Assassin's Express by Jerry Ahern Page A

about plants he realized, but decided it was safe to assume the Blueboy Nursery people grew their trees from seedlings; hence the greenhouses.
    Frost walked to the base of the front-porch steps and then started up, leaving his cases on the front-porch floor and walking the few steps to the front door. He saw no doorbell, so he knocked, and lit a Camel in the blue-yellow flame of his battered Zippo, inhaling the smoke deeply into his lungs as he waited. He squinted skyward, despite his dark glasses. The sun was strong, and a pleasantly cool breeze blew against his face from the west.
    He turned back to the door, starting to knock again.
    His hand froze as the screen door opened outward toward him.
    Frost made a smile appear on his face, but held his cigarette cupped in his right hand between his first finger and thumb, ready to be snapped into the face of the person at the door if need be, to buy him a split second to get to his gun.
    â€œYes—can I help you?”
    â€œYes, Ma’am,” Frost told the housedress-clad woman. He guessed her age at somewhere in the middle to late fifties; she was somewhat on the chubby side, but not unpleasantly so, with short gray hair carefully combed framing her full face and dark-rimmed glasses balanced precariously on her nose. “I am a friend of Andy Deacon. You know he’s in the hospital.”
    â€œYes—I’d read about it in the papers,” the old woman cooed.
    â€œWell, I understand Andy was supposed to come here and pick up some valuable old books he was interested in acquiring.” Frost always felt stupid using code phrases and recognition signals.
    â€œBooks?”
    â€œYes—a nineteenth-century Canadian imprint of one of Mark Twain’s works, I believe—the title escapes me.” Frost waited—now the woman was supposed to tell him the title.
    â€œOld Times on the Mississippi, wasn’t it?”
    Frost smiled at the woman, saying, “I’m glad that’s over.”
    â€œAndrew said that if he couldn’t make it he’d send someone and tell him what to say. Is Andrew going to be all right?”
    â€œYes, ma’am—I think so,” Frost told her honestly.
    â€œHe’s my nephew—a good boy, really.” She smiled.
    â€œYes, ma’am—can I see Jessica Pace?”
    â€œShe’s out back in the greenhouses—I think greenhouse B with the Georgia pines.”
    The woman smiled and as Frost started to turn away, he turned back, saying, “Can I just leave my things here?”
    â€œYou can put them inside the door if you’d like.”
    â€œFine,” Frost told her, as he caught up his baggage and started for the door.
    â€œJust inside here, young man,” the woman cooed.
    â€œYes, ma’am.” Frost smiled back, stepping inside the small hallway, realizing as he did it that something was wrong, that he was being stupid. He started to let go of the baggage, to straighten up, to snatch at the Browning High Power in his trouser band, when he felt—heard—movement behind him and tried to spin around on the balls of his feet; his right hand touched the butt of the Browning.
    It wasn’t actually pain, but a dullness; then bright floaters over his eye and a burst of light. Frost could faintly make out the worn Oriental rug smashing up toward his face as the blackness washed over him....
    Frost opened his eye, but all he could see was diffused light, no images. There was a sack or maybe a pillowcase over his head—he couldn’t be sure. He tried to move, but his hands were bound together behind him at the wrists and he was naked—he could feel the coldness of a stone floor under him. He tried moving again, this time discovering his ankles were tied as well and that when he moved his ankles there was pressure around his neck—some sort of noose.
    â€œYou awake?”
    It was a woman’s voice—he mentally bet with himself