John Miller - Smoke and Mirrors

She managed to scoot forward, lie on her back, and open the doors using the bottoms of her feet. The heavy doors slid aside effortlessly and Alexa maneuvered into a sitting position. She yelped involuntarily at what she saw. Wearing a tightly stretched T-shirt, starched jeans, and cowboy boots, Jason Parr sat on the floor in a corner of the bathroom, staring out through wide-open but dry and frosted eyes. In death, he looked subtly different than she remembered. His mouth was open and his swollen blackened tongue protruded from his lips like a half-inflated balloon. Around his neck was the red silk tie that had been used to throttle him. The tie looked like the same one that the bellboys, clerks, dealers, and probably room service personnel at the casino wore as part of their uniform. The real Jason Parr looked as though he had been dead for a couple of days, which meant that the man she had gambled with was Paulus Styer.

She saw shadows under the door, and watched as the gold-plated lever dropped from the nine to the six o’clock position and was cracked open. There was a gentle rapping followed by a voice she knew but couldn’t quite place. “Ms. Keen. Are you in there?”

She felt momentary relief at hearing the familiar voice. That was replaced by horror as the man entered the room, and looked down at the corpse in the corner. “Oh, damn, you’re in quite a predicament,” he said in a honey-smooth Southern-edged accent.

When the man turned his gaze on her and smiled, she realized it was Styer in another nearly perfect disguise. Although the similarities to the man Styer was impersonating were more than superficial, his smile was an insincere imitation of the original owner’s.

“I see you’ve found me,” he said, switching to Jason Parr’s voice, indicating the body. “You’re an honest gal, but not a very careful one.”

Alexa glared at her abductor as she realized what he could do with his current disguise. Paulus Styer had found the perfect Trojan horse.

Brad met Winter in the Gardners’ foyer, and after following him to the master bedroom where a still-dressed Leigh was stretched out on the bed, he filled them in on his meeting with Klein. He didn’t tell them he suspected that Klein had been behind the plan to kill the Gardners, as the injustice would gnaw at them. The important thing was that the Gardners were no longer in danger and Cyn would soon be safe at home.

“He’s paying five million, in cash? Just like that?” Brad asked.

Winter nodded. “I think he would have probably paid more, Leigh. But it’s what you thought was fair and it is an amount he can live with.”

“What about Mulvane?” Brad said. “Does he know what he’s done?”

“He seemed convinced,” Winter said. “Hard to tell with a man like Klein. He gave me the impression that he has suspected some subterfuge on Mulvane’s part all along. After the deal is done, we’ll take the bonds, put them in Brad’s evidence safe, and you can move them to your bank when it opens.”

“I don’t care about the bonds,” Leigh said.

Winter asked, “Where’s Alexa? I want to tell her.”

“You didn’t see her? She took off to watch your back when I told her you went to the Roundtable.”

“No,” Winter said.

He opened his cell phone and dialed Alexa, his fingers trembling involuntarily. After three rings she answered.

“Yes?” she said.

“Lex!?”

“What’s up?”

“Where are you? Brad told me you followed me.”

“I saw you leaving the casino and as I was getting ready to follow you, I got a call from Deputy Director Hatcher. He insisted that I meet with some field agents from the Memphis office. No biggie. I’m driving to the FO now.”

“Okay. We’re doing the deal tonight at nine.”

“So you don’t need me right now?”

“No. I guess not. You scared the hell out of me is all. I was about to call in the cavalry.”

“I’ll be back from Memphis as soon as I can get away,” she said. “I want to be there when Cyn calls or shows up. You stay sharp, you hear?”

“There’s no danger. Klein will make sure Mulvane doesn’t pull anything.” Winter closed the phone and slipped it into his pocket.

“Can you imagine Mulvane’s face if a dozen armed deputies had thundered into the casino hollering out Alexa’s name?” Brad said.

“The only thing I know is that nothing is going to happen to Alexa on my watch. Anybody does anything to her, and it’s scorched earth time.”

Styer took the phone from Alexa’s ear, closed it, and removed the earpiece he’d used to listen in on her call. She was in an armchair, where Styer had placed her after carrying her from the bathtub, still bound. Paulus put the second phone into his pocket where she could see it. She had cooperated because Styer told her he had planted a bomb containing three kilos of Semtex in the Gardner house. The detonator was rigged to his cell phone. All he needed to do, if she tried anything rash, was to hit the SEND key. She had taken his word, seeing in her mind the faces of everyone inside the house. She knew he would not hesitate to kill them.

“So Cynthia’s alive?” she asked.

“She is indeed. You’ll see her very soon.”

She watched him, still so convinced by the disguise that to hear his Eastern European-accented English flowing from the familiar lips was as unnerving as having a dog talk to you.

“Why Winter?” she asked.

“I don’t understand your question,” Styer said.

“Why all this to kill Winter?” she asked. “What did he do to you?”

Styer sat in the chair across from her, crossed his leg, and studied her without answering.

“I understand you were supposed to kill him in New Orleans. Why did you lie-say you weren’t?”

Styer said, “He both knows and talks too much. He talks about me to the CIA and the FBI. I saw a photo of him meeting with the new leader of the shadow group that is seeking to kill me. I explicitly forbade him from looking for me as the condition for allowing him to rejoin his family and take care of the orphaned Porter girl. He chose to ignore that. Did he imagine I wouldn’t know everything? I thought he was smarter than that.”

“I know for a fact that he hasn’t been looking for you. A man he presumed was from the CIA spoke to him about you, in the guise of warning him.”

“I saw a picture of him meeting with a cell leader.”

“Somebody made sure you got it then. If they told anybody he was looking for you, if there was a picture of that meeting, it means they took it to spread the word, figuring you’d come after him so they could nail you. Doesn’t that make more sense?”

“Winter lied to you,” Styer said, rubbing his chin gently so as not to disturb the synthetic skin or the makeup that covered it. “He wants revenge for those old people in New Orleans.”

“You mean Millie and Hank Trammel?”

“That wasn’t personal. I explained that to him. In this line of work, there is often collateral damage.”

“The Trammels were like family to Winter. I don’t expect you to understand that. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re a killer. He isn’t.”

“Don’t be so naive. Do you know how many men and women he has killed?”

“He only kills when there’s no alternative. His life is filled with people who love him. You don’t have any idea what that is like. Despite all of your expertise, you’re never going to be more than a heartless calculating predator.”

Styer smiled warmly. “Alexa. We are all only animals of varying intelligence. Our thoughts are no more than chemical reactions. Our movements are just electrical responses to stimuli. Like all living things, we are born, we live our lives, and we die and rot right off our skeletons. Family is accidental and random, based on sexual desire and fertility. Friendships are merely selfish associations. We join together as animals to feel safer, to pool emotions others have convinced us are necessary to feel better about ourselves. He has to kill me, as I have to kill him. As long as I live, he will not be able to feel the world is more than chaos, that there is a god, that anything matters. Conversely, as long as he lives, I will have to look over my shoulder, and I can’t allow that. I gave him a chance to live, but he can’t forget about me and what I did to those old people.”