’s home was one of the stately mansions on St. Charles Avenue.

From an intruder’s standpoint, it was a fucking fortress.

Landscape lighting had been well placed for flattering accent. The risk it posed was negligible. Diego saw a hundred ways that the artificial moonlight could be avoided.

Problematic, however, were the spotlights projecting from ground level up onto the exterior walls and bathing them with thousands of watts of illumination. A shadow cast by that light would be thirty feet tall and would look like an ink-print on the gleaming white brick.

He assessed the perfectly maintained lawn and the eighty-thousand-dollar car parked in the circular driveway, and determined that the security system’s quality would also be the best that money could buy. State-of-the-art contacts would be on every door and window, with motion and glass breakage detectors in every room, and, in all likelihood, an invisible beam around the perimeter of the property. If it was broken, a silent alarm would be activated, so that by the time an intruder reached the house, police would already be surrounding it.

None of these obstacles made breaching it impossible, but they presented difficulties that Diego would rather avoid.

Through the front windows, he could see into a room that looked like a study. A heavyset, middle-aged man was seated in a large chair, his feet up on an ottoman, talking on the telephone and frequently sipping from a glass he kept close at hand. He looked relaxed, uncaring that the lighted room was on display and that he could be seen from the street.

That was a statement in itself. Mr. Wallace felt safe.

In this neighborhood, someone who looked like Diego would immediately arouse suspicion. He was confident of his ability to be invisible when he needed to be, but even so, he kept a wary eye out for patrol cars and nosy neighbors out walking their dogs. Rain trickled beneath his collar and down his back. He disregarded it. He hunkered there, nothing except his eyes moving as they periodically scanned his surroundings.

He watched and waited for something to happen. Nothing did, except that Mr. Wallace traded his telephone for a magazine that held his attention for almost an hour. Then he tossed back the remainder of his drink and left the room, switching out the light as he went. A light on the second story came on, remained on for less than ten minutes, then went out.

Diego stayed where he was, but after another hour, when it became apparent to him that Wallace had gone to bed, he decided that his time was better spent somewhere else. He would resume his surveillance in the morning. The Bookkeeper would never be the wiser.