Edge

Chapter 55

TWENTY MINUTES LATER I stepped outside, smelling the chill moist air, the aroma from a wood fire in the distance. Kids sometimes lit campfires in the park overlooking the Potomac falls.

I recalled Maree and me, sitting uneasily-in my case, at least-on the rock shelf forty feet above the raging water earlier this morning. I recalled her kissing me.

Then I forced myself to concentrate.

Because the man fronting as Tony Barr was now approaching, vigilant as ever and armed with an impressive automatic weapon. I needed him to believe I had no inkling he was a partner of Henry Loving.

“Tony,” I said, nodding. The intense, quiet man joined me. His eyes kept scanning the property. I asked, “Lyle’s inside?” So far I was keeping my voice calm and looking at him in ways I thought appropriate to these circumstance.

“Yessir… Any word from Philly?” he asked.

What the hell was Loving up to? I wondered. I said, “Nothing yet. Loving won’t be there for another half hour or so, at the earliest.” Car keys jangled in my hand. “I’m going to pick up the Kesslers’ daughter and their friend.”

A sliver of moon kept appearing and vanishing, as the thick clouds scooted by above us. Maple and oak sloughed silver leaves in the breeze and the tall hemlocks in the side yard swayed. The wind breathed easily.

I looked around the property. “It’s a lot different here now, with the primary in custody and the lifter about to be nailed. You can almost enjoy it.” I glanced at the imposter’s black angular machine gun. It wasn’t pointed near me but if he caught on that I knew who he was I’d be dead before I could move an inch.

The man said, “That’s true-except for some deer with a suicidal personality who jumped out of the bushes over there a little while ago. We almost had venison for breakfast. Just heard him again, the same place. They’re not really very bright, are they?”

“I don’t think that’s why God made them.” Was he suspicious? I couldn’t tell. I continued, “Listen, Tony, when I get back I want to coordinate getting the Kesslers to Fairfax in the morning. Loving’ll be in custody by then. But I want some protection on them for the next couple of days, until everything’s resolved. Agent Frederick said you might be willing to take that on.” I was vamping. Overdoing it? I wondered. I wasn’t sure. A bad performance would kill me.

“Yessir… if he’d like.”

I smiled. “Meaning you’re not all that crazy about baby-sitting detail.”

He grinned too. “I’m happy to be of help, sir.”

“Appreciate it.”

Then a faint snap came from the front yard.

Both of us shared a troubled look and turned toward the sound. Tense, squinting.

“What do you think that was?” I asked.

“Our deer?” he asked in a whisper.

I shook my head. “Not in the front. They don’t go there.”

The sound was repeated, louder.

We trained the muzzles of our weapons in the direction of the snap.

“The hell is it?” he asked.

We got the answer a moment later as we saw another rock sail over the house and land in the driveway.

“Diversion,” I rasped with alarm in my voice. We both spun around fast-to see a man covering us with a silenced semiautomatic pistol. He’d come up behind us quietly, as we were staring toward the sound, after flinging the stones over the roof to distract us.

The lean sandy-haired man was wearing the same green jacket he’d been wearing on Saturday at the assault on the Kesslers’ house and at the flytrap.

I whispered, “It’s Loving’s partner!”

“His-?” the Barr-imposter began to ask. But before he finished the sentence the man in the green jacket squinted, lifted his weapon toward my leg and fired three times.

I cried out and went down hard.