No Man's Land

34

A CLOUDY NIGHT.

A mansion heavily guarded.

A frothing, pitching ocean right next door.

Paul Rogers took each of these things into account while he stared at the gates to Chris Ballard’s refuge.

For he had decided that’s what it was: a refuge.

Maybe from me.

Since he hadn’t had to work tonight he had left Hampton at eleven and gotten here around one.

He knew where the guards were. And how high the walls were. What he didn’t know was where Ballard slept.

That would take a bit of exploring. It would take a bit of risk. But he had no other options.

He scaled the wall on the north side of the compound and dropped lightly to the ground inside. He kept low for a few moments, scanning all compass points before heading toward the main house. The doors, he was sure, were armed. The grounds, he knew, were under video surveillance.

He had seen the camera positioning and spotted a narrow lane of invisibility that he used to reach the main house.

The walls were sheer, no handholds, at least for an ordinary person lacking climbing apparatus. The house rose four stories into the air.

The best views of the ocean were from the top floor. The sun would rise in the east, and he felt confident the owner of this place would want to see it do its thing.

He gripped an invisible crevice in the wall and started to climb, keeping his body tight to the face of the house. His fingers and feet pushed into the roughened surface, finding handholds where none existed.

The windows were dark on the second story.

On the third story he noted a dim light and took a chance looking through the glass.

Suzanne Davis, Josh Quentin’s romp-in-the-sheets partner, was lying in bed, this time alone. The covers barely covered her and evidenced quite clearly that Ms. Davis opted for no clothing at bedtime even when she was riding solo.

Rogers kept going and reached the fourth floor. He veered horizontally against the face of the mansion until he reached the window. It was open a crack, no doubt to get the ocean breeze.

He looked down and saw a guard pass by. But the man’s gaze never moved up. Rogers’s fingers slipped under the wood and gently pushed up. The window, well oiled, slid open quietly.

In a flash Rogers was through it and inside.

He surveyed the darkness. He was not in a bedroom. It looked set up as a home office. Desk, shelves, a small conference table, several seating areas.

He spotted the door at the other end of the room.

In his head he visualized how the house must be set up internally.

The door to his left had to empty out into the corridor. The door at the end of the room must open into an adjoining room. A bedroom?

He moved toward the door and noted the motorized wheelchair with a cane leaning next to it. This had to be Ballard’s room.

He eased the door open. The bed was set against the far wall. A man was lying in the bed.

Rogers zeroed in on the face. Even in the darkness his eyes were able to see precisely what was there. And then his mind was able to whittle away three decades of wear and tear from the countenance.

Eventually, a man he recognized as Chris Ballard rose to the surface. A cheery, relaxed face that hid a personality filled with cruelty, a heart lacking the least bit of compassion.

He moved over to the bed and gazed down at the shrunken mass.

He thought about how best to do this. It was an issue of noise. He needed to have a conversation. And in order to do that he had to allow Ballard to talk.

He put a hand over the sleeping man’s mouth. This had the effect he desired.

The man was jarred awake. He looked up into Rogers’s face. His features went from fearful to curious.

And then the fear returned.

Rogers bent down and said in a low voice, “Where is she?”

He removed his hand from Ballard’s mouth, but his fingers encircled the old man’s throat and squeezed lightly.

Rogers’s intent was clear. If Ballard tried to cry out, Rogers would crush his throat.

“Where is she?” Rogers said again.

“Who?” croaked the old man.

Rogers tightened his grip slightly. “Where?”

He tightened his grip a bit more. “Where?” he said again. The modulation of his voice was unchanged but his tightening grip around the neck told the old man of his urgency.

Ballard shook his head.

“Where?”

The old man shook his head.

Rogers squeezed the neck, but only for a second. The old man’s eyes fluttered and then closed.

He had not killed, but merely incapacitated. He knew the difference.

He silently praised himself for not losing control and just killing the man. He checked the carotid pulse, just to be sure.

Life beat there, if but feebly.

He rose from the bed and listened intently.

He could hear nothing.

He looked back at the man and rubbed the back of his head.

The night had not turned out like he had wanted, but at least he had found Ballard.

Had Jericho been the “she” Davis had mentioned to Josh Quentin? The woman on the Falcon jet?

He touched the top of his head; his eye closed against the sudden, jarring pain.

Was I really that close to her?

He left the bedroom and walked into the office. He started going through papers, careful to put things back exactly as they were. He took some pictures of pages with the camera on his phone. He looked through the binders on the shelf and did the same with certain pages there.

Finished with that, he had one more thing left to do.

He walked back into the bedroom and lifted Ballard out of the bed as though he weighed nothing. And to Rogers the man did weigh nothing. And was nothing. Certainly not someone deserving of a life filled only with luxury.

He carried him over to the window that was set against one wall, put the unconscious old man down, and opened it. He peered out.

There was no one down there. The ground was cobblestone, as was the entire interior courtyard.

He stood Ballard up, gripped his shoulder and the back of his pajama trousers, lifted him off the floor, and pitched him headlong through the open window.

He watched as the man fell. Rogers wasn’t sure if Ballard ever awoke to see death coming right at him.

And he didn’t really care.

Ballard hit the stone headfirst. The crunch was audible up here. Rogers waited, counting seconds off in his head. Then he heard the running feet outside.

Security guards converged on the mass of bloody flesh at the bottom of the window.

He knew what they would do next.

He went into the other room, went back out the window he’d come through, and closed it completely. Then he made his way down the sheer wall even as lights inside the house popped on.

Passing the third floor, through the open window he saw Davis jump up and throw a robe on before rushing out into the hall.

Rogers’s feet hit stone the moment the door to Ballard’s office was slid open.

He had reached the perimeter wall when he heard someone open the window he’d just come through.

He was over the wall by the time the person looked out and saw…nothing.

Rogers hit the dirt on the other side and started to sprint.

He was back in his room in Hampton exactly two hours later.

He sat on his bed, took out his phone, and looked at some of the pictures he’d taken.

One was of Claire Jericho and Chris Ballard. Ballard wasn’t as old as he had been tonight, but the man was still probably in his late seventies. So Jericho was alive. Or at least had been when this picture was taken.

Impulsively, he grabbed his keys and headed out.

He had a place he had to see. Places, in fact.

And he had to see them right now.