The Blonde

by Duane Swierczynski

  He placed the bag on the floor of the backseat, propping it up on one side with a box of Kleenex and on the other with a hard-back copy of a fitness book called The Lean Body Promise. Weight loss wasn’t going to be a concern for Ed anymore. He’d already lost about six pounds today.

  Ah fuck it. Katie would have laughed.

  After double-checking his exit route on the Tribeca’s GPS system, he opened the garage doors and drove down the driveway to the street. He pulled Ed’s cell phone out of his pocket—he’d found it in Ed’s bag. Then he dialed the Hunter’s home number, helpfully written in pen on the kitchen wall phone. The home line was wired to his jerry-rigged gas-main detonator. Simplest thing in the world. One phone call, one massive basement explosion.

  Kowalski pressed the Send button, appreciated the white-hot blast that blew out the first-floor windows and sent a booming echo rolling through the neighborhood.

  Then he saw Claudia Hunter dive through a second-floor window, tuck and roll down the grassy hill on the side of the house, struggle to her feet, then take off behind her neighbor’s house. She was gone before all of the beads of glass showered the lawn below.

  Holy crap.

  That was impressive.

  Kowalski knew he’d gone easy when he was strangling her with the dental floss. But her pulse had been shallow; she’d been checking out. Apparently, she had other plans.

  Kowalski popped out of the car, thought about it, then grabbed the Adidas bag from the backseat. No telling how long it would take him to run Claudia down. He wasn’t about to leave his objective behind to be recovered by some dumb car thief.

  Up the driveway, behind the house, down the hill, Ed’s head bounced around in the bag.

  Hey, buddy. It’s your wife.

  Claudia was a fast runner, even in bare feet and a summer nightie.

  After a few backyards, Kowalski paused to stash the bag in a child’s tree house. The structure was fairly complex, with two separate entrances and stained, smooth pieces that were too perfect to have been assembled by hand. The bag was slowing him down, and he didn’t want to damage the contents too much. Or leave it back in the car, where a curious cop might spot it.

  Kowalski checked the ground for a weapon, saw what he wanted, picked it up, and raced after Claudia.

  Goddamn she was fast.

  12:46 a.m.

  Sheraton, Room 702

  So if I walk across the room, and you stay here on this couch, you’ll die.”

  “In about ten seconds. Give or take a second.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’d say try it, but I’d rather you not. It really hurts.”

  “Why is it ten feet? I mean, why not nine, or eleven? Is it ten feet exactly?”

  “You know, it’s a bit hard to make careful scientific measurements when it feels like your brain is going to explode inside of your skull. But based on available evidence, I’d say yeah, this microscopic noose around my neck stretches to damn near exactly ten feet.”

  Jack considered this.

  “Hang on. You obviously don’t work in a lab all by yourself. Can’t your colleagues help you out? Fix this fatal error in the program ? I don’t know ... give you a blood transfusion?”

  “They’re all dead. It’s why I left Ireland.”

  Kelly looked at him, her eyes pleading with him to shut the fuck up and listen. Saying, This is going to be a difficult speech, so I’d prefer it if you stopped asking questions and let me tell it my own way.

  At least that’s what Jack read her in eyes. He was familiar with that look. Theresa had mastered it long ago.

  “I’ve always known that my line of work is dangerously competitive,” she said. “We’re not officially part of the government, but we’re not independent, either. We sign confidentiality agreements like you wouldn’t believe. And we’re required to attend exhaustive seminars on lab security. But all of that doesn’t mean fuck on a bike when five thugs with Kevlar suits and Rambo knives storm into your lab one morning and start slitting your coworkers’ throats.

  “These guys, whoever the fuck they were, wanted the Mary Kates, and all of our project research. They left two of us alive to gather it up—yours truly and my boss. He managed to trigger a self-destruct sequence on our servers, but they got wise to it, stopped it, and they cut off a hand for being uncooperative. I’m not sure if he’s alive or dead.”

  “And you?”

  “I jumped through a window and ran.”

  “Then how—”

  “How did I get the Mary Kates in my blood? Lab accident. The time we were ambushed, each of us already had a fair amount of the little buggers in our systems. It’s one of the things we were, um, trying to perfect.”

  “So the fatal error was introduced, and the satellite was still fixed on you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you haven’t been alone since then?”

  “Grand, isn’t it?”

  She rested her hand on his forearm. Her skin was soft and warm.

  “Let me get this out before we go any further: You don’t have to believe me. In fact, I think you’d be crazy if you did. There’s a box full of printouts and a USB memory stick full of research that will corroborate my story. It’s in San Diego, in case anything happens to me.”

  She paused. “Are you listening?”

  Jack had been staring down, processing it all. “I am.”

  “Thank God. I’d hate to think you were zoning out while I was telling you vital information that might be useful in the event of my premature death.”

  “I was just—”

  “Never mind. If I buy the dirt farm, go to the Westin Horton Plaza, downtown near the Gaslamp Quarter. At the front desk, ask for a package for Mary Kate.”

  “Should I write this down?”

  “No way, boyo. Memorize it.”

  Jack scratched down the initials anyway: MK, WHP, SD.

