Hour of the Assassin

by Matthew Quirk

  Jeff listened carefully. “Those are police,” he said. “Stay here. I’ll check. We might have to take him out the back.”

  Jeff walked out, the gun in his hand, and Singh took a dozen steps behind him, looking out the window, trying to see what was going on. A door opened and closed near the front of the house.

  Nick was alone in the center of the room. He inched his free hand forward and pinched the tube feeding him gas.

  He lowered his jaw so the mask no longer fit properly and he could pull in fresh air around its edges. He took in long clean breaths, burning off the haze of drugs.

  In the mirror over the mantel, he could see Singh standing behind him, near the door, peering at the edge of the blinds. Nick recognized him now, one of the attackers from Malcolm Widener’s house.

  As he turned back, Nick let go of the tube. He held his breath against the sedative as Singh approached. Nick remained still, savoring the clearing feeling in his mind, the way his body began to feel once more like part of himself.

  He held his eyes unfocused as Singh loomed over him and moved closer. He could feel his warm breath.

  Still. Wait.

  He kept his body limp, even as the adrenaline primed every muscle to move.

  Hold. Closer.

  Singh held the mask to adjust it, and leaned in to check Nick’s pupils.

  Nick shot his head forward, slamming into the bridge of his nose with a crunch.

  Singh reeled back, stunned, falling along the edge of the table, his hand grabbing desperately and slipping through the pills. He landed on the floor, his head slamming down.

  Nick peeled the tape and monitor off to free his left hand, forcing himself to concentrate, to move his drunken fingers. He stood, legs unsteady but able to walk, and scanned the room for a weapon.

  His cheeks hurt, and he realized he was smiling like a lunatic, pumped up on some artificial joy that was now slowly dissipating. There was fear, but it felt so distant, lost in the exhilaration of drugs or escape. Singh pushed himself up, with one hand held to his face, squinting, disoriented. The scalpel gleamed in his hand, flashed toward Nick. Nick dodged to the right and the blade brushed across his shoulder.

  The man had lunged too far, at the edge of his balance, still dazed from the blow. Nick shoved him to the side, toppling him, then closed in, hand on the table to steady himself. As Singh raised himself off the ground, Nick lifted his right foot and dropped it, slamming his head into the stone floor.

  A hollow concussion filled the room, and Singh flopped down. Only the whites of his eyes showed. He was out, for now.

  The scalpel had snapped against the floor. Nick grabbed the small blade and tried to fit it back onto the handle, but the attachment had broken off. He slipped the razor-sharp bit of metal into his pocket and moved on. He quickly searched the man for a gun or another weapon but found only a set of keys.

  He took his wallet from the table—Jeff had his gun—then heard movement to his right. From the echo, he guessed it was a kitchen, so he cut left, through a dining room and past the back stairs into a mudroom, looking for a weapon as he ran.

  Nick pressed himself against the door frame and scanned the backyard: a long lawn, going up a hill, hemmed in by thick stands of trees on either side.

  He twisted the doorknob, metal creaking slightly against metal, and slipped into the backyard and the morning air. Jeff’s Range Rover was parked in a driveway beside the house. Nick darted left, to the trees closest to him. They would give him some cover. As he entered the shade of the trees, he saw a brick wall topped in sandstone to his left.

  He kept going, away from the house and the sound of sirens. He didn’t want to go to the police, not if he could help it, not with the murder still hanging over him.

  He heard the sound of a door opening and closing. Jeff or his guards were coming for him, searching the yard. He moved as quickly as he could, picking his steps, quiet along the wall. It seemed to belong to the adjacent property, not this one. He looked for a break ahead, hoping that the woods at the top of the hill led to a road or a way out.

  As he neared the top of the hill, he heard footsteps approaching. He stopped short and ducked behind a tree. A long shadow bobbed to his right. It wasn’t coming straight at him. It seemed to be moving along a path that would bring it about six feet to his right, then past him.

  The figure moved closer, rustling through the downed leaves. It didn’t make sense that Jeff or Singh or anyone from the house could have gotten this far this quickly, and he hadn’t heard any sounds of the police coming from this direction.

  Nick’s breathing picked up, sounded like a steam engine to his own ears. Slow. Take it easy. He lifted the keys he had taken from Singh, gripped them in his right hand, the blade of the long key sticking out like an ice pick. That was his best weapon. The piece of scalpel was too small to hold. He got ready to lunge.

  The figure stepped into view.

  It was Ali Waldron. Her hands were empty. No gun. He waited in silence for her to pass, so he could get around her and away without raising an alarm.

  Her head turned his way, and she stepped back with a start. She looked at his face, the fresh cut on his shoulder, her eyes wide with shock. If she let out one cry the pursuers would find him.

  She didn’t make a sound, simply mouthed, “Are you okay?”

  55

  Nick approached her slowly, step by silent step. She didn’t retreat. Didn’t shout.

  She swallowed, pressed her lips together, dry mouthed with fear, of him, certainly, but her head kept turning back toward the house, the men pursuing him. She held her right wrist loosely with her left hand.

