Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

Many nights, even after all these years, she dreams of being on the bars.

It’s 2000. The Sydney Olympics. Nicole is fifteen. Performing her routine on the uneven bars before thousands of spectators, hundreds of cameras, her fellow artistic gymnastics team members, her coach. She feels the chalk on her hands, then leaps for the lower bar, grasping it firmly, feeling the pull on her arms, spinning around it twice before having enough momentum to propel herself to the higher bar, and then she is off, rotating, the stadium, the people, flying past her field of vision, except she’s not seeing them. They’re not out there now. There are no spectators, no cameras, no fellow team members, no coach. There is only Nicole, and these two bars. There is nothing else in the entire universe for the next minute, which seems so much longer than a minute. When she is dreaming, this minute can go on for hours. She is soaring. Flying like a bird. Weightless. There’s nothing like it, no way to describe it. She thinks about how impossible it must be for someone who has walked on the surface of the moon to describe the experience. She is not walking on the moon, but when she is on the bars, the high she feels, can it really be all that different? Olga knows. Nadia knows. There is no way to put it into words. There are the bars, and then there is everything else.

The nights she does not dream about the bars, she dreams about the kills.

They are, in their own way, equally graceful. Swooping in on one’s prey as noiselessly and as swiftly as moving from the upper bar to the lower. No wasted effort. No superfluous moves. In their own way, a thing of beauty.

A perfect execution.

Whether her dreams are of uneven bar routines or assassinations, they are always gold medal performances. Never a silver. Never a bronze. Sometimes, her dreams meld. As she comes off the high bar, doing her final maneuver, preparing for her dismount, her hands now free, she sees in them a dagger. As her body, an instrument in its own right, descends, so, too, does the dagger.

Woe be to anyone who waits below.

She is on Orchard Street.

Nicole has the address. She has been briefed. She has a picture. Tall, with long, dark hair. The target will be there. Allison Fitch. She shares an apartment with a friend, but the friend works days. Allison works in a bar at night, so she sleeps through the day.

Nicole doesn’t know who this Allison Fitch is, or what she has done. She doesn’t know who, exactly, wants this woman dispatched, but given that it is Lewis who has engaged her, she can guess that this woman presents a threat to someone very important. Fitch has something on someone, and it may be in her phone. Nicole has been told to make sure she recovers it.

But none of this really matters to Nicole. It’s a job.

She pulls her black baseball cap down low on her forehead as she crosses Orchard. She feels in her pocket for the plastic bag. It’s a strong one. Even if the woman claws at it with her fingernails, it will not tear. Nicole does not use guns. She does not like guns. She does not like the noise they make. She doesn’t have to do much self-analysis to figure out why. From the moment she started out in track and field, she hated the starter’s pistol. Muscles tensed, breath held, waiting for it to go off. It was those last milliseconds, before the gun exploded, that she’d always hated the most.

She doesn’t like them now, even when they are equipped with a silencer. A gun is heavy, difficult to conceal. And it makes so little use of the body. Anybody can use one. Nicole likes physical involvement. Suffocation involves strength. So does thrusting with an ice pick. But today she will use a simple plastic bag.

No one has ever been arrested for carrying a plastic bag, although she is carrying other devices that would definitely interest the police if they were to stop her for any reason. She stands at the entrance to the building, and before entering glances up and down the street.

Nicole sees no police cars, nothing to worry her. A block away, there is a car, with some odd contraption strapped to its roof, stuck in traffic, but it is of no concern to her.

Nicole steps into the lobby of the building, studies the directory of names and buzzers. She presses several at once, careful not to buzz the one for Allison Fitch. A few seconds later, a voice crackles from the speaker. “Hello?”

But another, less cautious tenant has actually hit the button to buzz someone in. Nicole opens the door and enters the building, then waits for a couple of minutes. She doesn’t want anyone opening their apartment door to see who was hitting the buzzer. They’ll peer out, see no one, then go back inside.

This is a building without elevators. She climbs the two long flights of stairs and is relieved to encounter no one. However, even if she does, she knows that anything anyone might remember about her, other than that she is a white woman in her twenties, will be wrong. The brim of her cap, as well as the sunglasses, shields much of her face. Her hair is black this afternoon, but it will be blond tonight.

She determines, once she is in the hallway, that the apartment overlooking Orchard is the one at the very end of the hall. She approaches the door to apartment 305, but before going to the trouble of picking the lock, she tries turning the doorknob with her gloved hand, in case it is unlocked.

No joy. It’s locked. She reaches into the inside pocket of her windbreaker and finds the tool she carries for just such an occasion. As locks go, this looks like a simple one. If there’s a chain on the inside, that will slow her down for maybe another thirty seconds. She has several rubber bands in her pocket. All you have to do is tie the band to the chain, then loop the end of it over the knob. Then, as you close the door, the chain is pulled from the slot.

Practiced it a million times. Now, she can do it with her eyes closed.

The door opens.

The chain is not in place.

She opens the door a fraction of an inch and listens. She can see a sliver of kitchen, and beyond that, a small living room. A foldout couch has been left open, the covers askew. Two people share this apartment. If the target is not using the pullout, she must be in the bedroom. Nicole is guessing that room is to the left of the living room.

In one smooth motion, Nicole opens the door, steps in, and closes it behind her, all without sound.

Now that she’s in the apartment, she stands frozen, listening. A window must be open, because the sounds of the street are distinct. That’s a good thing. Although she moves stealthily, a bit of background noise can’t hurt.

Nicole listens for another person. Snoring, soft breathing. A shower running.

A heart beating.

She hears nothing, yet senses a presence. She takes a couple of steps toward the living room, waiting for a glimpse of the door into the bedroom.

She edges past a kitchen table set with two chairs that scream IKEA. A monthly calendar printout, with Allison Fitch’s bar shifts penciled on it, is held to the fridge by a magnet in the shape of a cat.

Jesus, she thinks. Don’t let there be a cat in here. She does not sense one. She doesn’t smell one. There is no bowl on the floor. But the kitchen is in some disarray. The sink is full of dishes. A half-full cup of coffee sits on the table.

Nicole can see the bedroom door, and into the room. It’s a typically small New York apartment bedroom. Eight by ten, maybe. Just enough room for the unmade double bed. A window on the far wall. Raised.

There she is.

Not in the bed, but standing at the window, her back to Nicole. Dark hair hanging to her shoulders. Her hands resting on top of the air-conditioning unit. Looking down at the street. She is dressed. Dark blue skirt, white blouse. The way she’s standing, she’s probably in heels, but Nicole is unable to see below her knee; the bed is in the way.