When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [12]
I was halfway across the front porch, in a full, huffing rage, when he stepped away and opened the Jeep door. I realized that what I thought was a body was the wrong color to be an animal.
It was maroon. More like a duffel bag.
He turned to face me at the sound of my voice. He half waved, smiled that nearly irresistible smile of his, which I answered with a seething look that ought to have set him on fire on the spot, burnt him right to the ground.
“Morning,” he called. “God, it’s beautiful up here. This is heaven, isn’t it?”
Clutching my robe closed, I bent down, and grabbed up the “mourning” paper, as I call the Post, since it’s always so full of bad news.
Then I turned heel in my cocker spaniels and stomped inside.
Chapter 11
DISCRETION was critical.
It was a very warm and sticky afternoon in Boulder, but not under the tall and stately fir trees that lined the spacious and orderly backyard of Dr. Francis McDonough’s house. And certainly not in the sparkling blue twenty-five-yard pool, which was around seventy-two degrees, as it almost always was.
The pool was surrounded by white wrought iron, curlicued leaf furniture, big comfortable ottomans, a settee covered in floral Sunbrella fabric. Urns of seasonal flowers were spotted around the pool as well as canvas-topped market umbrellas.
Frank McDonough was doing laps, and it astonished him that almost twenty years after he’d been a Pac-10 swimmer at California-Berkeley he still loved to swim against the pace clock.
Dr. McDonough enjoyed his life in the Boulder area tremendously. His sprawling ranch-style house had an indelible view of the city as well as the plains to the east. He loved the bite and crispness of the air, the exquisite blueness of the sky. He had even gone to the National Center for Atmospheric Research to try and find out why it was so, why the sky out here was so blue? He had moved from San Francisco six years ago, and he never wanted to go back.
Especially on a day like today, with the Flatiron Mountains towering in the near distance, and his wife, Barbara, due home from work in less than an hour.
He and Barbara would probably barbecue black bass on the patio, open a bottle of Zinfandel, maybe even call the Solies over. Or see if Frannie O’Neill could be pried away from her animals out in Bear Bluff. Frannie had been a college swimmer, too, and Frank McDonough always enjoyed her company. He also worried about her, since David’s tragic death.
Frank McDonough stopped swimming in midstroke. He halted just as he was about to reach the south end of the pool and make his ninety-first flip turn of the afternoon. He’d seen a flash of hurried movement on the patio. Near the Weber grill.
Someone was out there with him.
No, more than one person was on his patio. There were several people, in fact. He felt a twinge of fear. What the hell was going on?
Frank McDonough raised his head out of the water and flipped off his dripping Speedo goggles. Four men in casual dress—jeans, khakis, polo shirts—were hurrying toward him.
“Can I help you guys?” he called out. It was his natural instinct to be nice, to think the best of people, to be polite and courteous.
The men didn’t answer. Odd as hell. A little irritating. Instead, they continued walking across the deck toward him. Then they started to run!
A table went over on the deck. Votive candles broke, newspapers and magazines flopped on the deck.
“Hey! Hey!” He looked at them in total disbelief.
All four of them had jumped into the pool’s shallow end with Frank McDonough.
“What the hell is this?” McDonough started to yell seriously at the intruding men. He was confused about what was happening, frightened too.
They were on him like a pack of dogs. They grabbed his arms and legs, pinned them, twisted hard. He heard a sickening crack and thought his left wrist had been broken. The fast, powerful movement hurt like hell. He could tell how powerful they were because he was strong, and they put him down as if he were a ninety-pound weakling.
“Hey! Hey!” he yelled again, choking on a