Day Shift

11

Manfred was hungry, and he was tired of feeling trapped in his house. Toward evening, the reporters began to drift away, and he felt pleased with himself. After eleven o’clock, he got into his car and drove to Davy, picking a barbecue joint called Moo and Oink, which was about the only place open this late. He had the chopped beef and the beans and the onion rings, and he enjoyed every bite. Most of all, he enjoyed being in a place that wasn’t his house.

When he pulled out his wallet to pay, he saw the slip of paper with Olivia’s other phone number on it, the phone in another name. As he pulled it out of his wallet, he had a sudden and clear vision. Olivia was in bad trouble; he could feel her fighting someone.

Tonight was the time she was supposed to be reconnoitering the Goldthorpe house. Manfred sat, the piece of paper in his right hand, absolutely paralyzed. Should he call her? But how could she answer, if he did? He might just make things worse.

All Manfred’s pleasure in the evening had evaporated.

He looked at his watch. It was now nearly midnight. It would take him at least two hours to drive to Dallas. What did he need to take with him?

I don’t need anything, he thought. I’ve got my wallet and my credit cards and my driver’s license. I can buy anything else I need. This was one time when it felt good to live alone, without even a pet. Though he had no clear idea of what he would do when he got to Dallas, Manfred walked out of the restaurant and drove to the interstate. Usually, he found the Texas speed limit more than generous. Tonight, he prayed there was no state trooper concealed by the side of the road.

Along the way, he had enough sense to call Lemuel.

Lemuel answered.

—

Without any warning at all, Olivia had been smashed against the brick wall of the house by a man who was so strong, she’d wondered for a moment if he was a vampire. He knew about fighting, too. Olivia was used to employing her ruthlessness and agility to win a fight, but this man, whoever he was, seemed to know her capability. Her hands were pinned, one above her head and the other at her waist. His body was pressing hers against the hard surface, but there was nothing sexual about it.

Since she couldn’t kill him, she went limp while she waited to find out what his intentions were. Her captor was not Lewis Goldthorpe; she was sure of that, simply from his height and his strength. Olivia realized what she hadn’t heard. This man had not called for backup. So he was not police, not a security guard, or he would have already called for help. And if he’d been another sneak thief, he would have left before she knew he was there, to avoid confrontation.

Instead, when she went limp he forced her hands together and used a plastic zip tie to secure them. But he was trying to do too much by himself, and he didn’t succeed in getting her wrists in tight proximity. She had some wiggle room. Not that that helped just at the moment, because he again used his whole body to keep her against the bricks, her hands trapped between them. He was doing something with his right hand. She heard some electronic beeps.

He’d gotten out a telephone. He’d punched two buttons.

Now he whispered, “McGuire, I’ve got her.”

Olivia’s blood turned to ice water. A moment before, she’d been cautious, waiting for more information: who this man worked for, what he planned for her. Now she knew. He’d automatically leaned a little away from her, just an inch or two, while he talked.

Olivia twisted just a little, brought her knee up sharply, and then shoved with all the power in her bound hands. Her knee landed exactly where she’d hoped it would, and he gagged and doubled over. She wheeled sideways, lifted a foot, and braced herself against the wall to kick the side of his head with all the force she could muster. She wished she’d been wearing boots. He landed on the ground on his back, and while he was fumbling to pull out a weapon, she stomped on his throat.

She knew from the feel of it she’d landed a killing blow.

She couldn’t find her balance on the uneven surface. She pitched forward onto the ground beside the dying man. As he finished dying, Olivia drew herself up into a crouch. Awkwardly, she patted him down. It was no surprise that he had a knife. In the darkness, she fumbled to extricate it from its sheath. As a bonus, she felt a familiar cylindrical shape and knew he’d brought a flashlight. Yes! It was easier to free it from his belt than to work her tiny one out of her pocket. She switched it on, setting it on his stomach to shine on her hands. Even with its help, she nicked herself in the process of cutting the zip tie. Once she’d freed her hands and stanched her own bleeding with the hair band, Olivia gave herself a minute to recover. By the time her sixty seconds were up, her breathing was back to normal and her pulse had stopped hammering.