  “Okay, I got it. Mary Kate, Westin Horton Plaza, San Diego. But wait.... Can’t you try to locate your boss? Isn’t there a chance he’s alive?”

  “Even if he were, that would be difficult. I don’t know his name. He referred to himself as ‘the Operator,’ and nothing more. He was obsessed with security. But now all that’s fucked, isn’t it?”

  12:51 a.m.

  Behind the Edison Avenue House

  There she was. Running along the banks of a rock-strewn creek that flowed behind the properties. You got yourself a smart woman, Ed. Instead of racing out into an empty street, where she could be easily picked off, she decided to follow a central path away from the danger, most likely planning to emerge when the danger had passed.

  Sorry, Mrs. Hunter, Kowalski thought. This danger has a job to finish.

  Pumping hard, Kowalski closed the distance. His fingertips caressed the smooth stone he had picked up back at the tree house. Dense little sucker.

  “Claudia!”

  Always better to use the first name. Increases the likelihood that someone will respond to you.

  She didn’t turn, but she slowed for a second, and in that instant a tiny bit of hope seemed to drain from her body. That was all Kowalski needed. He hurled the stone at her head; direct strike. Claudia’s knee buckled and she tripped forward into the creek.

  Kowalski didn’t slow down. He needed to confirm death—failing that, induce death—then recover the head and get the hell out of there. Behind him, in what was not quite the distance, the Hunter home burned like a three-story stone bonfire.

  Claudia still had a little fight left in her. She was lying faceup in the shallow creek, despite the fact that Kowalski had seen her fall face-first. She’d had enough energy left to flip over. He admired that. Face your attacker, rather than hide from the inevitable. Kowalski could imagine her calling up her last reserves of strength just so she could spit on him as he approached.

  He felt for a pulse; it was fading rapidly. She was on her way out.

  He thought about leaving her as is. Investigators co
uld surmise that she’d fallen and banged her head while fleeing from a burning house....

  Okay, yeah, that was crap. Her neck needed to be professionally snapped.

  Before he did that, though, Kowalski surprised himself by thinking about leaning over and kissing her forehead.

  He didn’t of course.

  Instead, he placed his left palm on her chin, and his right hand around the back of her neck. Then twisted ...

  Why would he think things like that?

  ... hard.

  Now, back to the tree house. Back to Ed’s head. Back to his handler, back to his mission of vengeance before wrestling with the inevitable, crippling grief of losing Katie and their baby....

  Kowalski reached up again, felt around. Got a splinter, but nothing else.

  The gym bag?

  Gone.

  12:52 a.m.

  Sheraton, Room 702

  Will you stop?” As she spoke, Kelly had kept inching closer to him, and Jack tried to keep some personal space. It was starting to freak him out.

  “What?”

  “Look, I swear I won’t walk away. You sit on your end of the couch, and I’ll sit on mine. I’ve had a long fucking day, and it’s only getting longer. I need to process this stuff.”

  “Then go, Jack, go. Process away.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. She seemed upset.

  Great. He was feeling guilty about a woman who had tried to kill him. No, even better—was still in the process of killing him. The poison was still running through his veins.

  Kelly opened her eyes. “Look, forget everything I told you. You can believe me; you can think I’m crazy. You can write a story about this, or you can go off and never think about this again. I ask one thing of you: a night’s sleep. I’m begging you. Just lie next to me in bed until morning; then I’ll give you the antidote and you’ll never have to see me again.”

  Jack looked at her. She did look exhausted. Exactly like he felt.

  “What if I take the antidote from your bag when you’re sleeping ? How do you know I’ll stay?”

  “You haven’t tried taking it so far, Jackie boy. You’re not that kind of guy.”

  “You’re so sure of that?”

  “Besides, it’s a bit tricky. I dosed you with luminous toxin. Nasty stuff if not treated correctly. I need to step-dose you out of it. You find the antidote, by some small miracle, you have to know how to take it.”

  “Luminous what?”

  “I’m a scientist, Jack. I’ve got access to all kinds of disturbing chemicals.”

  “Okay, say I get your bag and take it to a doctor. Tell them what you told me. That you gave me luminous tox—”

  “Toxin. ”

  “Toxin. Right. Luminous toxin. You’re not the only scientist who knows how to deal with that stuff.”

  “Whatever you say. But if you try to leave this room while I’m sleeping, at least linger in the hall for a few seconds so you can listen to me die.”

  Jack looked at the digital clock next to the bed: 12:54 A.M. He had his appointment to keep in less than eight hours.

  “I just need sleep. Please. Let me sleep.”

  So did he. And for the first time all evening, Kelly sounded somewhat rational. Maybe she’d calmed down a bit by talking this stuff through. An idea formed in his Jack’s mind. He found himself saying, “Okay.”

  Kelly leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Instinctively, he turned his face toward her, then caught himself at the last minute. Jesus. For a moment there, he’d thought it was Theresa. He’d almost kissed her on the lips.

  But even if Jack hadn’t stopped himself, her recoil would have done the trick. She pushed herself away like he’d given her an electric shock.

