Caldwell didn’t stop looking at the recordings from his security cameras, and he didn’t stop watching for signs that he was attracting interest. He took one more precaution. He bought a car. It was a black BMW 3 Series sedan, a lower-end model that cost him about forty thousand dollars, but it was new, and it had a powerful engine.
He bought it in the name of Henry Dixon with a check from Dixon’s account, because if he ever needed the car, he would no longer be Peter Caldwell. He had the side windows tinted as dark as they would make them, because if he needed the car he would be running. He drove it straight from the lot to the garage he had rented a few blocks away. He visited the car once a week and drove it to keep the battery charged and the engine lubricated. He slowly acquired another twenty thousand dollars in cash and stored it in the well where the spare tire was held.
He did everything he could to get ready, as though being ready for a disaster would keep it from happening. Then he waited and watched.
12
Caldwell was in Zoe’s room, lying beside her. The night was cool, maybe an early taste of fall, and there was a steady wind that made the big trees in the neighborhood rock back and forth and their millions of leaves set up a steady hiss and shudder. There was a new moon, so the sky was mostly dark. Caldwell was a little more on edge than usual. When he was in special ops the trainers had taught him to plan operations for nights like this. The additional darkness made it easier to move unseen, the unusual coolness made people shut their windows and muffled sounds, and the wind covered incidental noises.
Zoe’s breathing was soft, slow, and regular as she slept, still touching him, her bare arm across his bare chest, her long hair swept back behind her neck.
He closed his eyes and let sleep take him too. When he woke in the darkness, the dogs were both on their feet, staring at the closed door of the room. One of them began a low growl, and the other added to it.
Caldwell slid out from under Zoe’s arm, stood, and put a hand on each of the dogs to silence them. He stepped into his pants and shoes, picked up the gun he had hidden under them, then slipped his shirt on over his head. He kept glancing at the dogs. They weren’t agitated, just standing alert and ready, staring at the door as though they were awaiting a person’s approach. But the dogs wouldn’t imagine an intruder. They had heard or smelled something.
Caldwell opened the bedroom door an eighth of an inch and looked out into the hallway and past it to the living room. The room was empty and the apartment’s front door was still closed. He opened Zoe’s door farther and the dogs slithered out ahead of him. He stayed low as he moved into the open.
He slipped into his bedroom and looked at the monitor of his security system. The screen was divided into quadrants, and when he scanned them, he was relieved at first. What the four cameras were seeing wasn’t a street full of Chicago police cars or a federal assault team suiting up in military gear. But he saw movement. It looked like the shape of a man coming toward the front of the house. He tucked in his shirt and put on the sport coat with the extra ammunition, because it was dark gray and would make him harder to see. He looked at the monitor more closely.
Three human figures were on the front steps, one of them kneeling by the door, and the other two standing behind him to shield him from the street. Caldwell watched the man manipulating something with both hands. The dogs lowered their heads. Their approach must have been what the dogs had heard earlier. Now it looked as though the man was moving a pick and tension wrench in the front door lock. The man put something in his pocket, fiddled with the doorknob, and then stood up.
Caldwell slipped out of his room and closed the dogs inside. He hurried to Zoe’s room and shook her awake.
“Zoe, there are men breaking into the building. They’ll be through the front door and coming up the stairs in a minute. Get dressed, lock yourself in the bathroom, and lie down in the tub. Go!” He snatched up the clothes she had left on the chaise, took her arm and pulled her to the bathroom, pushed them into her hands, and shut the door.
He stepped into the kitchen and turned on the water in the sink, then went down to the end of the hallway and lay on his belly, the pistol in his hand.
There was the clicking of metal on metal, this time at the door of the apartment, twenty-five feet from him, then the clack as the dead bolt retracted into the door. The door opened slowly and a pair of male shapes stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the dim light from a streetlamp shining through the first-floor windows. They each held something in one hand, and he knew the objects had to be guns, but they looked longer than pistols.
From behind Caldwell’s bedroom door the dogs began to bark and snarl, and both men turned toward the bedroom and braced themselves for an attack, their guns ready. The dogs scratched at the bedroom door, but couldn’t get out. The scratching told the two intruders that the dogs weren’t able to get at them, so they stepped deeper into the apartment.