  “We have to get out of here,” she whispered.

  Why hadn’t she cried out to Jeff? Did she think she didn’t have time? That Nick would hurt her before people could arrive?

  He looked at the wrist and saw fresh bruises, then faced the house. She couldn’t have come from there. No. She had been back here, watching.

  “You called the police.”

  She nodded.

  Something rustled in the trees between them and the house. He started walking and beckoned her toward the wall. They took cover behind another oak, shoulder to shoulder.

  “My car,” she said, pointing over the lawn. “It’s that way.”

  “You didn’t come with them?”

  “No. On my own. I was just trying to find out what the hell is going on.”

  He peered around and surveyed the property, saw the road in the distance. They couldn’t cross the lawn that way. Jeff would see them. If they wanted to reach that car, they would have to get out of here and work their way back around to it. Nick looked up. The wall was eight feet high. The cover was good here, the trees thick.

  He bent his knees, wondering how much strength the drugs had stolen. The adrenaline still burned in his muscles. He took a long stride toward the wall, jumped and planted the toe of his boot against the brick, kicked up, and caught the stone at the top.

  He hauled himself up to his chest, lying on the wide sandstone cap, staying low, ignoring the pain from the cut.

  Ali looked up at him. She had brought him into this. His instincts told him not to trust her. He couldn’t even be certain it was she who had created the distraction and saved his life.

  “Come on,” she said, and held up her hand. “They can’t find me here.”

  He looked to the woods beyond the fence, then back, and stretched his fingers out toward her.

  She clasped them, and he helped her up. She dragged her shoes down the wall, fighting for traction; gripped the top; and pulled herself up beside him.

  He pointed toward a tangle of brush and leaves on the far side, and she eased herself down and dropped.

  The last thing he saw was Jeff stalking through the trees, gun drawn. Then Nick leaped down behind her.

  “What now?” she asked.

  He scanned the trees and saw a path along a stream ahead. The adrenaline amplified every sense. T
he woods were a Technicolor riot in the morning light.

  He pointed west, toward the stream.

  “Run.”

  56

  They raced through a park that looked like it had once been an estate. The trail wasn’t much more than a thin line of dirt hidden by rotting leaves. As the rush backed off its peak, Nick felt shaky and sick, and fought to focus on each step to keep from stumbling.

  There was a good chance that Jeff would be watching the road that led back to her car. It was the most obvious escape from the house. He would have to come at it from another direction.

  After they had put distance between themselves and the house, Nick looked back, slowing as there was no sign of the pursuers. He slipped off his jacket. The sleeve of his shirt was already torn from the blade. He ripped it off and wrapped it around the wound.

  He eased the jacket back over the injured arm, hissing as the cut burned.

  “Why were you at that house?” he asked her as they walked.

  “I knew something was happening there,” she said, each word deliberate. “I was worried that it would be bad, so I came to check. That’s it. I just don’t want anyone else to get killed.”

  “Like Malcolm Widener?”

  “I didn’t know anything like that was going to happen. I swear.”

  He wanted to interrogate her about who she worked for, about everything she knew, but his priority was getting away.

  He turned, and they worked their way through the woods toward the road where Ali had parked. Branches scratched at their arms, their faces. They had made it far enough through the park that they could come at her car through the woods, not the street.

  He stopped near the edge of the trees.

  “There it is,” she whispered, and pointed to a Toyota Avalon with Virginia plates parked a hundred yards down. She stepped forward.

  “Hold on,” he said, and looked down the street, trying to see if they were waiting, observing her vehicle. “How did you find out something was happening at that house?”

  “From the people I work for.”

  “But no one knows you were there? No one knows you knew about it?”

  “Yes. I was careful. If they found me there . . .” She swallowed. The fear got hold of her. Her eyebrows knit together, and her mouth tightened, the corners drawing down. He watched her, trying to figure out whether this was an act, some kind of elaborate ploy. He needed to go slowly, avoid any traps.

  “Listen,” she said, defensive now, as if she’d picked up on the suspicion in his face. “I was helping them. I was their spy, their actress, whatever they needed. That was my job. And now I just want to find out what I’m in the middle of, what the hell they’re doing, and how I can get out of it. They might kill me because of what I know. I think they were going to do it yesterday, but I managed to convince them I was loyal. Jesus. That woman disappears, and then Widener dies, and then I went to that house and saw whatever the hell they were doing to you. If they find out that I—”

  “Disappeared?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Who disappeared?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  He moved closer, towered over her. “Give me the name.”

  “Emma Blair. They—”

  A black SUV rolled slowly down the street, searching. Nick waved her toward him as he stepped behind a tree for cover. She followed and stood by his side.

  57

  They waited in silence. Nick listened to the truck’s engine, waited for it to stop, for the hunt to begin.

  All the while her words ran through his head. She knew about Emma’s disappearance.

  The sound from the truck grew faint, and he saw it turn a corner at the end of the street. It hadn’t slowed down near Ali’s car. The searchers must not have recognized it. He stepped out and started moving toward the Toyota.

