Judas Horse_ An FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Mystery - April Smith [102]
“Nervous?” he asks.
“Terrified.”
He makes me recite it again. We drive up. We wait. At 8:00 p.m., Laumann comes out of the house and walks down the driveway. He plays tennis at the club on Thursday nights. His court time is always 8:30. We put on the ski masks. I get out of the car. Stone keeps the engine running. I walk up to the target. I make my speech and empty the gun into his chest.
“Less than a minute,” Stone promises.
“I’m still nervous.”
“You can’t miss at point-blank range.”
And I’ve been practicing. Not just shooting Stone’s pistol up at the range but figuring out how to switch the magazines—the blanks that Jason provided, for the live ones in the gun—in two swift moves.
“I’ve been thinking about his wife and kids.”
“Don’t. Focus on the target. You’ve done it before, or so you say,” Stone comments.
“That was emotional. This is cold.”
“You’re paying the tax, as promised,” he says flatly. “The tax on Slammer’s foolishness.”
“Okay, and then?”
“After you do this, the tax will be repaid.”
“And the family will be okay?”
“Everyone in the family will be okay.”
I pop a mint. No bad tastes, no bad associations. I’m not going to be suckered into the past.
As we follow him across the bridge, through the prism of stacked-up car windows, I get a glimpse of the victim’s neck. Just like any other commuter’s neck.
“You have to put the good round into him. You have to shoot him squarely in the vest. The adrenaline will be pumping,” Donnato warned.
“I’ll be prepared.”
“Get close. Knock him flat. He knows what’s coming, although I didn’t go into detail about the first shot.”
“Right!” I laughed a high and desperate cackle that was sounding more and more like Stone’s. “Who in their right mind would agree to be a walking target?”
Donnato: “A man with a guilty conscience.”
Waiting makes the tension in my chest unbearable. We sit in the truck, watching the dashboard clock. Dick Stone is running his game, and we are running ours. There are agents in the in-laws’ house and in the house next door. Those females with the empty strollers are undercovers.
I study the Wilkins’ house, the tacky hacienda that we raided in the dark, marking the curve in the bushes where I’ll make the switch. I fix it in my mind. For reassurance, I think about Donnato calling the shots from the stakeout. Stone is calmly smoking a cigar. He’s been on stakeout, too.
At 8:06 p.m. Laumann appears at the front door. A light goes on above it, signaling all is ready. He is carrying a tennis racket and wearing white. This is going to make a big mess. Stone and I pull on our woolen masks. He hands me the Colt .45 and I unlock the car door.
With a thousand hidden eyes upon me, I have never felt so alone. I walk half a dozen steps and start up the driveway, everything still and glittering and clear. My heart is hammering—more than hammering: It’s closing off my mind. I pass the crucial point in front of the bushes. I turn to block Stone’s view and switch the magazines, slipping the live one into the pocket of my black cargo pants, while all the time my legs keep marching forward, and Laumann in his whites keeps coming toward me in the precise evening light, floating, as if he is already dead.
His eyes meet mine. Behind the glasses, there is nothing but terror. They had to shove him out the door. Both of us have been pushed together by our respective sides—the bride in black and the groom in white—to meet in middle of this surreal driveway, a doomed blood wedding.
“ANIMAL KILLER!”
My voice comes from some distant gravel pit. I raise the gun with both hands, plant my knees, sight, and fire.
The first shot throws him backward. He’s down. I run up close. The shot was good; he is unhurt, squinting his eyes and twitching and stuttering, “No, no, no, no!” as I stand over him and fire. Two, three, four, five.