Tom Clancy Support and Defend

21

Dominic dropped flat on his chest in the kitchen behind the peninsula, shielding himself from the entryway. He spun himself around to face the doorway at the back of the kitchen, which led to the hallway that ran along the northern side of the first floor. He began pulling himself forward with his hands so his sneakers didn’t squeak on the polished floorboards, using his cotton coveralls to slide silently.

Behind him, he could hear the front door close and someone in the living room walk over to the wall security system keypad and punch a couple buttons.

A male voice muttered, “What the fuck?”

Dom suspected this was Ross, and he’d obviously just noticed the security system was disarmed, meaning either someone had changed it or else he had forgotten to set it this morning when he left for work.

Dom kept pulling himself across the floor, slowly but surely. While he did so he thought Ross would have to be either incredibly switched on or a complete obsessive-compulsive to have no doubts he had remembered to alarm the system.

There was an entrance to the hallway to the back stairs from the living room, and another from the back of the kitchen. Dom hoped like hell Ross would bypass the kitchen altogether, but he heard the creaking footfalls on the hardwood as Ross began moving in his direction.

Dom picked up the pace, moving along the floor. He kept his legs up and pulled himself with his forearms, using the low friction of the slick surface to slide along on his chest and hips. It took all his upper-body strength to accomplish this, and doing so without grunting with effort was difficult.

He pulled himself into the hallway out of view, and he’d just kicked his legs out of the kitchen when the kitchen light snapped on. Ross was just fifteen feet behind him at the light switch, and very possibly still heading his way toward the stairs up to his bedroom.

Dom launched to his feet and moved straight back down the hall, making his footsteps as soft as possible and doing his best to keep them in perfect cadence with the louder steps of Ross behind him. Dom passed the staircase on his left and ducked through the open doorway of a tiny laundry room on the right. The dark space was barely enough room for a stacked washer and dryer, but Dom pressed himself hard against the appliances to stay out of view from up the hall.

He heard keys dropped on a counter, and the footsteps behind halted for an instant, but then they started up again.

Looking directly ahead, Dom could see the stairs in front of him. If Ross climbed the stairs he would only have to glance down and to his right to see a man in gray coveralls and a white hard hat leaning back into his washer and dryer.

Ethan Ross entered the hallway on Dom’s left and began climbing the stairs.

Dom pushed himself against his backpack with all his might, backing himself up another inch or two. He was furious for allowing himself to get into this compromised and dangerous position. He had a pistol in a shoulder holster under his coveralls, but he wasn’t about to pull it on a guy who, so far, Dom had enough evidence to suspect only of being a rich mama’s boy. If Ross saw him, Dom could do little more than run for the front door.

Ethan climbed the stairs toward the second floor, slowly and distractedly, in great contrast to his movements since leaving his office a half-hour earlier. He’d all but raced home, intent on getting in touch with Banfield and Bertoli as soon as possible, but this all changed the moment he entered his house and tried to turn off his home security system only to find it had already been disarmed. He was out of it today, not nearly as confident as he needed to be, but he couldn’t believe he hadn’t armed the security system before he left this morning. He thought back and was nearly certain he remembered doing so, but he had to admit to himself that, despite his sharp intellect, for mundane repetitive tasks it wasn’t hard to get one day confused with the next.

Ethan pushed the alarm system out of his mind as he headed into his bedroom, and immediately he returned to his main worry. Special Agent Darren Albright. Ethan had left work shortly after Albright left his office. He wasn’t concerned about appearances, he told Angie he was heading out for lunch before his dentist appointment and would be gone for the rest of the day. And although he was certain she’d heard at least part of his conversation with the special agent, he knew Angie wouldn’t suspect him for an instant of being a whistleblower. He changed out of his suit and then stepped into his closet to grab a pair of jeans and a cashmere sweater. All the while he thought about how he would get in touch with Banfield. He had to be sharp now, sharper than he’d obviously been so far. Making contact with Banfield without using the fire-hydrant signal was a danger, of course, but he thought it so important now it was even worth risking a phone call, although he knew he had to use some sort of code in case either he or Banfield was under surveillance.

When he was still in the process of getting dressed he picked his home phone out of its cradle by his bed, then brought it to his ear. As he did so he noticed the mobile Banfield had convinced him to purchase a few days earlier, and he occurred to him it would be foolish of him to use his landline to make the call.

He cradled the home phone and snatched up the mobile. While he dialed the number with one hand, he struggled to pull his head through his cashmere sweater.

Directly downstairs, Dominic slipped off his sneakers, then tied the laces together quickly so he could hang them around his neck. In his stocking feet, he scooted along the floor of the downstairs hallway so as to stay as quiet as possible, and he moved to the back of the house. He entered the covered porch— he was in front of the lens of the security camera in the pantry, but he knew it wouldn’t matter now that Ross was home. The wireless camera wouldn’t send an alert to his phone if his phone was connected to the same network, because it knew he was home.

