by Tom Clancy
Julia looked down at Viv, who was already out of her stall beside her.
“You gonna help me open these gates for your buds?” she asked with enthusiasm, dropping the cruddy Irish.
Viv wagged her tail, lowered her forequarters into the play position, and then turned over on her back, rolling about with her long front legs upstretched and her lips pulled into a distinctive greyhound smile.
Julia watched her for a bemused moment, then bent and rubbed her stomach.
“Why do I get the feeling nobody in this joint’s got the slightest clue what I’m talking about?” she said.
* * *
Over his car radio, the word Rob Howell had heard the WKGO 810 traffic reporter use was ponding. As in, “Drivers should expect some localized ‘ponding’ in sections of the Santa Cruz Mountains, especially along eighty-four near the Highway Thirty-Five turnoff, where we’ve seen periods of heavy rain over the last hour.”
In fact flooding would have been a truer description. By the time Rob reached the exit leading onto 35—his usual southbound shortcut — the rain was coming down in buckets and had so completely inundated the ramp beyond that he half expected to see a guy with a grizzled white beard, leather sandals, and a diverse menagerie of critters around him hammering together a wooden ark at the roadside.
Rob checked his rearview, saw there was nobody behind him, then pressed firmly on his ABS brake pedal and swung toward the gravel shoulder. The Camaro’s wheels splashed through water several inches deep, their mud guards creating a choppy little wake as he came to an abrupt halt a couple of seconds before he would have made his turn into the exit.
His face tightening into a frown, Rob sat behind the wheel and listened to the steady tattoo of the rain against his car’s exterior. From the look of things, the ramp had been washed out by a serious drainage overflow. He supposed it might be worth chancing the turn anyway, but knew he’d be stuck if the backup of water extended out onto the highway. It would be far safer to remain on 84 and take it straight to the Pescadero Creek Road junction — a slower, dippier route, but one the guy in the WKGO weather chopper had mentioned was clear of delays.
The latter it would be, then.
Rob released a long exhale and reached for the cell phone on the passenger seat, wanting to try Cynth again before he got back on the roadway. It had been a while since his last attempt at calling her, and he figured she ought to be within earshot of a phone by now.
But the unanswered rings from both his house and the rescue center did nothing to relax Rob’s expression. It just seemed strange… Cynth and Julia had to be around somewhere. Could the weather have caused an interruption in telephone service? He didn’t think it was that severe, at least in terms of the wind being strong enough to blow down lines, or snap any tree limbs that might get caught in them. But you never knew. You really couldn’t predict where squalls would kick up when unstable weather systems passed over the mountain peaks and ridges. Lousy as conditions were around him, they could be much worse farther on.
Rob chucked his cellular onto the seat again, returned to the blacktop, and within minutes had persuaded himself he’d gone overboard with his concern. There were a bunch of likely explanations for Cynth not answering, including the one that had just occurred to him. If service had been knocked out, she might be altogether unaware of the problem.
He could just see her wrangling Laurie into eating breakfast about three feet from their kitchen phone, nothing further from her busy mind than the idea that her memory-deficient husband and provider was on his way home right now, and having conniptions trying to get through to her.
* * *
“Hi… aren’t you—?”
“Barry Hughes.” Anton produced an effortless smile for the Howell woman, tapping the forged power company name tag on his chest. “I stopped by here last week on my day off—”
“To inquire about adopting a grey, sure,” Cynthia said. “You asked if the shop was open, and went to get some information from Julia. I remember you’d mentioned that you were a lineman.”
Anton nodded. He stood facing her from the doorstep, his heavy work gloves stuffed into a back pocket of his coveralls. It had started to shower, the rain sizzling on the ground around him, sliding down over the smooth yellow surface of his hard hat.
“Wish I could say I’ve had a chance to make an appointment to look at the dogs, but life’s been all work lately,” he said, and paused. “The reason I’m here is to tell you we’re doing some maintenance on the cables—”
“Bfow!” Laurie interrupted with a big, gummy grin, reaching a tiny hand out toward him.
Anton chuckled, took it lightly in his own.
“That’s exactly right, doll,” he said, and then looked back up at the baby’s mother. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know your current might be down for a little while. Five, ten minutes at most. There’ve been some brownouts in the area… nothing major, just some spotty fluctuations… and we’re trying to trace the source of the problem.”
“Oh.” Cynthia gave him a questioning look. “I noticed the van heading up toward our kennels.”
He nodded. “Your lines look okay, but the couplings are pretty old. That’d be on the poles and outside your house and kennels. We’re replacing them as a precaution as we go along… before things really go bfow.”
Cynthia gave him a crooked smile.
“I think you might be too late,” she said. “Don’t know whether it’s related to any trouble with the electricity, but my telephone seems to be out of commission.”
Anton looked appropriately unprepared.
“Oh.” He frowned a little. “Are you sure?”
Cynthia nodded.
“I’ve been trying to make a call,” she said. “No dial tone.”
Anton stood there by the door another moment, looking thoughtful. The raindrops continued to dribble off his hard hat.
