The Witnesses Read online

  Nothing.

  Where the hell is he?

  No attached garage, and since he knows the house is practically identical to his own, there’s no basement or attic, so—

  A knock on the door.

  He’s seized with fear. “Don’t answer it!”

  But again, Helen either isn’t listening or is ignoring him. She goes to the door and opens it up, and Ronald drops the binoculars in his blanket-covered lap.

  It’s the threatening guy from next door.

  He stares at his wife.

  Helen steps back.

  He says one sentence, full of menace:

  “You need to stop.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Lance moves quickly through the house, again hearing Sam’s plaintive yell—“Dad!”—and a moment later steps into his son’s room. They’ve been here only a few days and already the ten-year-old boy’s room is a cluttered mess. The bed is unmade, the temporary bookshelves are cluttered with rocks and books, and clothing is scattered across the floor like a whirlwind has just struck. Posters of San Francisco Giants players are taped up on the yellow walls.

  Sam’s face is red and he’s sitting in an old school chair, in front of a small desk that’s scattered with tiny white plastic bones. A cardboard box with a brightly colored image of a dinosaur—a T. rex?—is on the floor. He’s wearing blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and white scuffed sneakers.

  “What’s up, sport?” Lance asks, going straight to his boy.

  Sam jerks his chin to the left. “It’s Sandy. She just came in here and took my book about triceratops. Without even asking!”

  Lance rubs the boy’s light brown hair. Sam looks a lot like his mother. “Okay. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, can you get it back? And when are we leaving here? I’m bored.”

  “I’m bored, too. Let me go get your book.”

  Lance steps out and goes into the small bedroom next door, and what a difference. The bed is made. The small, open closet shows shoes lined up and clothes hung properly. There is a small desk with a chair—identical to Sam’s—but there’s nothing on it. Homemade bookcases line the far wall as well, but they are filled with rows of books, all placed in alphabetical order by author. Sandy, two years older than her brother, is on her bed reading a book, her back and shoulders supported by two pillows.

  The book has a dinosaur on the cover. Lance steps forward. “Sandy? Hon?”

  She ignores him, flipping a page, reading some more. Her blond hair—lightened by the North African sun—has been styled into two braids.

  “Sandy?”

  “Let me finish this paragraph, please.”

  Lance waits. Then she looks up, face inquisitive, light-blue eyes bright and intelligent.

  “Yes?”

  Lance says, “Is that Sam’s book?”

  “Yes.”

  “He says you took it without permission.”

  “I didn’t need permission,” she says crisply. “The book wasn’t being used. It was on the shelf. Sam is working on a dinosaur model. It has 102 parts. He can’t work on a dinosaur model with that many parts and read this book at the same time.”

  “Still, you should have asked permission.”

  “But I needed the book.”

  “Why do you need the book?” Lance asks.

  “Because I’ve read all of my books,” she explains. “I needed something new to read, and if I were to ask my brother for permission, he might have said no, and then I would still have nothing to read. So I did the right thing and took the book to my room.”

  Perfectly logical, Lance thinks, and perfectly Sandy.

  “But it’s his book.”

  “He wasn’t using it. I needed something to read.”

  Lance holds out his hand. “Give me the book, Sandy. You can borrow one of mine.”

  Her eyes widen with anticipation. “Really? Which one?”

  “Hannibal and His Times,” Lance says.

  His twelve-year-old daughter frowns. “By Lewis Chapman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dad, I read that last September. I read it from September 17th to September 19th.”

  Lance smiles. “That was the hardcover edition. The paperback edition is out, with a new afterword and a rewrite of several of the chapters. You could read it and compare and contrast.”

  Sandy seems to ponder that for a moment, nods, and gives the book on triceratops back to him. “Deal. How long before you can get me that book, Dad?”

  “In about ten minutes, I suppose.”

  She checks her watch. “It’s 2:05 p.m. I’ll expect you back by 2:15.”

  Lance says, “Of course, hon.”