She had gathered her wits, too. Olivia used the dead man’s flashlight to check that her own blood wasn’t anywhere on the ground. She stuck the sawed-up zip tie in her pocket. She would take his knife, flashlight, and phone, which she found on the ground beside his body. Did he have a wallet? Yes, he did. She took that, too. No gun, which was a slight surprise.

There wasn’t any way to conceal the body, so she left it where it lay. Finally, she switched off the flashlight.

Forcing herself to move stealthily, Olivia worked her way closer to the street, bush to bush, until she came to the shadowy place where she’d left her bag. She pulled down the sleeves of the sweater to cover her abraded wrists. She draped the messenger bag to cover as much of her as she could, in case there were spots she hadn’t noticed.

Olivia took a few deep breaths, then started the long walk back to her car, reminding herself with every step to be wary. He’d made the call; they’d be checking. Though not twenty-five minutes had passed since she’d turned onto Old Pioneer, she felt it had been hours.

Olivia stayed in cover wherever she could — overhanging tree limbs, shadows of any kind, parked cars as she moved into the less grand streets. If she heard a vehicle approaching, she hid and remained hidden until it was past. That only happened twice. As she came closer to the street where she’d left the rental car, she abandoned the sidewalk altogether. She crouched, watching the car, from the lushly planted yard of the corner house on that block. Concealed by a cluster of yucca plants and pampas grass, Olivia watched for fifteen minutes. Nothing happened. She was just about to stand when the phone she’d confiscated began to buzz quietly.

It made her jump about a mile.

She held it up to her ear. “Falco? Where are you now?” said a familiar voice. “Did you have to hurt her? She okay? We’ll be there in two.”

When Olivia said nothing, the voice hesitated. Then the man said, “Isabel? Is that you?”

Gently, she placed the phone on one of the large rocks bordering the planting bed. She brought her heel down on it like a jackhammer. She was able to crack it significantly. She bent to pick it up, happy that she couldn’t hear the voice anymore. Happy that she’d destroyed something that her father had paid for, though the purchaser had been his right-hand man, Ellery McGuire.

Done with waiting, Olivia strode to the rental car just as confidently as she’d left it. She climbed in as though this were part of her daily routine, and she pulled out and drove away with smooth expertise. She coasted around for an hour, checking for a tail, before she headed for her motel. She parked at the back and started up the stairs, feeling suddenly exhausted.

Somehow she was not surprised to find Lemuel sitting outside her room. “How?” she said, but he caught her up in his arms and held her close. After a second, she let herself lean on him. Then when a couple of minutes had passed, she opened her door and they went inside.

He sat by her on the bed, his arm around her. “Manfred called me directly,” he said. “I was closer than he was, so I told him to turn around and go back to Midnight, if he wanted. He said he would.”

“Where were you?” she asked, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Here in Dallas,” he said. “I had a plane layover. I can delay a night.”

She started to tell Lemuel he didn’t need to postpone his departure, but when she tried to make her lips move, she simply couldn’t make them form those words. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I got away from him.”

“Woman, I know that,” Lemuel said in his quiet voice. “Manfred gave me the address. I saw the body. Who sent him?”

“My father’s right-hand man,” she said. “Ellery McGuire.”

Lemuel was silent. “Does he know where you are?”

“He knew I was going to that house, or at least suspected enough to put someone there. I don’t know how. I’ll figure it out.”

“Did you get whatever you went there to get?”

“No, I never got inside. Falco caught me first. I was too cocky. On the other hand, why would I ever imagine there’d be someone waiting there for me? I had other things to worry about.”

“What were you afeared of?” From time to time, you could tell Lemuel had been born in another age.

“That there might be security measures I didn’t know about, or that the jerk who now lives there would catch me and I’d have to do him in… which wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.”

“But instead, someone you never expected was there waiting for you.”

She nodded.

“You have no idea why?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t had time to think. I was too… intent on getting away from the area before the body was found. I had to get to a safe place.”

“You’re safe now,” he said, his cold lips brushing her cheek.

Suddenly she wanted the familiarity of him, the touch of him, more than anything else in the world. She turned to him, put her hands on each side of his face, brought his lips to hers.

For the first time that night, something went exactly like she’d expected. Maybe even better.