“Suppose we could have loosened a contact by accident,” he said. “Hopefully it’ll be something our crew can straighten out right away… you’ve already checked your inside connections, right?”
Cynthia nodded again.
“Just before you buzzed me,” she said.
Anton put on another smile.
“With a baby in the house, I sort of figured it’d be your first reaction. Kids always getting into things and all,” he said. “If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to give it a quick check for myself. Otherwise it becomes an issue with the phone company techs in case we nicked a cable and have to contact them.”
Cynthia adjusted Laurie against her shoulder. “Do what you have to,” she said, and moved aside to let him in. “It’ll get you out of the rain for a few minutes, anyway.”
Anton stepped through the doorway, wiped his boots on the mat, let her guide him to the kitchen, and held the receiver to his ear as she stepped back to give him some room.
“Nothing,” he said, and made a small show of examining the jacks. “It’s out for sure.”
She shrugged.
“I was just about to feed the baby, walk up to the center, and ask my husband’s assistant—”
“Julia…”
“Right, I almost forgot, you met her the other day,” Cynthia said. “Anyway, she has a cell phone, and I’m going to need to make an important call.”
Anton abruptly hung up the phone and turned to her.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” he said.
His tone flatly declarative.
No expression on his face now.
Cynthia stood there in baffled silence, looking as if she was certain she had misheard him.
“Excuse m—?”
“I said you can’t do that,” Anton broke in, and then flicked his right hand into the utility pouch on his belt and produced the weapon he had chosen for the job. A Sig P232.380 ACP. White stainless-steel frame, blued barrel. Powerful, accurate, and easily concealed.
Her eyes wide, her lips a wide circle of confusion and fear, Cynthia s
tared as he raised the pistol, stared uncomprehendingly at the terrible black hole in the center of the gun barrel. She instinctively pulled Laurie close, arms wrapped around her, backing away until she came up short against something hard. The table, a chair, a counter, Cynthia wasn’t sure what in her fear and incomprehension.
That gun. That great black hole pointing at her. Aimed at her from across the kitchen.
“No,” she said. Clasping the baby tightly against her chest. Laurie crying now, sensing her terror. “Whoever you are… no.”
Anton cocked the hammer of his pistol, a sound that sent a physical jolt through Cynthia.
She held her daughter close.
“No,” she repeated in a breathless moan, waves of desperate panic sucking the air from her lungs. “Please… take anything you want from me… please, please… just don’t hurt the baby… I’m begging you don’t hurt my baby—”
Anton leveled his gun at the spot where the screeching infant was clenched in her mother’s protective embrace, the small body against her chest, their hearts pressed together, beating together.
“It won’t hurt,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
* * *
Kuhl heard the dogs start to bark moments before Anton radioed him from the house.
“Phone lines are down,” Anton confirmed. “Everything’s cleaned out in here.” A pause. “The robin has a cellular.”
Pulled to a halt in front of the rescue center, Kuhl listened to him over the van’s radio and then had Ciras contact the two men posing as utility workers back on the road. They had strung a chain across the foot of the drive to bar access. The signs hung from its temporary posts — one facing the eastbound lane, one facing west — advised visitors approaching the center that it was closed for the day due to emergency electrical repairs. Anyone who attempted to disregard the warnings and somehow tried to enter the drive would be verbally redirected by the men or, if required, stopped by more extreme means.
Kuhl stared out at the rescue center for perhaps thirty seconds, rain beading his windshield, drumming on the roof of the van with increasing rapidity. The silver Honda Passport belonging to Julia Gordian was the only other vehicle in the dirt parking lot. Inside the center’s front door were two signs, one of particular interest to him.
Customized in the shape of a greyhound, the sign on the upper portion of its glass pane read:
WELCOME TO THE IN THE MONEY STORE
A smaller changeable message board below it read:
BACK IN 15 MINUTES
It was the latter that held Kuhl’s eye.
He regarded it silently as the penned dogs downhill continued their raucous barking. He had expected his target to be inside the shop. The operation, then, would have been a fast and uncomplicated piece of work — his team entering as utility men, catching her off guard. Instead, they had found her sign on the door. And yet she must be on the premises even now. If not in some backroom of the shop, then certainly on the grounds. Her vehicle was here. She had not been seen leaving the drive on foot. And he doubted some unknown exit from the property existed… where could it lead? There was little but woodland for miles in every direction.
Kuhl listened to the husky, agitated barking of the greyhounds. He must assume the Gordian daughter had also heard it and could not wait for her to become alarmed.
Very well, Kuhl thought. Very well.
He shifted in his seat so he could see Ciras as well as the pair of men behind him.
“Prepare yourselves,” he said. “We take her now.”
* * *
Julia had been giving the rescues some exercise out back when the first droplets of rain sent the squeamish dogs into a mass retreat from the yard… all except Viv, who’d continued to play the role of devoted sidekick, sticking to her like glue even as the rest of the greys piled up against the cinder-block structure that held their kennels.
