Trace (54 page)

    
He props the AR-15 on the edge of the sink and rests the barrel on the rotting windowsill. Through the scope he finds his first prey crouching behind the Dumpster, just a sliver of his black-clothed body exposed. Rudy squeezes the trigger and the rifle cracks and the agent screams, and then another agent darts out of nowhere and hits the dirt behind a palm tree and Rudy shoots him too. That agent doesn't scream or make any sound that Rudy can hear, and he moves from the window to the barricade in the doorway, angrily kicking and tossing tables and chairs out of his way. He breaks through his own barricade and rushes to the front of the house and smashes out the living room window and begins firing. Within five minutes, all five agents have been slammed with rubber bullets, but they keep on coming until Rudy orders them over the radio to halt.

    
"You guys are worthless," he says into his radio as he sweats inside the raid house that the training camp uses for simulated combat. "You're dead. Every one of you. Fall in."

    
He steps outside the front door as the agents in black walk toward the yard festively decorated for Christmas, and Rudy has to give them credit. At least they are not showing their pain, and he knows they hurt like hell where the rubber bullets slammed into their unprotected bodies. You get hit enough times with rubber bullets and you want to break down and cry like a baby, but at least this batch of new recruits is hard-faced and able to take the pain. Rudy presses a small remote control and the CD of the barking dog inside the house stops.

    
Rudy stands in the doorway and looks at the agents. They are breathing hard and sweating and angry with themselves. "What happened?" Rudy asks. "The answer's easy."

    
"We fucked up," an agent replies.

    
"Why?" Rudy asks, the AR-15 down by his side. Sweat streams down his muscular bare chest, and veins rope along his tanned, chiseled arms. "I'm looking for one answer. You did one thing and that's why you're dead."

    
"We didn't anticipate you having a combat rifle. Maybe assumed you had a handgun," an agent offers, wiping her dripping face on her sleeve and breathing hard from nerves and physical exertion.

    
"Never assume," Rudy replies loudly to the group. "I might have a fully automatic machine gun in here. I might be firing fifty-caliber rounds in here. But you made one fatal mistake. Come on. You know what it is. We've talked about it."

    
"We faced off with the boss," someone says, and everybody laughs.

    
"Communication," Rudy says slowly. "You, Andrews." He looks at an agent whose black fatigues are covered with dirt. "As soon as you took a round in your left shoulder, you should have alerted your comrades that I was firing from the kitchen window behind the house. Did you?"

    
"No, sir."

    
"Why not?"

    
"I guess I've never been shot before, sir."

    
"Hurts, don't it?"

    
"Like hell, sir."

    
"That's right. And you weren't expecting it."

    
"No, sir. Nobody said we'd get shot with live rounds."

    
"And that's why we do it down here at Camp Pain and Misery," Rudy says. "When something bad happens in real life, we usually haven't been briefed first, now have we? So you got hit and it hurt like hell and scared the shit out of you, and as a result you didn't get on the radio and warn your comrades. And everybody got killed. Who heard the dog?"

    
"I did," several agents say.

    
"You got a fucking dog barking like holy hell," Rudy replies impatiently. "Did you get on the radio and let everybody know? The damn dog is barking, so the guy in the house knows you're coming. A clue, maybe?"

    
"Yes, sir."

    
"The end," Rudy dismisses them. "Get out of here. I gotta get cleaned up for your funerals."

    
He steps back into the house and shuts the door. His two-way radio-phone vibrated twice from his belt while he was talking to the recruits, and he checks to see who is trying to get hold of him. Both calls are from his computer geek, and Rudy calls him back.

    
"What's up?" Rudy asks.

    
"Looks like your guy's about to run out of prednisone. Last filled a prescription twenty-six days ago at a CVS," and he gives Rudy the address and phone number.

    
"Problem is," Rudy replies, "I don't think he's in Richmond. So now we've got to figure out where the hell he might get his drugs next. Assuming he'll bother."

    
"He's been filling his prescription every month at the same Richmond pharmacy. So it looks like he needs the stuff or thinks he does."

    
"His doc?"

    
"Dr. Stanley Philpott." He gives Rudy that phone number.

    
"No record of him filling a prescription anywhere else? Not in South Florida?"

    
"Just Richmond, and I looked nationally. Like I said, he's got five days left of the most recent prescription, and then he's out of luck. Or should be, unless he's got some other source."

    
"Good job," Rudy says, opening the refrigerator in the kitchen and grabbing a bottle of water. "I'll follow up."

Chapter 48

    
Private jets
look like toys against giant white mountains that soar around wet black pavement. The linesman in a jumpsuit and earplugs waves orange cones, directing a Beachjet as it taxies slowly, its turbine engines whining. From inside the private terminal, Benton can hear Lucy's plane arrive.

