a piece of equipment that belonged in the garbage. The whole plan was borderline incompetent.
Flynn’s worry was that the perp was already in the Hoffman’s lives, someone they had come to trust. Was that how he worked—he was the grocery clerk, the night man at the convenience store, getting under the skin of the vic so skillfully that there was never a flicker of suspicion?
He shook the snow off and started toward the house, but there was motion to his right, at about one o’clock. Something low and big. A car? No, impossible off the road in this snow. Anyway, it was living movement, stealthy and low to the ground.
Almost on its own, his gun came out. He stayed where he was, though. Don’t move until you understand.
A minute passed, then another.
This perp had once taken a forty-year-old woman who’d weighed two hundred pounds out of a farmhouse in Oregon on a rain-soaked night and left not even a footprint. He had taken mothers from shopping mall parking lots, fathers from backyard barbecues, nurses from their rounds, priests from their rectories.
He had killed them all, Flynn believed. Of course he had, killed them without remorse, lost as he was in whatever fantasy drove him.
Now there was another sound. What the hell was that? Something tinkling.
No, it was music. It floated like a spirit on the storm. There were windows downstairs with drawn curtains, and he thought that was where the music was coming from. It stopped, then started again. Soaring out above the roar of the storm, the hiss of the snow. Dear God, she could play that piano. What was it? Beethoven, maybe? Beautiful, anyway.
Rocking from side to side, checking his feet, blowing into his hands, Flynn began pressing forward again.
Another sound came, this time to his left. This was a very strange sound, a muffled sort of whistling. It went on and on, this sound, a kind of noiseless screaming.
Finally, it ended and did not repeat. The music swelled and the wind moaned in the eaves of the old house. Low clouds plunged out of the north. The only light was from the house and the glowing snow.
He was going down to that house and he was going to announce himself to those people. He was well under way, slogging through drifts as deep as six feet, when he observed the moving shape again. It came from the right this time, and therefore had crossed his field of vision without him seeing it. So there must be a low area between him and the house, probably the snow-covered road. But it wouldn’t offer more than a couple of feet of protection, so whatever that was out there, it wasn’t a man.
He called on the reserves of inner silence that twenty years of intensive martial arts training had given him. “All things come to him who waits.” The defender has the advantage, always.
He watched as the wind picked up a long stream of snow and blew it off into the darkness. The eaves of the house wailed, the music swelled, and bright scars of moonlight whipped across the desert of snow. Behind the storm would come brutal cold and behind that, they said, another storm.
The moonlight revealed a low form with a long back and tail—an animal. The instant the light hit it, it became so still that many people wouldn’t have noticed it. A moment later, though, darkness engulfed the shaft of moonlight, and the animal with it. He fought to control his breathing, fought to stay where he was and not follow the flight-or-fight instinct, which was telling him to get the hell out of here.
He tried the night vision goggles. They hadn’t been adjusted to work in snow.
Activate the radio, then? No. The others were all armed professionals, too, and a single spatter of communication could cause the perp to pull out—assuming, of course, that he was here.
The house was still dark. When the moon broke out of the clouds, it stood still and silent. Were they asleep? Could they sleep? He could see an LED in there, glowing red in the downstairs hall. They had an alarm system.
Flynn’s worry was that the perp was already in the Hoffman’s lives, someone they had come to trust. Was that how he worked—he was the grocery clerk, the night man at the convenience store, getting under the skin of the vic so skillfully that there was never a flicker of suspicion?
He shook the snow off and started toward the house, but there was motion to his right, at about one o’clock. Something low and big. A car? No, impossible off the road in this snow. Anyway, it was living movement, stealthy and low to the ground.
Almost on its own, his gun came out. He stayed where he was, though. Don’t move until you understand.
A minute passed, then another.
This perp had once taken a forty-year-old woman who’d weighed two hundred pounds out of a farmhouse in Oregon on a rain-soaked night and left not even a footprint. He had taken mothers from shopping mall parking lots, fathers from backyard barbecues, nurses from their rounds, priests from their rectories.
He had killed them all, Flynn believed. Of course he had, killed them without remorse, lost as he was in whatever fantasy drove him.
Now there was another sound. What the hell was that? Something tinkling.
No, it was music. It floated like a spirit on the storm. There were windows downstairs with drawn curtains, and he thought that was where the music was coming from. It stopped, then started again. Soaring out above the roar of the storm, the hiss of the snow. Dear God, she could play that piano. What was it? Beethoven, maybe? Beautiful, anyway.
Rocking from side to side, checking his feet, blowing into his hands, Flynn began pressing forward again.
Another sound came, this time to his left. This was a very strange sound, a muffled sort of whistling. It went on and on, this sound, a kind of noiseless screaming.
Finally, it ended and did not repeat. The music swelled and the wind moaned in the eaves of the old house. Low clouds plunged out of the north. The only light was from the house and the glowing snow.
He was going down to that house and he was going to announce himself to those people. He was well under way, slogging through drifts as deep as six feet, when he observed the moving shape again. It came from the right this time, and therefore had crossed his field of vision without him seeing it. So there must be a low area between him and the house, probably the snow-covered road. But it wouldn’t offer more than a couple of feet of protection, so whatever that was out there, it wasn’t a man.
He called on the reserves of inner silence that twenty years of intensive martial arts training had given him. “All things come to him who waits.” The defender has the advantage, always.
He watched as the wind picked up a long stream of snow and blew it off into the darkness. The eaves of the house wailed, the music swelled, and bright scars of moonlight whipped across the desert of snow. Behind the storm would come brutal cold and behind that, they said, another storm.
The moonlight revealed a low form with a long back and tail—an animal. The instant the light hit it, it became so still that many people wouldn’t have noticed it. A moment later, though, darkness engulfed the shaft of moonlight, and the animal with it. He fought to control his breathing, fought to stay where he was and not follow the flight-or-fight instinct, which was telling him to get the hell out of here.
He tried the night vision goggles. They hadn’t been adjusted to work in snow.
Activate the radio, then? No. The others were all armed professionals, too, and a single spatter of communication could cause the perp to pull out—assuming, of course, that he was here.
The house was still dark. When the moon broke out of the clouds, it stood still and silent. Were they asleep? Could they sleep? He could see an LED in there, glowing red in the downstairs hall. They had an alarm system.
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