Ken Douglas - Death Glitch

Seconds later the double door went up and Izzy’s unasked question was answered. One car, a flashy red BMW sports car. And a lot of stuff. Amy pulled her VW in, parked next to the Beemer as the single door went up. Izzy pulled in, parked next to a mound of cardboard boxes. She was barely able to squeeze her little Raider in.

“ What’s in the boxes?” Izzy said.

“ Everything, including the kitchen sink,” Alicia said. “I’m an eBay junkie.” She laughed. “Sadly, I’m a neat freak, too, so there’s no room for most of this crap in the house.”

“ Then why do you buy it?”

“ I don’t know,” Alicia said. “I can’t seem to help myself.” Alicia wasn’t poor, didn’t appear to be watching her money. She lowered the door and Izzy and the dog followed her into the house.

“ Nice,” Izzy said once inside. The furniture was expensive, from the love seat and sofa in the living room to the designer lamps and the paintings on the wall, which all looked like original art.

“ You’ll be safe here,” Alicia said as Amy came in the front door.

“ I don’t know if I’ll ever be safe again,” Izzy said.

Mansfield Wayne paced his living room, with a wooden ruler in his right hand and with every third or fourth step he smacked the open palm of his left. He needed to feel the pain, needed to feel alive. He was seventy-seven years old, the same age as Isadora Eisenhower and, like her, he had terminal cancer. Cigarettes were the cause of his, Eisenhower, it seemed, was the victim of bad luck. He probably deserved his fate. She probably didn’t deserve hers.

Still, if one of them were to be spared, it should’ve been him. He ran an empire which employed thousands. Who was she? A woman concerned only for herself, that was plain to see, because if she had an ounce of concern for others in her condition, she’d’ve shared her secret. Nobody should be allowed to keep something like that all for themselves. It wasn’t right.

“ Stop it, stop it, stop it!” He flung the ruler across the room. He was Mansfield Wayne. He didn’t have to justify his actions. Yet, here he was trying to justify what he was about to do. He didn’t do that. He was a man who took what he wanted and who fought like hell when somebody tried to take what was his. Eisenhower had something he wanted. No, something he needed, needed desperately. He was going to find her, learn her secret and take it.

He thought back on what Peeps Friday had told him. It was a fantastic story, an unbelievable story. Mansfield didn’t believe in the supernatural. Didn’t believe in ghosts. Didn’t believe in God either. If he couldn’t see it and touch it, it didn’t exist for him. But this did.

He could spot a liar at fifty paces. Peeps Friday was a lot of things, but he was no liar. Peeps may not believe in what he’d seen on that DVD, but he was telling the truth about how he got it. And from what he’d said, those doctors believed what they’d seen. Still, he wanted to make absolutely sure. He had to know if Lila had shot Isadora Eisenhower. He had to hear it from her own mouth.

The doorbell rang.

“ Finally.” He went to answer it.

“ I came as fast as I could,” Lila Booth said.

“ Not fast enough!”

“ Mansfield, I work for you, but I don’t have to. You don’t get to use that tone of voice with me.”

“ Yeah, yeah.” He waved a hand in front of himself, started for the kitchen. His martini had been interrupted, it was time to rectify the situation.

“ I’m serious. I am not one of your lackeys.”

“ Sorry,” he said. “You want one?” He held up the shaker.

“ You know I do.”

He made one for himself, one for her.

“ It’s good,” she said after taking a sip.

“ Glad you like it.” He went to the dining room, took a seat at the table. She did, too.

“ So what was so urgent that I had to drop everything and come right over?”

“ Tucker says you went rogue, that you’re going to take out Amy Eisenhower, without clearing it with him. Or more importantly, with me.”

“ I’m trying to keep my temper here.” She slid her hand into the backpack she always seemed to have with her. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, probably because he’d been too excited to pay attention. She had a gun in there, probably more than one. She was the only person in the world who could get close to him armed. His security had been warned to leave her be when she approached him. She was never searched, never would be. She was a coiled snake without a conscience, but she was his snake.

“ Hold your horses. I’m not upset.”

“ Then why am I here?”

“ I’ll get to that.” He took a sip of his martini, trying to slow the conversation down so he could get his bearings. “But first I want you to know how much Tucker and I appreciate all you’ve done for us.”

“ I don’t go rogue.” She eased her hand out of the backpack. “Amy Eisenhower copied Tucker’s files to a CD. I got it back and I decided to take care of her before she got a chance to go to the authorities. And I decided to do it gratis, something I never, ever do. I was willing to do this for you, because Tucker was out of the country. Because I couldn’t get through to you. And because of our long association. But I made a couple mistakes.”

“ Go on.”

“ One, I left a message on Tucker’s voice mail. That was stupid, because he still had feelings for the girl. He told her grandmother, who threw a spanner into my plans.”

“ And the other mistake?” This is what Mansfield had been waiting for, hoping for.

“ I let my temper get the better of me and I took out granny. Shot her through the heart.” She shook her head. “It was a stupid thing to do. A waste of a good weapon. A waste of my talent. And I put myself at risk for no reason.”

“ You shot her through the heart.”

“ Yes.”

“ So it’s true.” He sighed. For the first time in many months he felt hope. A great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

“ Yes, she’s dead.”

“ I’d like to thank you for that.”

“ You wanted Granny dead.”

“ Yes. You’ll get your usual fee for that.” He gave her a smile, something he didn’t do often these days. “I would’ve wired the money as soon as I’d heard she’d been taken care of, but I had to hear it from you, that it was you who took care of it.”

“ I didn’t expect this.”

“ It’s okay, we appreciate everything you do for us and the last thing I’d want you to think is that we’d take advantage of you.”

“ That’s nice to hear,” Lila said.

“ Now about the granddaughter, Amy Eisenhower. I don’t want her dead.”

“ Don’t tell me you’re going soft because Tucker has feelings for her.”

“ Hardly.”

“ Then what?”

“ I want her alive.”

“ So you want me to leave her be.”

“ Not exactly. I’d like you find her and bring her to me. Alive. Double your usual fee.”

“ Go on.”

“ You get the extra money for two reasons. One, because you don’t get to kill her. I know how much you like to do that. And two, because this is between you and me, I don’t want Tucker to know.”

“ Why not?”

“ Because he has feelings for the girl, because she’s betrayed his trust and because now it’s personal. There was a time when I didn’t need you, because I took care of my own problems. I’m too old and too sick to go out and find her myself, so I need you for that, but I want to get my hands dirty with this one and I want to enjoy it. I want you to bring her here, drugged, with her hands cuffed behind her back.”

“ Why, Mansfield, I’m impressed.”

“ There’s more.”