    
It is Sunday afternoon in Aspen, and rich people with the fur coats and baggage of the rich move around behind him, drinking coffee and hot cider near the huge fireplace. They are heading home and complain about delays because they have forgotten the days of commercial travel, if they ever knew about those days. They flash gold watches and large diamonds, and they are tan and beautiful. Some travel with their dogs, which, like their owners' private planes, come in all shapes and sizes and are the best money can buy. Benton watches the Beechjet's door open and the steps lower. Lucy skips down them carrying her own bags, moving with athletic grace and confidence and without hesitation, always knowing where she's going even if she has no right to know.

    
She has no right to be here. He told her no. He said when she called, No, Lucy. Don't come here. Not now. This isn't the time.

    
They didn't argue. They could have for hours but neither of them has a temperament suited for long, loopy dissents filled with illogical outbursts and redundancies, not anymore they don't, so they tend to fire quick, rapid rounds and put an end to it. Benton isn't sure it pleases him that as time passes he and Lucy have more traits in common, but apparently they do. It is becoming more apparent all the time, and the analytical part of his brain that sorts and stacks and dispatches without pause has already considered or maybe concluded that the similarities between Lucy and him could explain his relationship with Kay as much as it can be explained. She loves her niece intensely and unconditionally. He has never quite understood why Kay loves him intensely and unconditionally. Now maybe he's beginning to know.

    
Lucy shoves the door open with a shoulder and walks in, a duffel bag in each hand. She is surprised to see him.

    
"Here. Let me help you." He takes a bag from her.

    
"I didn't expect to see you here," she says.

    
"Well, I'm here. Obviously, you are. We'll make the best of it."

    
The rich in their animal pelts and animal hides probably think Benton and Lucy are an unhappy couple, he the wealthy older man, she the beautiful young girlfriend or wife. It crosses his mind that some people might think she is his daughter, but he doesn't act like her father. He doesn't act like her lover, either, but if he had to wage a bet, he would bet that observers assume they are a typical rich couple. He wears neither furs nor gold and he doesn't look conspicuously rich, but the rich know other rich, and he has a rich air about him because he is rich, very rich. Benton had many years of living quietly and invisibly. He had many years to accumulate nothing but fantasies and schemes and money.

    
"I have a rental car," Lucy says as they walk through the terminal, which looks very much like a small rustic lodge of wood, stone, leather furniture, and Western art. Out front is a huge bronze sculpture of a rampant eagle.

    
"Pick up your rental car then," Benton tells her, his breath a pale smoke drifting on the bright, sharp air. "I'll meet you at Maroon Bells."

    
"What?" She stops on the circular drive out front, ignoring the valets in their long coats and cowboy hats.

    
Benton's hard, tan, handsome face looks at her. His eyes smile first, then his lips smile a little as if he is amused. He stands on the drive near the huge eagle and looks her up and down. She is dressed in boots, cargo pants, and a ski jacket.

    
"I've got snowshoes in the car," he says.

    
His eyes are fixed on hers, and the wind lifts her hair, which is longer than when he saw her last and a deep brown touched by red as if it has been touched by fire. The cold stings color into her cheeks, and he has always thought that looking into her eyes must be something like looking into the core of a nuclear reactor or inside an active volcano or seeing what Icarus saw as he flew toward the sun. Her eyes change with the light and her volatile moods. Right now they are bright green. Kay's are blue. Kay's are just as intense but in different ways. Their varying shades are more subtle and can be as soft as haze or as hard as metal. Right now, he misses her more than he knew he did. Right now Lucy has brought back his pain with a fresh cruelty.

    
"I thought we'd walk and talk," he tells Lucy, walking toward the parking lot as he announces intentions that are not negotiable. "We need to do that first. So I'll meet you at Maroon Bells, up there where they rent the snowmobiles, where the road's closed off. Can you handle the altitude? The air's thin."

    
"I know about the air," she says to his back as he walks away from her.

Chapter 49

    
On either side
of the pass are snow-covered mountains, and the late-afternoon shadows are settling low and wide, and in the high ridges to the right of them it is snowing. There's no use skiing or shoeing past three-thirty, because darkness comes early in the Rockies and by now the road they are on is freezing over and the air is biting.

    
"We should have headed back sooner," Benton says, stabbing a ski pole ahead of his leading snowshoe. "The two of us are dangerous together. We never know when to quit."

    
Not content to turn back after the fourth avalanche marker where Benton had suggested they stop, they kept shoeing steadily uphill toward Maroon Lake, only to turn back not even half a mile before they could see it. As it is, they'll barely make it to their cars before it is too dark to see, and they are cold and hungry. Even Lucy is worn out. She won't admit it, but Benton can tell the altitude is getting to her; she has slowed down considerably and is having a hard time talking.

    
For a few minutes their snowshoes scrape over the crusting snow on Maroon Creek Road, and the only sound is their scraping and crunching and their poles puncturing the glazing rutted snow. Their breathing is quite smoky now but quiet enough, and it is only now and then that Lucy takes in a lot of air and blows it out. The more they talked about Henri, the more they walked, and they've gone too far for their own good.