“Do you know what it is?” I whisper back.
“Something. Something.”
SIX
Over the next week, I have them out to my house twice. The first time they come together. The next time they come separately. They both say the latter happened accidentally, but I feel they’re trying to feel me out. I don’t mind, I enjoy their company in either form, although I realize it could be a mistake for me to be alone with Matt. The guy has ingredient XYZ—if there is such a thing. He’s so damn sexy! If I didn’t love Teri so much, I’d have already jumped him. Even if he put up a fight, I wouldn’t have cared.
But the trouble is I do care.
The day after I visit with them alone, I check my e-mail and discover that my female FBI agent, Claire Mason, has tracked the van’s license plate number—the van the assassin used to haul his Gatling gun in—and has discovered that a Claudious Ember rented it a week ago from a Hertz in Manhattan. A further examination of his whereabouts shows he flew into Los Angeles the previous week, before flying to New York.
His original point of departure? Zurich, Switzerland.
It probably means nothing, but one of Yaksha’s men, Slim, told me that Yaksha worked out of Switzerland. I tell Claire to fly to Zurich and expand her search. Once more, I warn her to be cautious, to mask her trail, to be wary of strangers.
I only send Claire after Claudious. She made the breakthrough—it’s her right to follow up on it. She knows how well I reward success. Besides, if I sent my other FBI agent to Switzerland, and the two detectives, they would get in each other’s way. Worse, they might call attention to themselves. Claire is the smartest in the group. I trust her to be careful.
Claudious was not careful enough. Whenever I leave the country, I carry several passports and frequently change my ID. Also, he should have removed the license plate on the van, or swapped it with another, and filed down the identification number on the engine. To give the guy his due, he was probably confident he would kill me without much trouble.
It continues to puzzle me why Claudious’s organization sent only one assassin after me. Perhaps they wanted to demonstrate what just one of their people could do. It’s possible it was a test. Perhaps they wanted to see what I could do.
The information on Marko gnaws at me. I hate that he’s out there, especially when Lisa Fetch is still working at IIC. Even if she had quit her job and moved to another city, I would be uneasy about her chances for a long life. Her connection to Randy Clifford is too tight; it was while doing her bidding that he was killed by the hit man. I feel it is only a matter of time before Marko pays Lisa and her boyfriend—the cop, Jeff Stephens—a visit.
I ask myself why I should care. Of course, I have practical reasons to be concerned about IIC. They have a file on me. They know my address. They refer to me as a “person of interest.” Worse, they say I have a “lengthy history.” Does that mean they know I’m a vampire? I don’t know, but I have to find out.
Still, none of this explains my concern about Lisa and Jeff. The truth is, I just like them, and I would hate to see something bad happen to them, especially when I can prevent it. I don’t decide who I care about—I don’t know if anyone does. But I like Lisa and Jeff enough to bump up my visit to meet Marko.
The contract killer lives in Iowa, of all places, in a small town named Fairfield. At least he is centrally located. My source tells me he owns a thousand acres of land outside of town and grows feed corn—for pigs, cows, chickens, not for humans, although people consume it indirectly in the form of corn syrup. He has two residences, one in town, the other out on his land. He sits on the city council and attends church every Sunday. He has a wife and two young children. Talk about a great cover.
I fly to Cedar Rapids. A package is waiting for me at the airport, outside the secure area. In the package is a Glock .45, with two spare clips and a silencer. I’m one of those fortunate billionaires that have set up teams of gofers all over the world, people who are only too happy to deliver to me whatever I want, when I want it.
I rent a car and take a leisurely ninety minutes to reach Fairfield. By now the sun is setting, and I have only to swing by Marko’s farm to know he’s staying there with his family. “Damn,” I swear quietly. I would prefer not to have the wife and kids around—they might cramp my style. But I’m confident I can lure him outside.
For ten minutes, I study the family through an open window. Marko sits with his wife and children, watching a new science fiction TV series. A fire burns under a chestnut mantel and the house smells of roasted turkey and homemade stuffing. There are numerous biblical paintings on the walls. The man himself—who’s known in town as Joe Henderson—is forty-five, thin but wiry. He is six-two, and when he stands to get a cup of coffee for his wife from the kitchen, I notice how fast and smooth his movements are. No doubt he has the reflexes of a cat.
Mrs. Mary Henderson is fifteen years younger, pretty and plump. She wears a tiny gold crucifix, similar to my own, and a cheap store-bought dress that hides her legs. She has a boy and a girl. Both are cute, with red cheeks and bright smiles, and I can tell by their happy faces they don’t have a care in the world.
It’s clear family life suits Mr. Henderson, yet at the same time I note his constant alertness. There’s no question in my mind he was trained by some branch of the military in special ops, and a quick peek inside his mind reveals a cold darkness I have seldom seen in a human being.
But I don’t recoil in disgust. He is a curiosity. On the outside, Mr. Henderson looks like the perfect family man, but if his interior life could be displayed on a poster, it would probably be blank. He’s unlike Danny Boy, the rapist, who took pleasure in taunting his victims. In a sense Marko is a consummate professional—he kills for money, nothing more, and when he’s with his family, he’s able to block his secret life out so well he hardly thinks about it.
He’s like a robot with two sets of hard drives that he uses for memory. Two storage units that seldom connect. The guy would undoubtedly fascinate most psychologists. At some time in the past a switch must have broken inside him and cut him off from his humanity.
He does not appear to mind.
To draw him outside, I use a simple approach. His kids might have better hearing than their father, but it’s Daddy who’s been trained to listen to every tiny noise. Gathering a handful of pebbles, I stand near a window on the other side of the house from the living room and gently toss them at the glass. I throw four stones, each one a minute apart, until I finally hear him rise from his chair.