And here, on the screen, out of the west and out of the recent past, come the fugitive brother and sister, approaching hand in hand along the sidewalk, both of them looking this way and that, as if expecting to be assaulted from one quarter or another, as indeed they ought to expect.
When they pass beyond view, Zabotin finds them in the video archives of the second camera, which covers the parking lot and the street beyond it, then locates them once more in the east-facing-camera. They walk away into the dripping night, pause at the nearby corner to wait for the pedestrian-control signal to flash from DON’T WALK to WALK, and then continue east across the intersection. On that southeast corner, they stop for a moment, perhaps surveying the way ahead, considering their options.
Judging by the absence of business signs and a convocation of shadows in that next block, the commercial area gives way to some kind of mixed-use zone.
The twins enter a crosswalk again, proceeding to the northeast corner of the four-way intersection, where they continue directly east, past what appear to be two stately old houses.
Although Zabotin has sprung for high-definition cameras, they are intended only for short-range surveillance. As the Shukla twins venture farther from the QuickMart, they seem to deliquesce as if they were never of real substance, but only a pair of rain spirits now dissolving in the aftermath of the storm. The many reflective wet surfaces of the newly washed scene, flaring and scintillant in the rush of vehicle headlights, conspire with the shadows, which swell and shrink and shiver in the same sweeping beams, transforming the fugitives from flesh into fading mirage.
In the last moment of visibility, the twins appear to turn left, off the sidewalk, moving toward a puzzling geometry of colored lights that are not a business sign.
“Scan backward and play those few seconds again,” Carter Jergen says. Zabotin does as told, and Jergen reviews that brief piece of video not once but four times before, at his direction, the Russian émigré freezes the image at the penultimate moment. Jergen taps the screen with a forefinger. “These look like car shapes. But what are those weird lights beyond them?”
“Stained glass,” Zabotin says. “Church windows.”
“What church?”
“Mission of Light.”
Jergen looks at Radley Dubose, and the big man says, “Why would they go to ground in a church?”
“People in trouble have taken sanctuary in churches as long as there’ve been churches.”
Dubose shakes his head. “Not anybody I know.”
Eager to be done with this, Ivan Zabotin swivels in his chair to face Jergen. “Sir, Mr. Agent Jergen, what else, what anything, can I do for you?”
“You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Zabotin. All you need to do now is forget we were ever here. This is a matter of national security. Were you to discuss our visit with anyone, even with your wife, you could be charged with a felony.” That is bullshit, but Zabotin pales. “A felony punishable by up to thirty years in prison.”
“Thirty-five,” Dubose amends.
“Nothing happened here, nothing to tell anyone,” Zabotin assures them, his brow now stippled with tiny beads of perspiration.
Jergen and Dubose leave the QuickMart mogul at his desk and return to the front of the store.
At the cash register, Tuong Phan reminds Jergen, “You owe for that candy bar you ate.”
“I didn’t like it,” Jergen replies, and he takes another of the same from the counter display. “It tasted like shit.”
Outside, he throws the unwrapped candy bar in a trash can.
“It really tasted that bad?” asks Dubose as they head to the Range Rover.
“No, it was good,” Jergen says. “But I have to watch my waistline.”
32
Time in flight, the longest clock hand having swept away almost half of the current circle of sixty, the witching hour aloft on its broom and fast approaching…
In the kitchen, a built-in secretary provided a place to plan menus. A wheeled office chair was tucked into the knee space.
Jane rolled the chair to the unconscious woman, wrestled her into it, and secured her wrists to the chair arms with two heavy-duty hard-plastic zip-ties taken from the tote bag.
The chair’s five legs radiated from a center post. She zip-tied each of Petra’s ankles to the post.
There could be no automatic assumption of sisterhood in this world of deceit and violence, and only those who had the most shallow understanding of human nature could assume otherwise. Yet Jane took no pride or pleasure in what she had done to Petra Quist, even if the girl-woman had tried to do worse to her. Any predator sharp of tooth and claw did not require great courage when chasing down a lamb, merely persistence and a little luck.
Petra wasn’t exactly a lamb, though neither was she the dangerous wolf that she pretended to be. Her carefully crafted tough-bitch image served as her armor, but her only weapons were attitude, a fearsome disregard for consequences, and what seemed to be an unquenchable, empowering anger.
When Jane was done with her, Ms. Quist might have no armor anymore, nor any weapons. If from this night forward she had to face a world of rapacity and depredation without her usual defenses, she might not last long; in which case, though Petra had to an extent spun the thread of her own fate, Jane would have some responsibility for turning her loose disabled.
In the end, there was no rational choice other than to accept whatever guilt might accrue to her by doing whatever must be done to Petra Quist in an effort to save Travis, as well as the innocents on the Hamlet list. Jane had no illusions that anyone got through this world unstained by the experience, especially not her.
The mansion featured two elevators, one in the front hall, the other in the spacious butler’s pantry between the kitchen and the formal dining room. She rolled Petra into the latter, and they rode down to the subterranean level.
On poker nights, the man of the house—what passed for a man—usually arrived home between twelve-thirty and one in the morning. An hour would be enough for Jane to deal with this girl-woman and be ready to handle Simon Yegg.
But what if Petra had returned early because she knew that he would not be out as late as usual? Instead of an hour or more, Simon might come home in half an hour. Perhaps in mere minutes.
When Jane wheeled her captive out of the elevator, the virtual servant, Anabel, brought up the lights. The marquee blazed with hundreds of small bulbs, and the name of the home theater—Cinema Parisian—flowed above the marquee in blue neon cursive.
She maneuvered the office chair through the double doors with no problem, though it didn’t move as well in the carpeted reception area as it had on the limestone floors. She pushed it past the box office, through an archway, and parked the unconscious woman by the candy counter in the lobby.
Each of the wheels featured a flip-down chock that prevented it from moving. She engaged them all, so that Petra would not be able to roll anywhere if she regained consciousness.
At the lobby door, Jane said, “Anabel, lights out.”
Absolute darkness collapsed upon her, but she manually switched on only the theater-lobby lights before leaving Petra there alone.
She took the stairs rather than the elevator to the main floor, turning on lights as she needed them.
She revisited the kitchen only to get her leather tote bag. No need to mop up the shattered glass, the lake of vodka. Simon would not enter the house via the garage and would not ascend from there to the kitchen either by the stairs or the elevator; therefore, he would have no chance to be alarmed by this mess.
According to Sara Holdsteck, Simon’s most recent wife, he always reserved one of his limousine company’s cars and chauffeurs on poker night, because he enjoyed a few glasses of Macallan Scotch with the game. The car would return him to the front door, as the other limo had delivered Petra, and if all went well, Jane would be there waiting for him.