by Tom Grace
Nolan responded to Palmer’s attack with the venerable Winchester. The rifle thundered in his hands as he bracketed a pair of .30-06 rounds at the wall, blindly hoping to find Palmer. Nolan heard a satisfying thump—the dull thud of a body hitting the floor.
“Pull Toccare out of here and see what you can do for him,” Nolan ordered Deena and her father.
He then focused his Winchester on the wall where the shots had come from. Two fist-sized openings marked where Palmer had directed his fire. He hadn’t sprayed them wildly, but in concentrated bursts at two locations. And, both times, Palmer found his target. If not for Signora Toccare’s robust furnishings, Nolan knew he would be in far worse shape.
It’s like he knew exactly where we were, Nolan thought. Like he could see through walls.
Hollywood movies aside, Nolan knew that infrared thermal imaging cameras could not allow a person to see through walls. He also knew that, with some digital interpolation, Wi-Fi could. And if Palmer was as brilliant as Deena said, he probably had already perfected that trick.
Nolan scanned the ceiling of the sitting room and spotted a tiny LED light on the smoke detector. He found another tiny light glowing in a bookcase and recognized the telltale stubby antennae. He took aim with the Winchester and destroyed the master suite’s Wi-Fi hub.
“Toccare is asking for you,” Deena called out from the bedroom, her voice filled with concern.
Keeping low, Nolan scrambled into the next room where Deena was tending to Toccare’s injuries. She had dressed his wounds with whatever she and her father could find in the dark.
“Why you shooting up my nice house?” Toccare rasped.
“Spiders—I hate ‘em.”
Toccare half coughed, half laughed. “Yeah, me, too. I told Jamison about what we discussed—about taking care of my grandson and the other kids. I’m a man of my word.”
Nolan grasped Toccare’s hand. “I am, too.”
“Did you get him?”
Before Nolan could respond, he heard something land on the sitting room floor. He kicked the door shut just as another stun grenade exploded, protecting them from the weapon’s disorienting effects. Even shielded by the door, the sound was deafening and the bright flash in the crack under the door left an after image on their eyes.
“I guess not,” Nolan replied.
“Get going,” Toccare urged. “The stairs to the pool are back there.”
“What about you?”
“Fuck, I’m done. I’ll shoot him if I can. Maybe buy you some time,” Toccare said. “Protect them. Kill Palmer. Help my grandson.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Nolan promised.
“Can’t say I’ll wait. Now go.”
Nolan racked another round in the shotgun and placed it in Toccare’s hands. If nothing else, the man intended to go down swinging.
SIXTY-NINE
Nolan led the way through the interior of the master suite. He entered each room first and disabled any Wi-Fi routers or bridges that he found. If he was right, the move would blind Palmer and level the playing field.
They descended the spiral staircase into the long, linear room built around a twenty-five-meter lap pool. The structure extended out into the grassy dunes like a pier. Its gabled roof was dotted with skylights, and the walls were a formal colonnade enclosed with French doors. Though still overcast, the cloud cover had thinned slightly and the moon’s reflected light now brightened a slightly larger area of the night sky.
They heard the roar of a shotgun blast followed by the staccato bark of Palmer’s Beretta. Toccare’s death was now a certainty.
The pale diffuse light outside was not strong enough to cast shadows, but with it Nolan could discern shape and movement. And outside the pool house he saw two forms moving around the building. In leapfrog fashion, they tested each of the poolside doors, looking for an entry.
“Any chance Palmer brought some friends along to help him?” Nolan asked Deena.
“I can’t imagine Byron trusting anyone with something so personal.”
“Well, if they’re Toccare’s—any enemy of my enemy is a friend.”
The pair outside rounded the far end of the pool house, continuing their search on the patio side and moving toward the main house. Nolan guided Deena and her father past a sauna and changing rooms, stopping them in a windowless corridor as he proceeded toward the main house. From an archway, he scanned the room and located a Wi-Fi device on the far side in a bookcase—the home’s designers were thankfully consistent in their placement.