  “Keys,” he said. She didn’t move. “If they come after us, it’s better I’m driving.”

  She handed them over. Nick absorbed every detail of the neighborhood as they approached the car, looking for static surveillance, likely hides, finding nothing.

  He opened the driver’s door and got in. Once Ali was in the passenger seat, he told her to turn off her phone. He pulled a U-turn and brought the car up to thirty miles an hour through the neighborhood, fast but not drawing attention. The car was well used but spotlessly clean inside.

  He worked the mirrors as he drove, looking for any signs of pursuit.

  “Who do you work for?” Nick asked.

  She held the door handle and looked out the window. They’d gotten away, and the panic she’d shown earlier seemed to have subsided. She was calculating now.

  “Is it a man they call Gray? He was driving the Range Rover and had the gun inside that house.”

  “He’s part of it,” she said. “But I don’t work for him.”

  Nick waited, but she didn’t say anything else.

  “Listen,” he said. “I need you to tell me the truth. And I can try to tell you what I know about what’s going on. That’s the only way we’re going to make it out of this.”

  She crossed her arms and looked at him, seemed ready to deal.

  “Do you work for Sam MacDonough?”

  Her head drew back an inch. That got her attention. “What makes you think he has anything to do with this?”

  “I’ve put together some pieces here, Ali Waldron. I probably know some things that you would like to. So?”

  “I work for David Blakely. He’s MacDonough’s patron, his main donor.”

  Nick nodded coolly, his eyes on the road. He had been desperate to find the answers to those questions, but he had to be careful. He still didn’t trust her. Offering him that information would be the perfect bait if she were trying to lure him into something.

  “What happened to Emma Blair?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It sounded like you knew.”

  “I was just supposed to get close to her, to find out what kind of information she had. I would go to the same AA meetings with her. I’d get coffee after. I tried to get her to trust me.”

  “You knew she disappeared.”

  “I swear I had nothing to do with anything like that. I just talked to her, but she never gave me anything. I only found out last night that she was missing. It was after I learned about Widener’s death. I was trying to figure out what kind of trouble I might be in, how deep it went.”

  “Why should I believe a word you say?” he asked. She had sent him to Widener’s house, conspired in a murder, trapped him in this hell.

  “Because I helped you back there. Because I had no choice. I didn’t know what they were going to do to Malcolm Widener.”

  He jerked the car to the right, pulled into a cul-de-sac. His hands clamped on the wheel, and he felt the blood rise in his face. He knew what he looked like, the veins full in his neck, the strength coming out.

  “Did those men hurt Emma Blair?” he asked, taking his time with every word.

  “I told you I don’t know.” She shook her head.

  “Don’t fucking play games with me,” he growled.

  She pressed against the door. “It’s the truth. Who are you really? Why are you in the middle of all this?” He didn’t answer, saw the fear in her. “Why you?” she asked. “They wouldn’t just take anyone and try to make him out as . . .”

  A killer. Let her think it. His friend had just tried to put a bullet in his brain, a violation so grave that he was only beginning to understand that it had really happened, that it wasn’t some drug-fueled delusion. At this point he didn’t know what he was capable of.

  “Are you accusing me of something?” he asked, his voice like steel.

  He heard a car engine coming, throttle open, loud, someone in pursuit.

  “They talked about you. They said you were dangerous.”

  He thought of that man whose head he had cracked into the stone floor.

  “I protect
people. I don’t hurt them. Not until you dragged me into this.”

  The engine thrummed, closer now.

  She glanced back at the road, then to Nick, perhaps measuring whether he was a greater threat than the men on their tail.

  “They could see us here,” she said. “We should go.”

  He didn’t know how much of what she was saying was the truth, how far he could trust her, but for now she was his best chance. He needed what she knew.

  He hit the gas.

  58

  The elevator doors opened with a chime, and Sam MacDonough stepped out onto bare concrete. He turned his head as he walked, surveying the full floor of an office building, now empty, stripped down to the columns and aluminum studs. Footsteps echoed. They were hard to place, and he spun to see David Blakely walking toward him, past a bundle of Ethernet cables hanging from the ceiling.

  “This is yours?” Sam asked.

  “The whole building,” David said.

  Sam pulled the corners of his mouth down, impressed, then walked toward the windows. He was eighty feet over Pennsylvania Avenue, and his eyes swept from the Capitol toward the White House.

  “It’s safe to talk?” Sam asked.

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “Is Nick Averose still an issue?” Sam asked. David had told him it would be resolved by this morning.

  “You don’t want to get too close to the front on this.”

  Sam ran his toe over the floor, grinding the drywall dust under the leather sole of his shoe. “So, no.”

  “We have him covered.”

  “How?”

  “It will be taken care of.”

  Sam laced his fingers together, held them near his waist.

  “This is too much. We can’t announce in the middle of all this.”

  “That’s why we need it gone now. You think this is scrutiny? Wait until you declare.”

  “I’ll be lucky if I stay out of prison. The White House? No. I should withdraw. Let this all die down.”

  “You could,” David said. “But you still need to make this all go away.”