Final Sins

by Michael Prescott

  She was in luck. The window opened easily. She slipped through, into the dark rear hall.

  The motion detector would pick her up as soon as she moved away from the window. Unlike the front door, there would be no time delay; the alarm would sound instantly.

  She shut the window so the noise would be contained within the cottage. The other windows, she’d noted, were already closed, and the air-conditioning was on. Since no one was in the main house, and the neighbors weren’t close, there was a good chance no one would hear the alarm. Having cut the communications wires, she could be sure the signal wouldn’t be transmitted to the alarm monitoring station.

  She took off down the hall at a sprint. At once the cottage was filled with a high-pitched keening and an amplified electronic voice that repeated, “Intruder alert, intruder alert ...”

  The distance to the control panel in the foyer was short. She made it there in less than five seconds and tapped in the four-digit code.

  Silence fell.

  She peered out the front window, checking for any indication of activity in the main house. There was none.

  It looked like she’d gotten away with it. Before she left, she would reattach the wires in the security box, leaving no sign of any damage. She would reset the alarm and exit via the front door during the time delay.

  But first she had work to do. Last night she’d seen no eavesdropping gear. If he had some, it had to be hidden. She looked through the living room and kitchen, finding nothing.

  She retreated to the rear of the cottage and stepped into the bedroom. It was dark. Her hand found a light switch on the wall by the doorway, but she chose not to turn it on. As she recalled, there was an overhead light, and she was pretty sure it was controlled by the switch. She didn’t want a bright light coming on and perhaps attracting attention.

  Instead she made her way to the bed and switched on the bedside lamp on the nightstand. The three-way bulb glowed feebly at its lowest setting. It was the only light in the rear of the house, but it was enough.

  She scanned the room, noted a TV set opposite the bed. A smallish, older model. It looked incongruous in a guesthouse with a forty-inch high-definition TV in the living room. Although the cottage had come furnished, Brody might have brought this TV with him.

  More interesting was the absence of a cable or satellite box. A power cord trailed from the rear of the TV, out of sight behind a bookcase. She tugged gently on it and felt resistance. The cord was plugged in. But when she switched on the set, nothing happened.

  She rapped the side of the TV. It made a hollow sound.

  In less than a minute she found the concealed hinges that allowed the front of the console to swing open. The set had been gutted, its circuitry and other electronic parts removed, leaving a sizable cavity. In this hiding space were three black boxes, neatly stacked. The bottom box was featureless. The box in the middle had a large monitor, currently dark, and a few buttons and slots; it looked something like an old DOS computer. The third box was slimmer and more stylish, resembling a DVD player. Next to this setup were two cordless phones, antennae extended, and a laptop computer, hooked to a port in the rear of the stack. Multiple cords ran from the devices, all plugged into a power strip. It was the power strip’s cord that had been fed out the back of the TV to the wall socket.

  She knew what she was looking at, of course. It was an IMSI catcher. Specifically, a Rohde & Schwarz model, which had once been offered for sale on the open market but had been withdrawn after concerns about privacy violations. The item still turned up on the black market, but it wasn’t cheap. It probably retailed for a cool two hundred thousand. A lot of money for an ex-Special Forces guy to shell out on a piece of hardware.

  On the closed lid of the laptop lay a spiral notebook. She flipped through it. Most of the pages were blank, but the first few sheets recorded Faust’s movements in minute detail. Everything was there, up to Faust’s no-show at the art gallery last night, and his scheduled appearance at the bookstore right now.

  The phone in her purse rang.

  She wanted to ignore it. Let her voice mail get it.

  But inside the hollowed-out TV, the IMSI catcher was registering activity on its monitor. It had picked up the call.

  That was odd. Brody would have programmed the machine to intercept only the calls he wanted to catch—those made by Faust and Elise.

  She set down her purse and took out the phone. Caller ID displayed Elise’s number. Abby answered. “Yes?”

  “Abby? It’s Elise.”

  “I’m kind of busy here.”

  “I realize that. I just thought you should know—I’m at the book signing with Peter ...”

  “Right. And?”

  “My stalker—he hasn’t shown.”

  “He’s not there?” She checked the time. It was after eight o’clock. “You sure? He may have hidden himself in the crowd.”

  “There aren’t that many people.”

  “Faust sent you the text message, didn’t he?” Abby asked, knowing the question was pointless, because she had seen the bookshop event listed in Brody’s notebook.

  “Yes. I sent back a reply, said I’d meet him here.”

  It didn’t make sense, and Abby was suddenly very worried. “Okay, thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Maybe you scared him off.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  She hadn’t, though. Brody was not a man to be easily scared.

  Abby closed the phone and bent forward, reaching for her purse on the floor—then stopped.

  She had once seen a professional skeptic on TV arguing that nobody actually could sense being watched. This was only an old wives’ tale, the skeptic had maintained. Abby had known he was wrong. She’d often had an awareness of someone else’s gaze—someone staring at her from behind, or through a window. Her subliminal perception of such things was nearly always accurate. It could not be coincidence, as the skeptic had claimed.

  She had another proof of this now. Even before she straightened up, even before she turned to face the bedroom doorway, she felt his gaze on her. She knew he was there.