The squeak of an upstairs floorboard told Nolan that Palmer’s progress through the master suite had slowed.
Blind man’s bluff, Lord Byron, Nolan thought. Blind man’s bluff.
“Those steps are getting closer,” Jamison whispered.
The sound of the careful, methodical testing of the lever handles on each pair of French doors, though faint, grew noticeably louder. Nolan concealed himself behind the archway with a view of the nearest patio side window in the next room.
A dark form passed in front of the window. Two hands pressed upward against the bottom sash. It did not move and barely rattled against the frame. A face neared the glass—an Asian man peering into the room. A second face appeared, one that Nolan recognized. He slipped out from behind the arch. Roxanne caught the movement, then smiled with relief. Nolan pointed to the last of the pool house French doors. Roxanne nodded and moved to meet him there.
“Palmer is upstairs,” Nolan whispered as he quietly opened the door.
Roxanne slipped in silently and threw her arms around his neck.
“You look terrible,” she said. “You’re bleeding.”
“What else is new?” he responded. He then looked at her companion who had slipped in beside her and his eyes widened. “Peng?”
Peng smiled and gave a slight nod. Nolan offered his hand, which Peng then took warmly.
“Good to see you, my friend,” Nolan said. “Palmer’s right behind us, but you two have given me an idea. Open that door.”
Roxanne quietly opened a cedar door fitted with a narrow window. Nolan handed his rifle to Peng, took Deena and Jamison by the arm, and led them into the sauna. It was dark as a tomb.
“Either of you know how to shoot a pistol?” he asked.
“After Byron—,” Deena said, “Yes, I can.”
Nolan handed her the pistol Toccare had given him.
“This is just in case. You two stay in here and be quiet. Palmer is looking for two men and a woman, and that’s what my friends and I are going to give him. But now it’s three-on-one.”
Deena hugged Nolan and kissed his cheek. “Good luck.”
He returned the embrace, then backed out of the sauna and closed the door.
After killing Toccare, Palmer carefully searched the master bedroom suite. His chest ached, and with each breath he felt more certain at least two of his ribs were broken. Kilkenny had been incredibly lucky to blindly land two shots on Palmer’s torso. In honesty, he had to concede his own debt to luck as well. Kilkenny’s shots lost some of their force passing through the interior wall, with the rest dissipating into the woven fibers of Palmer’s bullet resistant vest. The absence of either would have certainly proved fatal.
The loss of the Wi-Fi signal within the master suite was also problematic. His equipment leveraged the Doppler effect—a phenomenon in which a moving object changes the frequency of radio waves reflecting off it. In a house bathed in Wi-Fi signals, he could see through walls and detect motion as subtle as the rise and fall of someone breathing. Without Wi-Fi, he was limited to only what his eyes could see.
Toccare’s master suite was larger than most modest homes. Palmer felt certain that a man as paranoid as Toccare would have a panic room. That he had led the others here indicated that such a safe haven must be close. Yet he found no concealed doors, no sign that anything was disturbed in a rush to hide. The closet serving the needs of Toccare’s better half could have doubled as a bouti
que in both floor space and inventory. The array of shoes would have made Imelda Marcos green with envy.
Palmer looked down on Toccare’s lifeless form. He did not regret killing the man—he doubted Toccare would have revealed anything to him. He would have to ask Deena about her connection to the late mobster.
A door slammed. Palmer’s head snapped toward the sound. He stepped over Toccare and moved past the closet and bathroom toward a pair of French doors that opened onto a wrought iron balcony overlooking an indoor pool. He opened the doors and stepped onto the balcony.
Below, he saw one of the many pairs of doors that surrounded the pool had been opened—it was a single leaf that had slammed closed. And from the balcony he saw a spiral staircase. Palmer raced down to the pool level, Beretta in one hand and contractor’s bag in the other, before caution prevailed.
