Дэвид Балдаччи - The Sixth Man

Sean parked his car, got out, and started walking. He turned up his collar both because of the cold and also to help hide his face. Dukes’s house was a small, vinyl-sided two-story with a minuscule front porch. There was also a two-car garage that Dukes had pulled into. Sean watched the garage door crank down on its chain track.

About fifteen seconds later the lights came on inside the house. Probably the kitchen, thought Sean, since most floor plans followed that design.

Sean kept walking, turned left at the next block, and looked for the other car. The street was dark, no lights except for meager ones coming from the occasional house. People here were apparently early to bed. Sean could see his breath and not much else. His gaze swiveled from side to side. The houses here had garages, too, and if the guy had pulled into one, Sean had lost him. He mentally kicked himself. What he should have done was keep driving after he knew where Dukes lived until he reached the next block and then wait there to see what house the other car had turned into. It was a mental error leading to a tactical mistake that a man like Sean King deemed personally unforgivable.

He had drawn near to a dirty, heavy-duty Ford F250 workhorse of a truck parked on the street in front of a two-story identical twin of Dukes’s house when it happened.

The car he’d been looking for had been hidden by the mammoth truck. It pulled out hard and fast, its engine whining with the effort, and bore down on him. Sean threw himself into the bed of the truck. He landed on top of some tools and a coil of heavy chain that jabbed hard into his ribs and stomach. When he looked over the edge of the truck’s bed, the only thing he saw were the winking lights of the car before it turned back onto the lead-in road. A few seconds later the car and its driver were gone. Sean drew a short breath and pulled himself up. He felt around his rib cage where the tools and chain had impacted.

The lights in the house snapped on. Sean clambered out of the truck as the front door of the house opened and a man was framed there in the light. He had on boxers and a white T-shirt and his feet were bare. In his hand was a rifle.

“What the hell’s going on?” the man bellowed, as Sean came into view. The man edged the rifle muzzle in his direction. “What are you doing to my truck?”

A dog started barking from somewhere.

“I’m out looking for my dog,” Sean said, pressing one hand against his side where he felt something wet. “It’s a white lab, named Roscoe. I was here visiting Mrs. Dukes on the other block and he jumped out of my car. I’ve been looking for him for over an hour. I thought he might have jumped in the back of your truck. I’ve got a truck just like this and he rides in the back. I’ve had that dog for eight years. I… I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

The gun barrel lowered as a woman in a pullover sweater and leggings joined the man at the door. The man said, “Our old mutt just died. Like losing a kid. You want me to help you look for him?”

“I appreciate that, but old Roscoe never did like strangers.” Sean pulled out a piece of paper and wrote something on it. “Here’s my phone number. I’ll leave it in the back of your truck. You see Roscoe, you can call me.”

“Okay, will do.”

Sean put the piece of paper in the truck bed and pinned it there using a can of paint that was in the truck.

“Thanks, and good night. Sorry to disturb you.”

“No problem. Hope you find him.”

Thank God for dog lovers.

He walked on, got in his car, and drove back to Martha’s Inn. He limped up to his room. He’d banged his leg jumping into the truck. He took off his shirt and examined the bloody puncture wound in his side. That had also come from landing on a pile of tools and chains in the back of the truck. As he cleaned himself up, Sean wondered whether he had just encountered Ted Bergin’s killer.

He gingerly lowered himself into bed after downing a couple of Advils. He was going to be stiff tomorrow. He mentally chastised himself for not getting the license plate number of the car. But as he thought about it, he never remembered seeing it clearly.

He picked up the phone and called Eric Dobkin. The man was now on duty, riding in his state cruiser. He was about fifteen miles from Martha’s Inn. When Sean explained to him what happened, Dobkin thanked him, said they’d get a BOLO out on the car and driver, and clicked off.

Next he called Michelle’s cell phone. There was no answer. That was unusual. She almost always answered her phone. He phoned again, left a message asking her to call him. Hundreds of miles away, he felt helpless. What if she was in trouble?

He lay back against the pillow, trying to make sense of everything that had happened thus far but finding no answers.

MICHELLE DUCKED down behind Bergin’s sedan, her hand on the butt of her pistol. She’d felt the vibration of the phone in her pocket but didn’t have time to answer. She crab-walked to the rear of the car and tried the garage door. It was locked. She found the locking mechanism, turned it, and pulled upward. The door was heavy, but she was strong. Leverage wasn’t the problem. It was the sound. The running track and pulleys of the door must not have been lubricated in ages. Lifting it only a few inches caused a screech that hammered in Michelle’s ears.

She had just given away her position to whoever was in the house and gotten nothing in return for her troubles. She set the door back down and hustled to the front of the car. The door into the house was right there, only she had a feeling that walking through it right now would not be good for her health.

It might be the cops. It might be the FBI. If so, why didn’t they announce their presence? If they think I’m a burglar, they might not. And if I announce myself and it’s not the cops? Classic Catch-22.

She looked around the twelve-by-twelve box she was trapped in. Neither door was an option. That left the small square of window that opened out onto the side yard, away from the front door. She snagged a can of WD40 from the worktable, undid the window clasp, sprayed the track with the lubricant, slid up the window, thankfully with virtually no noise, and hoisted herself up and through, landing on her backside in the grass. She was up in an instant, her gun out, her nerves calm, her eyes and ears alert. She came around the side of the garage and surveyed the area. Only her Toyota was visible. In any event she would have heard another car pull up, so she now assumed it was not the cops or the FBI. They tended to make lots of noise when no hostages were in play.

Whoever was here had left his vehicle somewhere else and come on foot. That was clandestine. That smacked of nefarious purpose. That indicated a direct threat to her safety.

She hit the ground as soon as she heard the slide on the pistol being racked back. The round struck to her right, plowing into the dirt and covering her with grass and particles of compressed earth. She rolled to her left, fired twice in the middle of the maneuver and in the direction of the shot aimed at her. She did a half crouch, glimpsed a figure from across the yard, fired again, and threw herself behind a tree next to the garage.

Had she heard a scream? Did her round strike home? She’d seen a figure, fired right at it. No more than twenty meters. Even under these conditions she should have–

Her back to the tree bark, Michelle gripped her pistol with both hands and listened. To have nearly hit her, the shooter couldn’t have been in front of the house. He had to be off to the right side. Perhaps across the gravel drive, in the woods on the other side. It had been a pistol; she knew that from the sound of the shot and the earlier rack of the slide. If the shooter was across the street, that was a good thing for her. At that range and at night, a direct hit from a pistol would be beyond lucky.