Working Stiff

Mr. French suddenly bolted off the bed, barking furiously, louder than she’d ever heard him, and the shock threw her off the opposite side in instinctive reaction. She fumbled for the gun she’d left sitting out on the nightstand, found it, and crouched behind the bed as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

The pale square of the window. Billowing curtains. The cool breeze moving over her skin.

Mr. French, snarling and barking.

There was no one at the window. I didn’t open that. Someone else did. He may already be inside.

No. If someone had gotten in, Mr. French would have gone after him.

The next second, her bedroom door slammed open, and McCallister stepped in, took cover next to Bryn, and said, “What happened?” He was still in his suit pants and shirt, but his tie and jacket were off—that was a minor, fleeting detail, though. What she mostly noticed was that he’d come armed. His voice sounded a lot calmer than she felt. “Window,” she said. “I didn’t open it.”

Mr. French was bouncing up and down, ricocheting off the wall and snapping at the blowing curtains.

“Call him off,” McCallister said. “Let me check it out. Maybe you did and forgot.”

“I didn’t! And it didn’t open itself!”

“I know. Just let me check.”

She whistled, but Mr. French wouldn’t heel; he was fixated on the window, angrier than she’d ever seen him. McCallister shook his head and stepped out and moved like a ghost to the side of the window. Mr. French, apparently realizing he had backup now, stopped barking and stood at alert attention, watching as McCallister eased back the curtain and looked out. His body language stayed tense, even after he gave Bryn the all-clear sign and slid the glass closed. He checked the lock. “Not broken,” he said. “Someone must have slipped the catch and opened it. Not that hard to do, with these kinds of cheap locks. I just didn’t expect anyone to come up the wall. It’s a pretty rigorous climb.”

“Could you do it?”

He shrugged, which she assumed meant yes. Bryn sat down on the bed and imagined someone climbing up that wall—and without her will, that image morphed from a shadowy figure to Fast Freddy. She imagined him raising his head and grinning as he did it, and it was the memory of his weird, lewd smile that made her shiver. “Jesus,” she whispered. “He didn’t get in …?”

“Mr. French says no,” McCallister said. He reached down and patted the bulldog on the head; the dog growled in response, lifting his lips to show teeth, but didn’t bite. Just made the point. “I think the dog stopped him.”

If she hadn’t let Mr. French into the bedroom—which she usually didn’t, actually—he might have been in the other room, barking at the door. More time for Freddy—if it was Freddy—to get in and do … whatever he was planning to do.

Or—on the pleasant side—maybe it had been a garden-variety rapist/murderer. That, Bryn thought, would actually be a relief.

“I don’t think you should stay here,” McCallister said. “Please pack a bag.” It was, she noticed, in the form of a request.

“I’m not leaving my dog.”

“We’ll take him with us. Please.”

McCallister still seemed tense, and she wasn’t in any mood to be obstinate, or to argue about the twinge of obedience she felt even though he’d phrased it politely as a request. He was one of those people who was so normally unreadable that when he flashed actual stress, it had to be a real crisis. Plus, someone really had jimmied her window—whether it was Fast Freddy or not. Getting out of here didn’t sound like a bad idea at all.

Packing took about five minutes. Hell, as much as Bryn owned, she thought she could have packed to move house in under an hour, depressing as that was. McCallister checked his car thoroughly, inside and out, for tracking devices, hidden passengers, or explosive parting gifts before he allowed her to come anywhere near it. He even checked out the trunk. She felt that little frisson of revulsion when she imagined Fast Freddy hiding in there, like a trapdoor spider down its hole.

They’d gone about a mile from her house, taking apparently random twists and turns, when McCallister finally said, “I don’t see a tail.”

“That’s good.”

“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I’m switching cars.”

“You’re what?”

“I could have missed something. This isn’t a game, Bryn. It’s not television. I can’t afford to take a chance with our lives.”

“I thought I was hard to kill.”

His voice, when it came, sounded grim. “You’re not hard to hurt.”

McCallister got on the car phone and ordered up a second car from one of his Pharmadene henchpersons. Within half an hour, they’d pulled into a parking lot and switched vehicles with another man driving a similar car.

“Where’s he going?” Bryn asked.

