Order to Kill

CHAPTER 58

FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA

U.S.A.

RAPP gunned the Charger, barely making it through the dark intersection before the light turned red. He’d hopped a military transport out of Riyadh and spent the last fifteen hours lying on top of a bunch of flak jackets in the back. Now that he was finally in the last five minutes of his trip home, those minutes seemed to be stretching out forever.

His phone rang and he patched it through the car’s anemic sound system.

“Hello, Irene.”

“I hear you’re back in the States.”

“Yeah. About a mile from my apartment.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s gone, Mitch.”

“What’s gone?”

“The apartment. We emptied it and it’s been rented. You need to turn around and go home.”

The inflection was impossible to miss. “My house is done?”

“I think Claudia’s still working on the punch list, but yes. It’s done.”

For some reason the news hit him with a force that he wasn’t prepared for. He glanced at the clock in his dashboard. A little after nineteen thirty.

“Maybe we should get together and debrief,” he heard himself say. “Are you at the office?”

“I am, but it’s completely out of the question. Claudia’s holding dinner for you.”

That hit even harder. Why? Why did he suddenly want to put the Dodge on a random highway and floor it? Was this fear? After everything he’d just been through, was this what scared him?

“First thing tomorrow morning, then?” Rapp said before he could stop himself.

“No. Tomorrow morning you’re going to sleep in and have a nice breakfast. Then, at eleven, you have an appointment with a plastic surgeon. Claudia has the details.”

“Fine. I’ll swing by after-”

“Actually, you won’t. Because you’ll be on your way to your appointment with a reconstructive dentist. Claudia has-”

“The details,” he finished.

“Exactly. The Middle East and Russia will still be there day after tomorrow, Mitch. Now go have a nice, quiet evening.”

The line went dead and Rapp kept driving straight for another mile before finally summoning the courage to make a U-turn.

• • •

The narrow road wound through dense trees and intermittent farmland before climbing to a flat summit overlooking all of it. Rapp’s twenty-acre lot was along the south edge of what was supposed to be an airy subdivision with ten home sites. That is, until his brother, an obscenely wealthy money manager, purchased the other nine. In case he ever needed a vacation home, he’d explained.

Rapp pulled up to the empty neighborhood’s gate and found that the keypad had been replaced by a thumbprint reader. Not sure what else to do, he pressed his left one against the screen. The steel barrier obediently swung back.

All markers and other clues that the unused lots existed were gone. There was nothing but natural landscaping, pristine asphalt, and dark sky. A traditional red barn appeared on his left, glowing dully in the moonlight. Originally intended to keep the residents’ horses, it now contained what was left of his contractor’s equipment.

The white stucco wall surrounding his house appeared as he crested a small rise, glowing a little brighter with the help of a few hazy spotlights. The copper gate was already taking on a green patina, visible as he pulled up next to the call box. There was a padded envelope on top of it addressed in a childlike scrawl.

4 Mich

Tearing it open, he found a single remote. A push of the button caused the heavy gate to slide smoothly out of sight.

The garage doors were closed, so he parked next to a modern sculpture that looked a little like debris from a plane crash painted with blue Rust-Oleum. It probably symbolized something deep and he made a mental note to tell Claudia how much he liked it.

The house itself was admittedly a bit unusual. It consisted of a single floor with a half basement and had no exterior windows at all. His late wife and the architect had done everything they could with textures, shapes, and roofline to keep it from looking like a prison and they’d largely succeeded. It might have been the most aesthetic bunker ever built.

There was no one to greet him when he came though the front door, so he took a moment to admire the warm lighting and sparsely arranged Asian furniture. A bold painting of a flower to his right looked almost as expensive as the downed Cessna out front.

At the end of the entryway, the left wall transformed into floor-to-ceiling glass looking onto a beautifully landscaped interior courtyard. The house’s living space ringed the courtyard, with virtually every room having access to that central garden. Through the newly planted trees, he could just make out the elegant lines of an industrial kitchen and the raven-haired woman moving through it.

He found a sliding door and stepped outside, crossing to the kitchen on a flagstone pathway. When he entered a similar door on the other side, Claudia yanked a spoon from the pot she was stirring and spun to face him. Clearly, she’d been coached and her reaction to his face consisted of nothing more than a brief flash in her dark eyes.

“Mitch!” she said, tossing the spoon on the counter and throwing her arms around him. The hug was more than a little painful, but he found that he didn’t mind at all.

“I’m sorry I didn’t meet you at the door, but I didn’t want anything to burn.”

“No problem,” he said, immediately wishing he’d come up with something a little more suave.

“Well?” she said, spreading her arms wide. “Do you like it?”

“I do,” he said, feeling a little overwhelmed. “Great sculpture out front.”

“Isn’t it fantastic? It’s an Aubarge.”