  Back in Sam’s room, Lance gives his son his book back, and Sam smiles and says, “Thanks, Dad.” He takes the book and tosses it up on the near bookshelf and misses. It falls to the floor.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, Sam?”

  Sam returns to his toy dinosaur bones. “Dad, don’t forget your promise, about taking us to the Badlands later this summer. I want to help out on a dinosaur dig. You said you’d check with Professor Chang at school. You promised.”

  “I sure did,” Lance says, recalling that promise, made back when things were so much simpler and safer. “And we’ll see about that, okay?”

  Sam’s head is still bowed over the cluttered table. “See about what?”

  Lance quickly turns away from his boy, unable to speak, his throat thick, his eyes watering, thinking only one thing:

  We’ll see if we’re all still alive by the end of this week, never mind this summer.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ronald’s hand slips clumsily under his blanket, grabbing the .38 revolver. Helen backs into the house, followed by the big guy from next door. Damn it! If he were the man he once was, he would have answered the door and gone face-to-face with this clown, and he would be standing in front of his wife, protecting her.

  He slips off the oxygen tubes from his nose and heaves himself off the chair. Wrapping the blanket around himself and the hidden revolver, he strains to walk as fast as he can to his wife. “What the hell is going on here?” he shouts, hating how weak and hoarse his voice sounds. Being a cop and then a security officer means having a voice of command, and that command voice is gone.

  The large man from next door has a voice that is strong and forceful. He says, “I apologize for bothering you, but I’m hoping you’ll stop.”

  He’s not too tall or too wide, and his dark clothes are loose, but Ronald senses his power and ability. He knows that man would be able to meet any challenge, whether it’s intimidating a neighbor or a street gang.

  “Stop what?” Ronald asks, standing next to Helen, holding the blanket around himself with one hand, his other hand hidden underneath, grasping the revolver. The damn thing feels as heavy as if it’s made of lead. He feels guilty, on the spot, like a young boy called to the front of the class by the teacher.

  His observing, his viewing, his…spying. Had he been noticed? Was this bulky guy going to threaten him and Helen?

  The man smiles, but it doesn’t comfort Ronald. The smile just shows perfect white teeth—no humor, no friendship. “If you could please stop parking your car on the street so close to our driveway,” he says. “It makes it challenging to back out of our driveway without scraping our fender.”

  Helen clasps her hands together, steps forward, going into peacekeeper mode—like when they were raising their two hellion boys—and she says, “Absolutely. I’ll go out in a few minutes and move it. Sorry to be a bother.”

  The smile widens, which makes the man look even fiercer. “No bother at all.” And he shifts his gaze, looks straight over at Ronald. “You be careful, too, all right?”

  The man turns and slips out. After Helen shuts the door, Ronald says, “Why did you say yes so quick? I wanted to ask him who he is, what he’s doing here, how long they plan to stay. Damn it.”

  He struggles to turn around without tripping over the blanket and goes
back to his chair, where he settles back down, puts the oxygen tube back under his nose, and takes a deep breath through his nostrils. He tries not to let the tickling in his lungs explode into a full-scale coughing fit.

  Helen comes over, hands still clasped, face nervous. “I just wanted him out of the house. Can you blame me?”

  Ronald looks out the window. The big guy is at the house, going into the front door, but, damn, look at how his head moves. He’s always scanning, always looking, always evaluating.

  “Did you hear him?” Ronald asks, turning back to Helen. “‘Be careful, too,’ he said. Like he knows I’ve been watching. Like he knows I’m carrying. That guy…he’s smart. And tough.”

  Helen stands by him, looks over the tidy grass and to the house. My God, Ronald thinks, for years they had seen tenants go in and out of that house, and, except for a couple of phone calls about noise complaints, it had been a peaceful place.

  Now? That simple little house seems as dangerous as a crack den.

  Or worse.

  Ronald asks, “Did you see his eyes? Did you?”

