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Hearing soft footfalls on the staircase, they turned, crouching down, pressed back against the walls. Maria-Elena’s beautiful daughter came floating up the stairs as if on a cloud, trailing her extravagant robe behind her. Reaching the landing, she turned to her left, moving into the west wing and vanishing behind the heavily carved mahogany door to the master suite.
Bourne and Rebeka exchanged glances before they went back to work. As before, Bourne put his ear to the bedroom door, but this time he heard, very faintly, the sound of ru
Bourne slipped inside the room, Rebeka following him soundlessly. The shower was on, the door to the bathroom slightly ajar. Signing that he would go in while she checked the closets, Bourne stole across the bedroom and, turning his body sideways, tapped the door slightly and slipped through the wider opening into the steam-bound bathroom. Bright lights were on, blindingly reflected off the shiny white tiles.
In one motion, Bourne was across the space, his arm extended, hand pulling back the opaque shower curtain. Water streamed from the showerhead, cascading down on empty space. There was no one in the shower.
Understanding bloomed. With an inarticulate growl, Bourne whirled, retracing his steps, out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. Rebeka, half inside the closet, turned as he came in. As she did so, Harry Rowland, emerging from the depths of the closet, slammed his fist into her side, where she had been knifed in Damascus six weeks ago. Before Bourne could move, he had a knife across her throat. From behind her, he gri
He moved infinitesimally, shifting something Bourne couldn’t see because Rebeka was in the way. Then he punched her in the side, and she hissed her pain through clamped teeth. The bloodstain widened.
She stared at Bourne with bloodshot eyes.
“Let her go, Rowland,” Bourne said.
“Is that a request or a threat? Either way.” Rowland shook his head.
“This fucker has been following me halfway around the world, and now you have joined the hunt.” He smiled with his teeth. “See, this is what it’s like to regain your memory.” Nodding, he continued: “Oh, yeah, I know who you are, you poor amnesiac freak. I actually feel sorry for you, living half a life, carrying that shadow around with you, day and night, awake or asleep. A nightmare of unimaginable proportions.”
Rebeka moved and he struck her again in the same place.
Blood welled up out of the fabric, dripped onto the floor. “Only I know what it’s like to have no past, to be adrift in the present.”
“What do you want?” Bourne was seeking a way to forestall more damage being done to Rebeka.
“I want an end to the hunt. I want your deaths.”
Bourne could see Rebeka gathering her reserves of strength, and he knew for what. He signaled with his eyes for her to stand down, to do nothing. I have a plan, his eyes said. Let me handle Rowland.But she ignored him, drew on her training, fierce and indomitable.
“There’s another way out for all of us,” Bourne said, doing whatever he could to distract Rowland an instant before Rebeka made her move.
Afterward, Bourne could not determine what went wrong—was Rebeka too depleted by the pain? Rowland too fast? She moved in a blur, he countermoved into her, the blade of his knife penetrating her side even as she whirled, delivering a blow to the point of his chin. He staggered back, letting go of her, but she reeled back, the knife buried to the hilt in her side, and, as Bourne moved forward, collapsed into his arms. Lifting her off her feet, Bourne ran out of the bedroom, down the hallway to the door to the basement. The plan of the house was clear in his mind, everything el Enterradorhad told them about the basement echoing the only promise of escape. With Rebeka lying bleeding in his arms, he could think only of escaping from Maceo Encarnación’s estate and getting her to a hospital as quickly as possible.
He took her down the concrete stairs. With a flick of a switch the basement blazed with light, illuminating the space and its contents.
He found a flashlight in a tool chest and switched it on. Crossing to the electric panel, he cut the power to all the breakers. The lights went out, not only down in the basement, but all through the house, along with the alarm system.
“ In the center of the basement is a storm drain,” el Enterradorhad told them. “ The water table beneath the house dictates a large one.”
Large enough to accommodate a human being.
Using the flashlight’s beam, Bourne found the drain. Rebeka moaned as he set her down. The hilt of the knife still stuck out of her side. He could not pull it out without a resultant gush of blood.
Even if he bound the wound, it would bleed far more than it was now.
Curling his fingers around the grate that covered the drain, he hauled upward. It wouldn’t budge.
All of a sudden, he heard the sound of ru
Charles Thorne, in his enormous king-size bed, drifted restlessly in and out of sleep.
He heard the front door click closed, and he sat up. Or had he dreamed it? He heard soft footfalls coming toward the bedroom. He knew the gait as well as he knew his own.
His wife was home.
“Did I wake you?” A
“Would it matter?” He was trying to shake the sleep out of his head.
“Not really.”
That exchange, as much as anything, defined their relationship. A marriage fueled by hot sex had been transformed into a marriage of convenience as the chemicals cooled and dissolved into the routine of daily life.
He watched his wife as she strode into the bedroom, crossing to her dresser, where she began to take off her jewelry.
“It’s almost seven in the morning. Where were you?”
“The same place as you. Out.”
Staring at A
What has become of me?he wondered. How did I wander so far off course?There was no answer, of course, apart from the obvious one:
Life happened, one decision at a time, a tiny incision in a rock face becoming a landslide under which he was now in imminent danger of being buried.
Naked, A
A shadow passed across him and he froze.