This could be a trap.
From the bottom tread, Palmer surveyed the interior of the pool house. He saw no one. Instead of approaching the open door, he moved to the patio side of the lap pool. He briefly considered that Kilkenny might be in the pool, waiting to ambush him, but a quick glance down into the water eliminated that possibility.
Through the door he saw the natural forms of the dunes in the green light of night vision, but no one fleeing the house. It was the blind spot beside that first door that troubled him—a place from which he could be shot at point blank range. Then he recalled that, like his van, the glazing in Toccare’s home was bullet resistant. If he went around the pool and approached from the opposite side, he could pull the closed leaf in as a shield and fire around it.
You’re overthinking this, Palmer chided himself.
He set his case down at the opening of a hallway that led back into the main house and pulled out a stun grenade. He yanked the pin and lobbed it through the open leaf of the French door, and then sought cover in the hallway. The weapon exploded with a satisfying whump.
As he began to move toward the door, he saw a flicker in the upper corner of his night vision display. The radiating arc logo for Wi-Fi signal reception appeared first as a dot, then arcs of increasing strength. Palmer reflexively turned his head toward the contractor’s bag and saw, through the walls, three forms running across a large room. They passed through a doorway and disappeared. Palmer picked up his bag and headed back into the main house.
“Shouldn’t we get the boy?” Roxanne asked as they raced through the foyer.
Nolan glanced at Palmer’s van stuck in the doorway and shook his head.
“I don’t think Palmer wants to kill him and the van’s not on fire. That thing’s an armored truck, so he’s safe for now.”
They passed the library, dining room, and butler’s pantry before finally reaching the kitchen. Nolan moved to the center of the room to get a sense of the space. He quickly found both the Wi-Fi router and the cooler. He then motioned for Peng and Tao to draw close.
“I think he’s using the Wi-Fi to see us,” Kilkenny explained.
Roxanne arched an eyebrow at him but offered no rebuttal.
“I’ve killed it elsewhere, but I’ve left enough on to lead him here. I want you two in the cooler—that’ll protect you from the flashbang.”
“Flash-bang?” Peng asked.
“Stun grenade—Palmer seems to have a thing for them. When he opens the door, let him have it.”
“What about you?” Roxanne asked.
“I’ll already be dead.”
SEVENTY
Palmer moved carefully back into the main house, verifying each room was empty before moving on to the next. In the foyer, he found his van still locked and the boy just as he had left him—buckled into the passenger seat and chemically restrained. He passed the library, where his search had begun, and the service stair that led to the upper floor.
He heard a loud crash, the hollow sound of metal pans and utensils falling to the floor. Palmer stepped into the formal dining room and, from there, saw through the walls into the kitchen. He saw two forms, a man and a woman, carrying a third between them. The injured one was having difficulty supporting itself.
Perhaps I hit Kilkenny, Palmer mused hopefully.
The injured one pointed across the kitchen and the other two went in that direction. The pair moved behind something opaque and disappeared from view. The remaining form reached up for something, then the Wi-Fi image disappeared, the signal lost. Palmer then heard another loud crash and the ringing of a metal bowl spinning slowly to a stop.
Palmer stripped off his night vision goggles and allowed his eyes to adjust to the moonlight. He reached into his bag and pulled out a stun grenade. He moved silently through the short hall that led to the kitchen, pausing for a moment in the butler’s pantry. On a silent count of three, he pulled the pin, spun around the archway, and lobbed the grenade into the kitchen. It landed near the room’s center.
He spun back into the butler’s pantry and braced for the explosion. The grenade detonated and a concussive ba-boom echoed off all of the hard, acoustically reflective surfaces. Palmer heard the sound through his hands, felt it vibrate in his skull. It shook his chest, sending waves of pain through his damaged ribs. He lost his breath, as if struck in the solar plexus. Even though he stood outside of the kitchen, it took a moment for Palmer to recover.
