It was a go.
He waited. The cops rang the doorbell and talked to the nurse, then went back to the patrol car and called in a report.
He quietly made his way back to the rental Lexus and pulled out. A couple of minutes later, he was pulling up beside the Crown Vic parked outside the Pearce home.
He buzzed down the window, a smile on his face. He knew what the cops were seeing. A perfectly normal guy in a suit driving an expensive car, clearly lost. He pasted a sheepish expression on his face.
“Good evening…officers.” He let his eyes go wide, as if just noticing they were in uniform.
“Sir,” the uniform in the driver’s seat said.
Outlaw widened his smile. “I need some help here. I think I’m really off base. My GPS is on the fritz. I’m looking for the Gaslamp Quarter, and I’ve been driving around in circles for the past hour.”
“Well, you’re going in the wrong direction. You’ll have to—” The cop never finished the sentence. A red hole blossomed on his forehead and a halo of pink mist surrounded his head. The pink mist erupted around the other cop’s head, too. There had only been the softest of sounds, completely inaudible to anyone even five feet away.
There was no one within five feet. There was no one within a hundred feet.
Outlaw had heard the cops checking in. This would be a routine surveillance. They’d only check in a couple of times in the shift, but it would be well to move fast now. As sure as hell as soon as the two cops didn’t report in, this place would be swarming with cops.
He wanted the whole job over fast. They’d be searching airports, bus and train stations.
Time for backup.
Outlaw had a list of collaborators, ex-military all. Men more than willing to use their gifts and training in the private sector.
He didn’t need to check a Rolodex or his cell address book. Every number he needed in his life he had committed to memory. He pulled out his Thuraya satellite cell phone. The records were kept in Saudi Arabia. The US government could not eavesdrop and could never requisition the records. Not even the NSA could listen in.
The phone at the other end was picked up immediately. It was past midnight, but the voice was alert. Warren Wilson, ex-Army, specialist driver, good mechanic, good shot. But above all, he had a boat and he lived in San Diego.
“I’ll need a hand for twenty-four, maybe thirty-six hours. Fifty grand.” Outlaw kept the amount low to leave room for negotiation.
“You got it. What do you need?”
“A safe place for a couple of hours for an interrogation. Then a boat to take me to near Cabo San Lucas in Baja and a car from there.”
Silence for a moment, then Outlaw heard tapping sounds, someone on a keyboard. “Okay. I’m sending you the GPS co-ordinates of an abandoned waterfront warehouse right now. My boat will be anchored right outside. I’ll get a buddy of mine to meet us at Cabo with a car. It’ll cost you, though. $150,000 because I need to give something to my buddy down in Baja.”
“Deal.” Outlaw flipped the cell closed. That went well. He’d been willing to go up to two hundred grand.
He parked the car right in front of the Pearce house. Even if someone noticed it, it didn’t matter. The rental had been with fake ID and Outlaw had switched plates with another Lexus at the airport. By the time they straightened it out, he’d be south of the border.
He walked calmly around the house, gun held down by his thigh. Time to pick that pathetic back-door lock, get rid of the nurse and get the old man to the warehouse.
He had to move fast. It was late and he wasn’t even halfway through tonight’s killing.
“You okay?”Sam asked for the millionth time as he drove. He shot another worried glance over at Nicole, noticing all over again how fucking pale she looked. Every time he saw the dried blood on her temple he winced, because it could have been worse than some broken skin and clotted blood. It could have been a hole.
He knew exactly what that beautiful head would have looked like if the fuckhead had pulled the trigger. Gun residue stippling the creamy pale skin surrounding a neat round hole that wouldn’t be so neat and so round on the other side of her head.
Sam had seen so many dead faces, dead people in his time, hundreds of them. So it wasn’t hard to picture a Nicole with a hole in her head, collapsed to the floor of her very small, very pretty office where she created miracles with languages and was working hard to develop a fascinating young company. Sam knew exactly what her dead face would look like, he could see it on the insides of his eyelids when he closed his eyes.
Her eyes, so lively—the irises that amazing cobalt blue—lifeless, like beautifully colored marbles. Her skin, ivory with the rosiness of good health right underneath, would be the color of ice, and just as cold. All that grace, all that beauty, gone in an instant.
That was if she’d had a bullet blown through her head. Being thrown out of a ninth-floor window conjured up an entirely new set of ghoulish images.
Sam had watched, helpless, as the carabineer of a good friend snapped open during mountain training in the Cascades, dropping the man 150 feet to crash onto the rocks. Sam and the rest of the team had gone back down the mountain to pick up the remains of their fellow soldier. Every bone in the body had been broken and it had been like a sack of marbles except for the torso, which had cracked open and spilled out about a yard of intestine.
Nicole, after plunging nine stories to the sidewalk. Christ, that one was enough to give him nightmares, too.