  When she pivoted slowly and saw Brody with the Beretta Mini Cougar in his hand, she wasn’t the least bit surprised.

  21

  “Hands up, Abby,” Brody said quietly. “Up high. There you go. That’s a good girl.”

  She stood with arms lifted, watching him. She was in a tight spot, no doubt about it, but the situation wasn’t entirely hopeless. There might be an opening. He had already broken the first rule of gun violence: He had hesitated to shoot.

  “I see you found my equipment.” He nodded toward the TV. “Took you long enough.”

  “You don’t seem surprised to find me snooping in your house.”

  “Why should I be? You left the window unlocked, disconnected the comm link for the security system. And of course you know the alarm code. I made sure to give you a good look at it last night.”

  “You wanted me to break in?”

  “Hell, I even arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Hunter in the main house to be out tonight. Told them I’d lucked into a couple of theater tickets I couldn’t use. They’re enjoying a road-show production of Les Mis right now.”

  “You went to a lot of trouble to get me here. Might’ve been easier just to invite me to look around.”

  “That’s not how the game is played. Besides, it’s not that I wanted you pawing through my stuff. I just wanted you here. Alone.”

  “I was here last night.”

  “Yeah, but you played a good hand. That crap you pulled at the restaurant, making sure the maître d’ would remember you. That was clever. You saved your life by doing that.” The gun steadied, aiming at her heart. “But it was only a stay of execution.”

  “At least,” Abby said softly, “you got a pretty good roll in the hay out of it.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve had better.”

  “Nice.”

  “Just telling it like it is. Besides, I would’ve
gotten a turn in the sack anyhow. Only instead of smoking a cigarette afterward, I would’ve smoked you.”

  He flashed his crooked smile. She wondered how she could ever have seen anything appealing in it.

  “I could have drugged you last night,” she said. “Knocked you out.”

  “You could’ve tried. But it wouldn’t have worked. I popped a flumazenil while I was on my way home from the restaurant. You know about flumazenil, right?”

  “Benzodiazepine antagonist. Counteracts the sedating effects of—” She stopped, not wanting to say too much.

  “Of Rohypnol,” he finished for her. “That’s right. I dosed myself with five milligrams and was prepared to take more if I felt drowsy.”

  “Countermeasures and everything.” Her throat was dry, and her upraised arms were starting to ache. “But how’d you know I might try using Rohypnol in the first place?”

  “It’s what Abby Sinclair always uses.”

  She needed a moment to register the significance of this statement.

  He knew her name, her real name.

  “Yeah,” he said, reading her reaction. “I’m surprisingly well-informed. Now you’re going to take these.”

  In his left hand he held up a pair of flex handcuffs, plastic restraints sometimes used in lieu of the more traditional steel cuffs. Once they were put on, they could be removed only if they were cut off. Twisting your hands was useless; it only made the plastic loop cinch tighter.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  He shook his head slowly, an adult amused by a child’s bravado. “Oh, yes, you are, Abby. And I’m going to have fun watching you do it.”

  “Are you?”

  “Enjoy the moment; that’s my philosophy.”

  “I thought you weren’t philosophical.”

  “That’s one of several things I lied about.” He took a step forward, out of the doorway. “Extend your hands.”

  She didn’t move. “If you’re going to shoot me, you may as well do it now.”

  “Who said anything about shooting? I’m just going to have you secure your wrists. Then we’ll have a long talk. Not about movies this time. This is real life.”

  “I don’t think I like you quite as much as I thought I did.”

  “Funny. I don’t think I give a shit. Put out your hands.”

  A dozen self-defense scenarios flashed through her mind. She was trained in Krav Maga, the Israeli street-fighting technique. She had dropped bigger guys than Brody. But none of those guys had been pointing a loaded semiautomatic at her chest. And none of them had been trained as a Special Forces operative. Whatever moves she knew, Brody could anticipate them.

  “Do it,” he said, his voice harder.

  Her one hope was that he was making her cuff herself. That meant she would have to keep her hands in front of her, not behind her back. She would still have some limited options.

  Her purse was on the floor where she’d set it down. Her purse, with the gun inside.

  She accepted the cuffs. They were a single plastic strip, like a cable tie, twenty-two inches long. She inserted the pointed end of the tie into the locking mechanism and wound the loop loosely around her wrists. “How am I supposed to tighten them?”

  “With your teeth.”

  “Not very ladylike.”

  The Beretta remained steady in his hand. “Just do it.”

  She snagged the end of the loop in her teeth and drew it through the ratchets until it was tight enough to almost cut off the circulation in her wrists.

  “Good job,” Brody said.

  He was too much in control. She wanted to knock him back on his heels, at least a little. “Don’t you want to know why I didn’t drug you?” she asked.

  “The answer’s pretty obvious.” He chuckled. “You were warm for my form.”

  What stung was that this was basically true. “Someone thinks highly of himself, doesn’t he? I had a better reason than that.”

  “Such as?”

  “If you were out cold, you wouldn’t have been talking. And you were telling me too much to let that happen.”

  “I didn’t tell you a fucking thing.”