Cradling the Beretta submachine gun with both hands, Palmer entered the kitchen. In the smoky haze, he saw no one. Metal pans and bowls littered the floor along with a variety of spoons, ladles, and other implements. And blood.
What started as small drops of black on the gray rubber floor quickly trailed into pools and rivulets. He now had no doubt that Kilkenny had been wounded when they traded gunfire in the master suite—and something must have burst. Palmer followed the blood and found Kilkenny’s body face down on the floor as if he had been dropped. One arm was bent underneath his torso, the other outstretched and twisted with the hand near the broken plastic shell of a Wi-Fi router.
Blood stained the left shoulder of Kilkenny’s shirt, and the pool beneath his body spread from his waist out beyond his head. Palmer had no doubt the man was dead—no one could survive losing that much blood. Kilkenny was a formidable adversary, Palmer had to admit. A man of above-average intelligence, but only slightly so when measured on the Palmer scale. The only question that remained was where, in the desperation of his final moments, had Kilkenny secreted Deena and her father?
Palmer smiled and followed Kilkenny’s blood trail to a commercial walk-in cooler. The stainless steel construction of the cooler coupled with the absurdity of a Wi-Fi antenna being housed inside made it an ideal place to hide. He paused to consider what might await him inside.
Toccare’s shotgun was still in the master bedroom suite, and he had no indication that Deena or her father were armed. But where was Kilkenny’s weapon?
He dropped down on his knees and peered under the stainless steel tables. He saw several rounds of ammunition scattered on the floor, but no sign of Kilkenny’s rifle. Palmer concluded that Deena and her father were armed and would most certainly shoot at anyone who opened the cooler door.
Palmer returned to the dining room and retrieved his last stun grenade. He would use the bulk of the cooler door as a shield and simply drop the grenade over the top when it was barely open a crack. He considered what effect such a weapon would have in an enclosed space and decided the honorable thing to do would be to offer an opportunity to surrender. After all, rendering his soulmate totally deaf would be an inauspicious way to commence their future life together.
Navigating back through the kitchen aisles, he walked past Kilkenny’s body and stopped at the hinge side of the cooler door. He considered what he would say, then took hold of the door handle and opened it ajar.
“Deena, my darling, I’ve—”
Peng drove the cooler door open with a vicious heel kick followed by the full force of his body. Stunned, Palmer staggered back trying to regain his balance, arms waving wildly in the air. The stun grenade flew from his hand
s, bounced off a countertop onto the floor and skittered harmlessly under a cart. Then something grabbed Palmer by the arm and shoulder and spun him around. His hips hit the front edge of a commercial cooktop and he folded over.
Palmer felt his arm twist behind him, the back of his hand so close to his neck that his shoulder popped. His chest, with the Beretta strapped across it, slammed into the raised grating. It felt like a dozen dull knives, and the air left his lungs in a painful burst. Palmer’s face then connected with the metal grating, and his forehead rang against the stainless steel backsplash. His nose passed through the open space above a burner, but his eye and cheek caught the cantilevered end of the black steel grate.
The arm driving Palmer’s torso down onto the cooktop pressed into his back, a bony elbow sharp against his kidney. The hand on his right shoulder pinned him in place. The sudden impact and the weight pressing down on Palmer snapped his fractured ribs. The jagged bones bowed in toward vital organs and structures they evolved to protect, tearing into his heart and lungs. Palmer shuddered, the damage and pain overwhelming his ability to think.
Kilkenny leaned close to Palmer’s ear.
“The lady speaks for herself.”
SEVENTY-ONE
Nolan felt Palmer’s body go lax. The man was barely breathing. Roxanne and Peng emerged from the cooler with weapons drawn and moved quickly to assist him. He eased the pressure used to restrain Palmer, drawing the man’s arms down to join both wrists behind the lower back. Palmer offered no resistance, the muscles of his limbs went completely slack.