Conceding defeat to the weather, Julia let the dogs inside and returned each to its individual stall.
She had no sooner left the kennels, Viv close at her heels, when she heard the barking down at the house. A loud, excited commotion that abruptly gave her pause.
If you’re looking for a watchdog, the greyhound isn’t for you. I’d tell you a grey’s bark is worse than its bite, but you’re not too likely to notice one of them doing either.
It was a line Julia had used on the Wurmans the previous weekend, and, her efforts to discourage their interest in adoption aside, it was also the absolute truth. The outburst from their backyard pen wasn’t just unusual; she’d never heard anything quite like it. Not out of her own dogs, Rob and Cynthia’s, or any of those awaiting placement at the center. Greys just weren’t barkers. Julia knew a deep, throaty woof was about the biggest fuss you could expect to hear, and would be a rare occurrence from even one dog at a time. She also knew from experience that a single barking grey normally wouldn’t set off its companions in a group… but from where she stood outside the kennel door it was clear that several, if not all, of the Howells’ five dogs had joined in the uproar. Which made things seem that much more conspicuously odd to her.
Julia didn’t get it. And Viv’s distressed behavior was a fair indication she felt the same. The dog had sidled up against her leg for reassurance, her whole body shivering with tension.
Julia stood there in the rain midway between the kennels and the shop’s rear entrance, laying a hand on Viv to comfort her.
“It’s okay. Be cool.” She stroked Viv’s neck as the barking persisted, then remembered the dogs had let out a few sounds of complaint last week when a doe and her two fawns came straying from the nearby woods to graze in Cynthia’s herb garden. Although they’d stopped once the deer were scared back into the trees, Julia supposed the visitors could have returned with braver attitudes than before. There was no reason for her to conclude the racket meant anything was seriously wrong.
Still, Julia wasn’t inclined to ignore it. Viv was still trembling against her thigh. The dogs behind the house hadn’t settled down in the least. And she couldn’t help but wonder why Cynthia hadn’t stepped out and quieted them by now.
“Come on, kiddo, how about we go see what’s doing?” Julia said. A moment later she moved on, starting to hook around the shop instead of heading for the back door, wanting a straight, unobstructed view of the drive farther downhill.
Hesitant, ears pinned against her head, Viv lagged behind a second, and then went slinging after her.
Their course change proved a short one. Julia had taken only about a dozen steps before she halted again with a sudden, extremely potent blend of surprise and caution.
She reached down toward Viv, this time pressing a firm hand against her chest to stop her in her tracks. About twenty yards ahead at the side of the shop, a couple of men in power company uniforms stood by a window in the falling rain. One of them was leaning forward to peer through it with his face almost pressed to the glass and his hands cupped around his eyes. The other stood with his back to him, gazing out across the property toward the wood line, his head moving from side to side.
The discovery gave Julia the creeps. It was a strong reaction, sure, and she was ready to admit the uncharacteristic barking of the Howells’ dogs might have quite a bit to do with its provocation. She had, after all, passed the linemen working down near the roadside transfer station, or storage depot, or whatever it was. Julia guessed it might be possible they had attempted to reach her at the shop for some reason, found its door locked, and decided to see whether she might be located in a back room.
Possible, yes. Except she didn’t believe that in her heart. There was a lurking quality to their presence she would not allow herself to dismiss as anything else. Since when did utility workers go snooping through windows if you didn’t answer the door? She’d adjusted her message board to say she’d return in fifteen minutes — not a long wait by any account. Not even if they had urgent business. And as far as the guy facing away from the shop, his head turning ever-so-s
lightly left and right as his partner leaned up against the windowpane… Julia couldn’t help it, but he struck her as being on the lookout.
She debated what to do next. If she hadn’t left her cellular in her purse, and her purse in the shop, a logical first step would have been to check in with Cynthia down at the house. Minus that option, she could reverse direction, skirt around the back of the store to the other side, and take a look at what was happening downhill from there… or maybe from the woods edging the property. It seemed paranoid, sure. Could be she was letting herself get very carried away with things. And say she were. Besides possibly winding up soaked to the bone, what did she stand to lose by being careful? At worst she’d feel foolish later on, have a laugh at her own overactive imagination as she was drying off with a towel. And at best — who knew? Really, who knew what these guys were doing out here?
Or what they might have done at the house to get the dogs so upset, Julia thought, aware of their undiminished barking.
She backpedaled, her hand still on Viv’s breast, gently prodding the greyhound to join her, wanting to move behind the shop where the men couldn’t see them.
Viv didn’t budge. Her fur was slick from the rain but she seemed indifferent to it, almost oblivious, and was staring at the two men in coveralls with her ears raised stiffly erect and turned forward. Although her body remained tense, she was no longer trembling.
These were not encouraging signs. Julia had found that Viv took to baths with less complaint than many greys, but she was still water shy, and like all members of the breed highly sensitive to changes in temperature. Under ordinary circumstances a chill downpour would send her into a squirmy run for cover. Instead, she had not moved from her alert set and was studying the men with her head pointed toward them like an arrow.