  “What about his eyes?” Helen asks.

  Ronald settles back into his chair, breathes deeply through his nostrils, and shifts the revolver around so it’s easily accessible. Memories come back to him, some of them dark indeed.

  “Back when I was on the job, even before 9/11, we’d get security alerts, and we’d be shown mugshots of various terrorists and shooters who could be a threat, who could be in the city.”

  The tickling in his lungs suddenly gets worse, and he coughs and coughs and coughs. Helen goes to a nearby little table, removes some tissues, and wipes his chin and lips, and he coughs some more.

  Ronald finally catches his breath, but he can’t stop wheezing. “All the mugshots of those men, they were white, black, brown, every skin color under the sun. But they all had one thing in common: the stone-cold look of a killer in their eyes.”

  He coughs one more time. “Just like him.”

  CHAPTER 6

  More than 3,600 miles from the suburb of Levittown, Gray Evans is sitting at an outdoor café in Paris, his long, muscular legs stretched out. Sipping another glass of vin ordinaire, he watches the world in this part of the City of Lights go by.

  This arrondissement isn’t the neighborhood near the Eiffel Tower, of green parks and the Quai d’Orsay, of pricey restaurants and American tourists strolling around on well-lit streets, of bateaux sliding along the Seine, carrying long rows of sightseers. Nope, this part of Paris is on the outskirts, with narrow streets, even narrower alleyways always stinking of urine, and angry-looking men walking in groups of five or six. At this time of night, not a woman is to be found here.

  Based on how dumpy the little café looked, Gray had half-expected to be served la viande de cheval. Still, the place served a nice steak frites. And the wine was cheap and filling.

  As he watches the people scurrying by on the narrow street, punctuated by the burping sound of a Vespa scooter, he spots his contact. A swarthy-looking young man with thick black curly hair, wearing baggy jeans and a tan sport jacket. Gray sips again from the wineglass, checks his watch, and decides to amuse himself by watching how long it will take for his contact to meet him.

  The young man walks up and down the far sidewalk, studiously ignoring Gray, and then makes a point of looking into a shop window, like he’s seeing if he’s being followed. Even the worst agent in France’s counterterrorist unit—Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure, or DCRI for short—would have spotted this clown minutes ago, even if said DCRI agent was blind in one eye and confined to a wheelchair.

  Gray checks his watch. Nearly ten minutes have passed and he’s about to go across the road and grab the kid by the scruff of his neck to drag him over to his table, but then the young man makes his move.

  He trots across the street like both ankles are sprained, and sinks into a chair across the small round table.

  “Bon soir,” he says, whispering, voice hoarse.

  Gray nods. The young man smells of sweat and cooked onions. Gray reaches into a coat pocket, slips out the torn half of a ten-euro note, the one with a Romanesque arch on one side and a bridge on the other, and slides it across the table, past the plates and silverware.

  The man has half of a ten-euro note as well, and his piece matches Gray’s perfectly. He grins, like he’s proud he’s done so well undercover.

  “My name is Yussuf,” he says.

  “Nice to meet you,” Gray lies. “Would you like something to eat? Or drink?”

  A quick shake of the head. “No. I have no time.”

  Gray smiles. “You’re in one of the finest cities in the West, with food and drink envied around the world, and don’t have the time?”

  Yussuf shakes his head again and keeps on looking around the street and café, like he’s expecting the entire force of the Paris Police Prefecture to rappel down these concrete and brick walls nearby and jump on his empty head.

  “We have a job for you,” he whispers.

  “I’m sure you do,” Gray says. “What is it?”

  A hand goes back under Yussuf’s stained coat and comes out with a slip of paper and a color photograph. Both are passed over and Gray looks down, without touching either the paper or the photograph.

  Yussuf says, “We need for you to go to America and kill a target. In a place in the New York State. Called Levittown.”

  Gray memorizes the four faces in the color photograph.

  “Why?” he asks.

  The young man seems taken aback. “I thought…an understanding had been reached earlier.”

