PrivateSector

CHAPTER TWO

The photo was a clean shot, revealing a face both lovely and angular. Full lips, pert nose, eyes that were deeply and memorably green. She was smiling when the picture was taken, a likable smile, effortless and without artifice. Eyes that festered with sympathy. No makeup. No jewelry. She was beautiful, yet tended to ignore or at least not amplify it. He liked this and so many other things about her.

She would be first.

He stole another glance at her bedroom window; the light was still on, and he returned to studying her photo, as though it could yield a clue he had somehow overlooked.

She appeared younger than thirty-no wrinkles, droopiness under her eyes, nor flab as best he could tell. Yet he knew for a fact that she had crossed that benchmark in May, was single, currently uninvolved, and had lived in the Washington suburbs the past three years.

He had unobtrusively edged into line behind her two days before at a nearby Starbucks, had sniffed her perfume and approved: expensive and tasteful. About five foot eight, possibly 115 pounds, and she carried herself well; poised, but with no hint of the conceit or brashness one expects from women with her looks and brains. She was courteous and friendly to the girl behind the counter and left a seventy-five-cent tip for a $1.25 coffee-overly generous by his reckoning-no sugar, no cream. She was not a health nut; he’d twice seen her eat meat, but she appeared mindful of bad habits.

Actually, she had to be the first.

He had batted it around inside his head three dozen times, chewed over the pros and cons, pondered it so hard that he nearly gave himself a splitting headache.

It had to be her.

Put her off and the whole thing could collapse.

But how?

By far, she was the riskiest of the group. He was methodical by necessity, and had actually devised a computer program to help him judge and assess these things. Plug in this factor and that vulnerability, and the algorithms worked their twisty magic and spit out a number. Ten was the level of most damnable difficulty. She was an eight, and anything above seven worried him-the program wasn’t flawless, and there surely were factors he had overlooked, qualities he had failed to plumb, so the magnitude could be underestimated. He’d never done a nine or, God forbid, a ten. Over the years, he had considered a few and walked away. The odds of a blunder were simply too damned high and the penalty of failure unthinkable. A seven also happened to be on the list, edging toward eight, but the rest were sixes and below. His usual method was to save the hardest for last, as a mistake in the beginning could unravel the whole thing.

But it wasn’t an option.

It had to be her.

So, back to how.

The top file on the car seat beside him was thick with details about her life and habits, acquired mostly with very little trouble from public sources and several days of cautious snooping. A few critical details had been obtained elsewhere.

She had clockwork habits. At 5:30 each and every morning her bedroom light flicked on. Fifteen minutes later she came bolting out the front door in spandex running tights, and she certainly had the figure for them: long, lean legs and a bodacious ass. A dark runner’s shirt that contrasted handsomely with her short blond hair and practical but expensive running shoes completed her morning attire. She was fit and very, very fast. He had clocked her twice-five miles in thirty-two minutes over a course that was hilly and daunting, without ever varying her route or pace.

She had been a long-distance track star in high school and college. Her college newspaper described her as a steady performer, consistently placing first against weak schools, but apt to disappoint against the powerhouses. The rebuke struck him as unfair. She ran in the East, where blacks dominated, and did quite well for a white girl. Also, she’d managed a 3.9 GPA as an undergrad at the University of Virginia and graduated fifteenth in her class from Harvard Law. He regarded it as shameful that they couldn’t meet under less complicated conditions. He preferred intelligent, accomplished, athletic women and felt certain they would hit it off.

She lived alone in a community of townhouse dwellers whose homes, economic stations, and lifestyles were tedious and ordinary. However, the neighborhood was clean, safe, and a short commute from her office. She was sociable with her neighbors, but that was as far as it went. Her close friends were made at work and elsewhere.

Her townhouse was a two-story end unit, brick-fronted, slat-sided, with a one-car garage tucked underneath the living room. Thick woods were behind the complex, apparently left standing by a thoughtful builder to afford a sense of privacy. He appreciated the irony. Both nights he had scaled a tall tree and, using night-vision goggles, had observed her through a window.

After her runs she took thirty minutes to shower, dress, and breakfast. At 7:15 her garage door slid open and her shiny gray Nissan Maxima backed out. A brief stop at the Starbucks three blocks from her townhouse, then a straight scoot to her office. A Daytimer crammed with notes and appointments dictated her life. She lunched at her desk and shopped only on weekends. Her evenings were the only erratic and unpredictable part of her schedule. She tended to work late, occasionally past midnight.

She dated one man at a time, as best he could tell, and was finicky and old-fashioned about matters of romance. Spontaneous pickups and one-night stands weren’t part of her style. Too bad, because he could picture scenarios where this would be a workable approach, but he could more easily picture a swift brush-off fraught with unacceptable complications.

She was cautious and had commendable security habits. With her looks she should be, in his view. She locked her car door every time she left it. Penetrating her workplace was out of the question. She had installed a security system in her townhouse that she meticulously activated every time she walked out the door. A fairly good system in his expert judgment: a battery backup; the windows and doors were wired; a motion detection system was installed in the living room; and he guessed there was at least one panic button, most likely positioned in her bedroom. She tended, however, to leave open the second-floor bathroom window, presumably to prevent odor and mildew.

That flaw, however, did him no good. His script was everything, and no matter how he jiggled, twisted, or warped it, that glaring oversight could not be made to fit.

He kneaded his neck, turned off the car’s overhead light, and tossed the file back on the passenger’s seat. His decision was made, and in every way he could consider it made sense.

He would take her where she least expected it. He would move in when her alertness and instincts were at their lowest ebb, and would approach her in such a manner that she would let down her defenses and allow him near.

She would be his calling card, and what a memorable one she would be.