  “You don’t want to kiss me.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  The thought was the furthest thing from his mind for a number of reasons—not the least of which being he usually didn’t kiss people who had tried to kill him. But now that she had stressed it ... of course, now it was all he could think about. Kissing her.

  “Trust me, Jack. It’s a very bad idea. Remember the Mary Kates?”

  “I wasn’t going to kiss you.”

  “Just imagine I’d got a cold. A very bad cold. That’s how these damned things work anyway.”

  “Okay,” Jack said, staring at her lips. Her natural, full, soft lips.

  She turned her face away, then lowered her head onto his shoulder.

  “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for someone to believe me. Someone who didn’t think I was crazy. If I weren’t infected with killer nanomachines, I’ve give you a blow job out of gratitude.”

  Jack didn’t know what to say to that. He settled for “Um, thanks.”

  Her body started shaking, as if she had started crying.

  No, it wasn’t tears. She was laughing.

  “What?”

  “I’m glad I didn’t have to resort to plan B. You would really have gotten the wrong idea.”

  “Plan B?”

  “Handcuffs.”

  12:55 a.m.

  Behind the Edison Avenue House

  Not good, not good. Kowalski could see the flashing cherries of the fire trucks filling the night sky. Wouldn’t be long before police started searching the immediate area, looking for survivors. Wouldn’t be long before the neighbors would pop their lights on, look out their front doors, wondering what the hell was going on at one o’clock in the morning.

  And the tree house was empty.

  His bag was gone.

  Not a soul in the immediate vicinity. Bag wasn’t there long enough for someone to have “accidentally” discovered it. What, was he away three minutes? Four, tops? What the hell happened? Did Ed’s decapitated head sprout green hairy spider legs and go for a stroll?

  Lights were flicking on in houses spread across the hills. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Kowalski noticed the opposite: a light flicking off.

  It all came together within seconds.

  He so didn’t have time for this.

  Within thirty seconds, Kowalski was in the living room, staring at the guy who was staring at the stolen Adidas bag on his dining table. In the dim light, he looked like a young workaholic college professor, staying up late to do grades and putter away at a novel in spare moments. He had that bedhead look, even though he was still dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt a shade too tight for his age. The guy was so entranced by the bag—maybe he was thinking, Forget this novel stuff; I may have a bag full of stolen loot here. And that made sense. Who else would stash a bag in a tree house but a criminal? The prof, however, was in for a little surprise. Kowalski considered waiting until the guy opened it before speaking up. There you go, buddy. Put that in your novel. But the whole killing innocent bystanders thing was beginning to disturb him. He didn’t need another dead body on his conscience.

  Not tonight.

  “Ahem.”

  The guy jolted, then froze. Only his eyes moved.

  “Yeah, right over here, see?” Kowalski waved.

  The prof nodded slowly.

  “That bag does not belong to you. It does not contain cash or jewelry, or anything else you might consider valuable. Take a few steps back, let me take my bag, and I’ll be gone. No harm, no foul.”

  “How do I know this is yours?”

  “Because I say it is. And you should always believe a man with a semiautomatic pointed at your stomach.”

  Kowalski had no such thing pointed anywhere.

  The man’s voice cracked: “I want my cut.”

  “Of what?”

  “What’s in this bag. You can spare a little. Consider it a holding tax. I know how you armed robbers operate.”

  “You don’t need anything in that bag.”

  “And you don’t have a gun. No chance you’d be caught with the money and a piece. That’s another twenty, mandatory. You ditched the gun the moment you left the job.”

  The guy was a stubborn fucker. Definitely a
college professor, thinking he could throw his intellect around like a sledgehammer. Always thinking he was too clever to get caught. He must have been sipping a cappuccino, up late, thinking amazing thoughts, and then watched Kowalski stash the bag in the tree house.

  “You’re not worried about your children? Because once I kill you, they’re next.”

  “What makes you think I have children?”

  “Right before they die, I’ll tell them Daddy let this happen.”

  “Oh, the tree house, right? That was here when I bought the house. I don’t have kids, asshole. Just like you don’t have a gun.”

  Kowalski had been perfectly content to take the bag by force and leave this guy alive. That’s what he’d thought about as he broke the lock on this guy’s back door: Let him live. Because the body count was already high—hell, he’d just walked away from a dying woman in a shallow creek. No need to toss another body onto the pyre.

  This, though, demanded a response.

  “Go ahead. Take what you want out of the bag, and let me get out of here. I can hear the sirens.”

  The professor smiled, then unfastened the bag. He looked down into it. His jaw dropped.

  Kowalski closed the distance and slapped the man across his nose with an open palm. Better than a fist—less likely to break your own hand that way. The prof was stunned, but he threw a wild right roundhouse punch, which Kowalski deflected by snapping it to the side with the flat of his hand. Without losing momentum, he grabbed the professor’s wrist and yanked him forward, giving Kowalski a clear shot at the kidneys and base of the spine. He pounded his fist down repeatedly until the man was paralyzed on the carpet and sobbing.

  “You’re probably a sociology professor, aren’t you? All that talk about mandatory sentencing.”

  The guy squirmed, and moaned. Kowalski patted his pants pockets until he found what he was looking for.