He nodded as though that meant something to him. “Where’d all this furniture come from?”

“Where didn’t it come from? Do you like it? It’s modern, but not sterile, don’t you think?”

“That’s exactly what I was going to say.”

“You were not,” she responded, picking up her spoon and going to work on one of the pots boiling on the stove. She indicated with an elbow toward an open bottle of wine sitting on the counter. “Have a glass. But be warned, it’s a bit cold. I just pulled it from your cellar.”

“I have a wine cellar?”

She switched to the French she was more comfortable with. “Of course! Fully stocked!”

He found a glass and examined the label on the bottle. Not surprisingly, he’d never heard of it, but the fact that it had been produced before he’d learned to read worried him a bit. Through a few bizarre twists of fate and his brother’s financial genius, Rapp had amassed a fair amount of money. Not this much, though.

“Claudia?”

“Yes?”

“First, let me say that the place is amazing.”

“You love it, right?” she said, twisting around to look at him with a broad smile.

“Absolutely. I do. But could I ask you how much it cost?”

“Oh, not much. I was a little overbudget but I just paid for that myself.”

“Paid for what?”

“The overbudget part.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“Not much.”

“Is there some reason I shouldn’t know the number?”

“With the artwork?”

“Yes. With the artwork.”

“But not the wine.”

“The artwork, the wine. Everything.”

She shrugged at the sheer triviality of the amount, making a show of carrying out the necessary calculations in her head.

“Twoish…”

“Two hundred thousand?” Rapp said, deciding to fall off the wagon and pour himself a glass of what was apparently extremely expensive wine. Still, it could have been worse. He could reimburse her for that without too much juggling.

“Million.”

The glass stopped a few inches from his mouth but then he decided to just go with it. That number was so big, it didn’t bear worrying about.

“Now go away,” she said. “I need to concentrate. Go see Scott and Anna.”

“Scott?”

“Well, I couldn’t leave him in that horrible hospital and he didn’t have anyone else to take care of him. They’re in the guest bedroom playing LEGOs.”

Rapp started for the hallway but then stopped after a few steps. “Where is that?”

“Directly opposite of where we are now. You can’t miss it.”

• • •

Anna had been coached, too, but it didn’t help. She let out a high-pitched shriek when he walked through the open door.

“It’s okay! It’s me. Mitch.”

The young girl slid off the bed where she and Scott Coleman were attempting to build something that may have been the Eiffel Tower. “Mom said you were in a car accident. Were you wearing your seat belt?”

“I wasn’t.”

“You know that’s illegal. You have to!”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Anna,” Coleman said, “your mom probably could use some help. Why don’t you go see.”

“When are we going to finish?” She pointed to the LEGOs. “Maybe Mitch wants to play.”

“I’m sure he does, but we should save the rest for tomorrow.”

She nodded and went for the door, giving Rapp’s leg a quick hug before starting down the hallway.

“Anna?” Mitch called after her.

She stopped and turned.

“Maybe you could ask your mom to put my food through the blender.”

The request obviously confused her but she gave a quick nod before tearing down the hallway.

Coleman waited until she was out of earshot before he spoke. “Jeez… Mas said he worked you over, but I had no idea.”

“You don’t look so great yourself.”

Rapp was happy to note that his retort wasn’t entirely accurate. While Coleman had lost a lot of weight and his skin was pasty white, his eyes were clear and his voice had regained its strength. Most of all, though, he was aboveground.

“I hear you’re going to make a full recovery,” Rapp continued.

“Yeah. But at the end of a long road.”

“No problem. Take a couple of weeks.”

Coleman managed to produce the Boy Scout grin his friends had become so familiar with. “The docs say that I should be dead. That if it weren’t for you, the infection I got would’ve been fatal.”

“Me? What do I have to do with that?”

“Turns out you dragging me through every third-world shithole on the planet has given me a pretty good immune system.”

They fell silent for a few moments and Rapp ran through the Pakistan op in his head-the trashed motorcycle, going for position instead of entering the warehouse…

“I’m sorry, Scott. That should have been me in there.”

“Fortunes of war, man. What’ll you do?”

Rapp nodded. “When you’re done with your rehab are you coming back?”

“Hell yeah,” Coleman said, pointing a shaky finger at Rapp’s damaged face. “You obviously don’t do too well without me there to watch out for you.”

Claudia’s voice floated down the hall toward them. Dinner was ready.

Rapp noticed a walker in the corner. “You need some help?”

“No. I think I’m going to sit this one out. Maybe get some sleep.”

Rapp turned toward the door but stopped when Coleman spoke again.

“Can you do me a favor, Mitch?”

“Sure.”

“If Azarov is still alive, don’t go after him. It won’t change what happened.”

Rapp ran his hand along the rim of a Chinese vase that he hoped was a reproduction. “Sure, Scott. Whatever you want.”