  “Iraq? The Green Berets? That was some quality background info. It checked out, too. I tracked down the news reports on that Karbala Gap shoot-out.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I also found your home address.”

  “No, you didn’t. The address on my driver’s license is out-of-date. My current address is unlisted.”

  “Even unlisted addresses are available, if you know where to look. I found your sweet little ranch house in Van Nuys.”

  He glanced sharply at her. She nodded.

  “That’s right, Brody. I paid a visit to your wife.”

  He stood very still for a moment. Then savagely he shoved her backward onto the bed.

  “What the fuck did you say to her?”

  She twisted herself to a sitting position, her bound wrists in her lap, and regarded him coolly. “I guess that’s one of those things you’ll have to get me to talk about.”

  “I will. I guarantee it. You’re going to tell me everything you said to my wife, and everything you’ve learned about me.”

  “And when I’ve given you all the details, I suppose you’ll let me go.”

  He expelled a slow breath. “When you’ve given me all the details, I’ll kill you.”

  “You’re not giving me much incentive to cooperate.”

  “It’s not a question of cooperation. I know how to get information out of people.”

  “Torture? Is that what’s on the menu?” She got no answer. “So what are you, Brody? A psychopath?”

  “A professional.”

  “Professional what? Bounty hunter, kidnapper, assassin?”

  “A little of all three, I guess.”

  “You must have one hell of a resume.”

  “You want more background info? What the hell, it just might loosen your tongue.”

  He stepped away from her, toward the doorway. The gun never wavered.

  “Things shook out in Iraq just the way I said. I quit the service, but hung on in Baghdad. It’s where a lot of ex-military types were hanging out. We’d get together at the local watering holes, and we’d trade bullshit and lies. One day somebody approached me for a serious conversation. He made me an offer. I could get back in the field, this time with no supervision and no chain of command to worry about. And no Geneva Convention, either.”

  She pulled herself to a sitting position on the bed, resting against the headboard. “Pretty attractive opportunity.”

  “Sure was. I organized a team, and we gathered intel about subversives—some of the old Fedayeen militiamen or the newer foreign recruits. Everybody was informing on everybody else. Brother against brother, father against son. We’d get a hot tip on where some of the bastards might be holed up, and we’d go round them up. Garbage collecting, we called it.”

  “You ran snatch-and-grab missions.”

  “Good for you. You know the lingo. Yeah, we’d roll out to some walled compound, kick doors, take names.”

  The bedside lamp was directly beside her. On the margin of her field of vision she saw the electrical cord slinking behind the nightstand.

  “That explains bounty hunter and kidnapper. How about assassin?”

  “We didn’t always take them alive. Even when we did ... sometimes they had a way of expiring after they’d been in our custody for a while.”

  “Which is where the torture comes in.”

  “We preferred to call it harsh interrogation.”

  “You were Special Forces. You weren’t trained to lower yourself to the terrorists’ level. You’re better than that.”

  “Maybe I used to be. But now ... well, I am what I am. And I never lost any sleep over it. I’m a realist, remember?”

  The cord was bunched up on the floor in the narrow space between the bed and the night table. “So why aren’t you still over there?”

&n
bsp; “Things got a little too hot. The Iraqis started thinking they didn’t need us to solve their problems for them. They started threatening us with arrest. If we’d gone to prison we would’ve ended up in a cell with some of the same guys I’d been hunting. I don’t think we would’ve lasted very long. We had to get out.”

  “And now you’re here, intercepting Peter Faust’s phone calls.” Casually she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and leaned forward. “How’d you manage that career transition?”

  “That’s not important. It’s a whole other thing. What matters is that you understand who you’re dealing with. I’ve broken men who were willing to strap bombs around their waists for the sake of their cause. Men who didn’t fear death—or pain. I want you to think about that. I want you to ask yourself how long you’re going to hold out, if those men couldn’t.”

  “You know, as second dates go, this one kind of sucks.”

  “You had a good time last night, though, didn’t you? I could tell you were into me. It made it so goddamned simple to manipulate you.”

  She eased her foot over the electrical cord, snagging it. “It’s not nice to gloat.”

  “I’m just surprised you made it so easy. I was led to believe you’d pose more of a challenge.”

  She pulled the cord toward her, slowly taking out the slack. “Who gave you that idea?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not important. We’ve spent enough time on preliminaries.”

  The cord was stretched taut now. “Someone told you my real name. And briefed you on the Rohypnol, among other things. Who was it?”

  “I’m the one asking questions tonight. And I guarantee I’ll get answers.”

  “Right. Because you’re a professional. But you forgot one thing, Mark.” She tensed her body. “I’m a pro, too.”

  She yanked out the lamp cord with her foot.

  The room went dark.

  Brody fired.

  She had expected him to be quick, but the speed of his reaction still took her by surprise. He snapped off a round less than a second after the light went out. But he aimed at the spot where she’d been seated, and she’d already thrown herself to the foot of the bed. A kick of her legs propelled her onto the floor. She landed hard, slamming into the carpet. Probably she made a thud, but she couldn’t hear it and knew he couldn’t, either. The gunshot had left both of them with ears ringing.