Dom first planned to make his way out the back door, climb the fence, and clear the scene, but the fact Ross was home gave him an opportunity Dom could not pass up.

He took a knee by the messy coffee table on the closed in porch and he recorded all the paperwork there with the video function of his camera phone. He found more papers in a magazine rack next to the couch, and this he pulled out and sifted through quickly, careful to record each sheet.

While he worked he kept his ears tuned to the footfalls directly above him. He could hear Ross moving into and out of his closet, and then he heard a muffled voice.

It was only Ross speaking, so Dom presumed he was talking on the phone.

Dom didn’t know if he was using the mobile phone by the bed or another mobile, but he sure as hell wasn’t using the landline in the house, because Dom had disconnected the wire in the box outside.

Dom couldn’t make out anything said until the very end of the one-sided conversation, when Ross all but shouted, his voice agitated, “I mean today! Right the fuck now!”

Dom thought this sounded highly suspicious. He finished his work on the porch and headed for the door. It had a serious exposed slide lock and a massive deadbolt. Dom unlocked the deadbolt, but just as he reached for the sliding lock, he jerked to a stop. Behind him in the hallway came the sound of creaking stairs — Ethan Ross was on his way down.

Shit.

On the other side of the back door was a screen door, and Dom imagined it would be a noisy proposition to open this in a hurry. He turned away from the exit and scooted in his stocking feet back to a hallway closet by the entrance to the porch. He pushed himself inside, hiding behind the array of thick coats hanging there. He just needed a place to stay out of sight until Ross left the house. He’d peeked in the closet earlier, and now he decided it was his best possible option.

But Murphy’s Law kicked in. He heard Ross’s shoes squeak on the hallway floorboards when he turned at the stairs and began walking in Dom’s direction. Dom realized Ross was heading for this very closet. Dominic rolled his eyes, pushed his backpack hard against the wall, and fought the urge to yank his Smith & Wesson out of his shoulder holster.

The closet door opened, Dom remained pressed flat against the cedar back wall, he didn’t move a muscle, and he held his breath.

Son of a bitch.

Ross fumbled with his coats for what seemed to Dominic to be an eternity. He yanked out a suede riding jacket, then put it back in favor of a camel-wool three-quarter-length coat, and then finally he settled on a high-tech red North Face synthetic down ski jacket. When he pulled it out Dom was exposed at the back of the closet, but Ross had already turned away. He shut the door and headed toward the front of the house, and Dom blew out a long, silent sigh.

As Ross entered the living room, his mobile phone rang. Dom heard him answer, and he managed to pick up the majority of the conversation because Ross’s voice carried down the hallway.

“Hey, Mom. No, I left early. I told you. Dentist appointment. Taking the rest of the day off.”

Next came some grumbling from Ross that Dom couldn’t understand, then he said, “I’ll do it later. I don’t have time right now.”

After several more seconds of frustrated complaining, he said, “I’m walking out the door. It’s up in my office. I’ll call you later and—” A long hesitation and an almost childish sigh Dom could hear even through the closed closet door. “All right! Wait a minute.”

Dominic heard Ross running back upstairs; he sounded annoyed and hurried. When Dom knew Ross had stepped into his second-floor office, Dom pushed his way out of the closet and walked in his stocking feet to the back door. There he carefully unlocked the wooden door and opened it, then slowly pushed open the screen door. As he suspected, it squeaked upon opening, but Ross was talking on the phone upstairs, giving his mother someone’s name and e-mail address.

Dom walked through the tiny backyard, staying close to the wall of the house in the offhand chance Ross was looking out a second-floor window right now. He made it to the driveway, knelt to put his shoes back on, and then he turned to head around to the front of the property.

Dom found the red E-Class parked in the drive. He reached into his backpack as he walked up to it, and he barely broke stride when he knelt down and placed a slap-on GPS receiver under the rear bumper.

He reattached the phone line at the junction box, and then closed it up, and he headed toward the street. With a quick glance to the front door of the Ross row house to confirm he was in the clear, Dom stepped out onto 34th and began walking north.

As he walked away he heard Ross open and then shut his front door. Dom didn’t look back, even when the Mercedes pulled out of the drive into the street and screeched off to the south, again with heavy music blasting from its speakers.

Dom relaxed for the first time in an hour. He’d done it, he didn’t think he’d gotten much for his troubles, but he had collected some data he could analyze, and he had a way to see where Ross was heading. He suspected he was not going to the dentist. Whoever he was meeting with, Ross seemed to think it was an emergency.

Dom wouldn’t try to track him to his meeting, it was too risky. Instead, he decided he’d go home and sit at his laptop and watch his movements in real time him while he loaded all the data he’d picked up into the analytical software.