  Gray shrugs. “The agreement has been reached, yes. But I don’t go in blind, ever. I need to know the why.”

  Yussuf reaches over the cluttered table and taps a face on the photo. “The target, here, it stole something from us.”

  “Don’t you want it back?”

  Yussuf draws his hand back. “It’s gone beyond that…a decision has been made, and a lesson needs to be taught.”

  Gray says, “All right, I can understand that. Anything else?”

  “The target…when you get there, may be with its family,” Yussuf says. “You should take that into account.”

  Gray looks down at the photo again, of the four smiling faces—dad, mom, daughter, and son. “Do you want me to kill them all?”

  Yussuf leans forward, lowers his voice even more. “Is that a problem?”

  Two scooters race by on the narrow road, horns blaring, young men sitting on the little machines yelling at each other. When it’s quiet, it’s Gray’s turn to lean forward.

  “No,” he says quietly. “Not a problem.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Jason Tyler has gone to more than half the continents of the world in service to his nation. He’s jumped out of planes, swum rivers, has fired weapons and has been fired upon, and has negotiated and dealt with people from Afghan tribesmen to the elite members of the British Special Air Service. But none of it has prepared him for dealing with this angry young American mother.

  “Look,” Teresa Sanderson says, arms crossed, standing in the kitchen, “I just want to go for a walk in the neighborhood, all right? Clear my head, stretch my limbs, get a bit of fresh air before going to bed.”

  Jason says, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t allow that. You know the rules. All of you must stay in my presence at all times. The only way you’re leaving this house is if your family joins you. And at this time of the night, nobody’s leaving.”

  Teresa walks to the kitchen door, puts her hand on the handle, like she’s daring him. “And what are you going to do if I open this door and walk out?”

  “I’m going to do my job,” he says, glancing away for just a moment. “My job…to defend all of you, to the maximum extent.”

  Teresa stares at Jason, and he stares back, and she says, “I’m sorry. I can’t stand this anymore.” She storms out of the kitchen and Jason hears the door to her and her husband’s bedroo
m slam shut. Voices are raised. He shakes his head and goes down the hallway, heading to the kids’ rooms.

  A knock on the first door, and the little girl says, “You may enter.”

  He opens the door and takes one step into the clean and tidy room. He says, “You all right, Sandy?”

  The young girl is in bed, blankets pulled up to her chest, a thick book in her slender hands. “I’m fine,” she says, not lifting her gaze from the book. “Why shouldn’t I be fine?”

  “Ah…” Jason has spent a number of days alongside this pretty young girl and still can’t figure her out. “Okay, just checking.”

  As he leaves, she says, “Oh, Mister Tyler?”

  “Yes, hon?”

  “What’s your birthday?”

  “Ah…May thirtieth.”

  “And the year?”

  He tells her the year. Young Sandy nods her head with satisfaction.

  “You were born on a Monday,” she says.

  He’s amazed. “That’s right,” he says.

  She returns to her book. “Of course I’m right. I’m never wrong.”

  The young boy’s mess of a room brings back fond memories of Jason’s own, when he gave his single mom such a hard time growing up in Seattle. The boy looks up eagerly and says, “Yeah, I’m fine. Look, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you a soldier?”

  Jason isn’t about to go into the details of being in the armed forces before working for one of the many intelligence services operating out there in the shadows, so he says, “Yeah, I am.”

  “You ever fire a gun?”

  “Lots of times.”

  “Can I see your gun?”

  Jason smiles. “Good night, kid.”

  Outside, the night air is warm and comfortable. Jason walks around the perimeter of the house, checking the windows, checking the doors. Sweet kids, sweet family. He hopes they will all be asleep in a while, because that will make his job easier. He doesn’t need a full night’s sleep—not for a while, and not for the duration of this op—but he will be happy when this job is done. He has survived and done well in circumstances that were much worse, in places that even the smartest American couldn’t find on a map.