“Anywhere but where we’re going. If anyone’s tracking him, it’ll be a wasted and lengthy trip.”

“Well, where are we going?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“In case we’re being monitored.”

He didn’t answer, but then, she really had stopped expecting him to make the effort to give her any actual information.

They left the downtown lights behind and drifted into suburbia, sleepy streets and darkened houses. He kept driving, and now that the adrenaline had worn off she found herself dozing, her head at an uncomfortable angle against the window. She must have faded out for a while, because when she jerked upright again McCallister was pulling to a stop in front of a massive stone wall pierced by an enormous, forbidding wrought-iron gate.

It slowly opened, revealing a moonlit blue-tinged gravel drive that was probably blindingly white in full day. The hedges were manicured and shaped as if they’d been taken to a high-end salon, not one leaf fluttering out of place. Bryn blinked as he drove up a long, winding path, past stately old trees and perfect rose gardens and a white gazebo large enough to host the New York Philharmonic for an afternoon concert.

A massive square block of a house appeared at the top of the next curving hill, illuminated with tasteful outdoor spotlights. The place was the size of a mall, Bryn thought, not to mention being so elaborate it could have been used in a movie with women in corsets and men behaving badly.

McCallister pulled up in front of the front steps, and the massive wooden door opened to reveal an actual butler. Well, she assumed he was, although he wasn’t wearing a tuxedo. More of a dinner jacket, which was remarkable enough at this late hour.

“Where are we?” Bryn asked.

“Home,” McCallister said. “Come on.”

This could not possibly be someone’s home. Not anyone who actually worked for a living. But McCallister walked around, opened her door, and she looked at Mr. French, who huffed something in dogspeak and jumped out to toddle along after him.

“Traitor,” she said, and grabbed her bag.

The butler was an older man, well into gray hair, but with a kind face that put Bryn at ease immediately. He took the suitcase from her without hearing any kind of protests, and said, “Miss Davis, I’ll take this to your room.”

“Give her the Auburn Room, Liam. I want her in a defensible position,” McCallister said. The butler nodded briskly and went up the stairs with her bag, leaving her and Mr. French to gawk at the huge, vaulted entry hall. It was some odd shape—octagonal, maybe—with three doors angled out of it, plus the staircase sweeping grandly into the shadows. She had an overwhelming impression of age, solidity, and above all, wealth. The paintings. The tapestries. The richly colored rugs on the floor.

“Welcome,” McCallister said, “to the ancestral millstone around my neck. Before you ask, yes, it’s mine. Or, more properly, it belongs to my family’s trust, and I’m allowed to rent it for a nominal fee.”

What did you say to that? Bryn finally settled for a subdued “Wow,” and studied a painting close to her. She’d seen that image before. They sold posters of it at Wal-Mart. “So you’re … rich.” Evidently, that was an understatement.

“Not really. As I said, most of this belongs to the trust; I just act as the administrator. I’m …” He thought for a second, and smiled. “A caretaker, I suppose. I avoid the place as often as possible, anyway. Liam is more than capable of running the enterprise without my interference.”

“But it belongs to your family.”

“No, to the trust. It belonged to my father. And my father didn’t leave it to me.” McCallister looked around for Mr. French, who was sniffing a low-hanging tapestry quite carefully, flat nose buried in the probably priceless fabric. “Ah, would you mind …?”

“Come here, dogface,” she said, and scooped him up. He squirmed, but she held him. God forbid the mutt should pee on anything in here; she’d be in debt for the rest of her life. “Who did your dad leave it to?”

“My brother,” McCallister said. “He died.” That was short, unemotional, and didn’t invite any more questions. “Let me take you to your room.”

“The Auburn Room,” she said. “Is everything named that pretentiously around here?”

“Be nice. I could have put you in the Aubergine Suite.”

“My God.”

“I’m two doors down,” he said. “If you need anything, you can press the button for Liam, or come get me. Don’t go wandering by yourself.”

“Ghosts?”

“None that would bother you.” Again, there was that slammed conversational door. McCallister jogged up a few steps, then turned and looked back at her. “Something else?”

She paused, hand on the railing. “What is your room called?”

“Patrick’s room,” he said. “But it used to be called the Black Room.”

Somehow, she wasn’t at all surprised. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">