Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

“All right.” She folded her arms and waited. “So?”

He took a deep breath and released it slowly. He had been dreading this, but he reflected that it had already begun: he had taken her gun and her phone, and she knew it. “How did those two men know that you and I were going to meet at that house in Malibu?”

She looked shocked. “Are you sure?” she asked. “What makes you think they knew it?”

“They arrived after I did. They might not have known I was already there, but they certainly knew I would be. I think that’s why one guy came ahead alone. They wanted to see whether I had arrived.”

She eyed him skeptically. “How could they possibly have known?”

“How could they possibly have gone to a particular block on a narrow, dark street in Malibu to find me if they didn’t?”

In the light from the bathroom doorway, he could see her eyes. She had been rigid and tense, but now she was beginning to be frightened. “You’re scaring me. Do you think they tapped our phone call? That they heard what we were planning, and then came to wait for us?”

He shook his head slowly, never taking his eyes off hers. “We never said aloud where we were going to meet, remember? You said it was the place we once looked at together.”

“Did they follow you?”

“No chance,” he said. “I took a taxi to the edge of Malibu. I went down to the beach for a time. Then I went back up on the road and walked there that way after it was dark.”

“Then maybe they followed me,” she said. “Oh, Robert, I’m sorry. I never saw them.”

“You got there after they did.”

She said, “This time, yes. But I drove down there earlier. I didn’t want to sit around in a hotel waiting and then run into traffic and be late, so I left early. I drove through once as soon as I got to Malibu, just to be sure I remembered which house it was. Then I went to a movie.”

“Why didn’t they follow you to the movie, and stick with you? It’s a great place to meet someone.”

Diane shook her head, her body rocking impatiently. “How do I know? I don’t even know if they did follow me. They didn’t find me, did they? They found you.”

All the time while Diane was talking he watched her. He could actually see her in the act of thinking: grasping at alternative explanations, but rejecting this one as too transparently foolish, that one as incriminating. “No matter what they saw,” Mallon pointed out, “they couldn’t have known that the time for them to show up was ten.”

She shrugged. “Then they did tap the phone call.”

“No,” said Mallon. “They didn’t. You told them.”

“No.” Diane began to move on the carpet, pushing herself slowly to get farther away from him. “No, I didn’t. I would never do that. I don’t even know who they are, and I’m your friend. I work for you. We’ve known each other for eight or nine years. Why would I want to help somebody kill you?”

Some instinct or memory or warning came into Diane’s mind, and she stopped moving away. She seemed to have difficulty preparing herself. “There’s no reason at all. We can’t let ourselves get paranoid and turn on each other,” she said, and she began to move a bit closer.

Mallon could see what she was thinking, as though it were printed on her forehead. She knew he was armed. She did not want to be ten or twelve feet away from him, close enough for him to be sure of hitting her if he fired, too far away for her to do anything to stop him. She was smiling with a sincere, concerned look in her eyes as she moved closer. Without any shade of change in her expression, and without a change in the direction of her movement, she sprang.

Mallon’s reaction was a simple reflex, a lunge to the left to avoid her. She managed to land a single, hard blow that missed his throat but stung his chest near the shoulder. Her other hand was already at his jacket pocket, groping for the gun. Mallon swatted her arm down and held her wrist. He used it to spin her around, then pushed to get her to the floor face downward. He straddled her as she struggled, then clamped his left hand around the back of her neck to hold her there.

He leaned to the right to grasp the roll of packing tape he had left on the floor after he’d covered the broken window, and she used that moment to twist and push down with her legs to try to roll him off. He managed to snatch the tape, then flop his weight onto her back to keep her down.

In spite of his size and weight, she never stopped struggling to overcome him, and from the first few seconds he had been aware that she was better at this than she should be. She used every chance to keep him from gaining control. Every time he tried to shift his position, she would feel the direction of his motion and push off to try to accelerate it and free herself. They fought in silence in the near darkness, their breaths now coming in heavy, hard gasps.

At last, she had worn herself out trying to lift him. He was able to clamp both her wrists behind her, and wrapped five turns of the tape around them to hold them.

“What?” she gasped. “Why… what do you… want?”

He leaned close, so his lips were right behind her ear. “I promise I won’t hurt you. I want you to tell me the truth.”

Mallon had used parts of three rolls of packing tape to bind Diane’s wrists and ankles, then to connect the ankles and wrists.

He knelt beside her on the empty living room floor, and she recoiled from him. He said, “Diane, I’m not going to harm you. But you’ve got to tell me why they’re trying to kill me.” He stared into her eyes, and he could tell she had been listening to him and studying him. Her eyes were a bit calmer.

She took two or three deep breaths. “You didn’t have to do this to me. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I just panicked because you took away my phone. I thought it was so I couldn’t call for help, that you were planning to hurt me.”

“And your gun,” he said. “I found that too.”

Her brows tilted in hurt. “Don’t you think that’s the best evidence you have that I only wanted to help? I never did anything with it.”

“Why did you come to meet me with a gun?”

“Because we’re in danger. I own it because I’m a female attorney who lives alone. I bought it when I was just starting out in general practice in Los Angeles, and lived in a neighborhood that seemed scary to a girl from a small town. That was a long time ago, so I hardly ever thought about the gun until now. After those men followed me home from work this week, I threw a few things into a suitcase, put the gun into my bag, and took off. At the time, I was very glad I owned it.” She sighed, and looked as though she might cry. “Now I’m sorry.”

Mallon said, “Diane, if you’ll tell me the truth, I’ll let you go. Why are you involved with these people?”

“Involved?” Her eyes looked scared again. “I’m not involved. I was only trying to help you, and now they’re after both of us.”

“They’re not after both of us. They’re after me, and you’re helping them. Why are they so interested in killing me? What is it you think Lydia and I found out? Who are these people?”

She looked at him as though he were speaking a language she did not understand. “I don’t know any more than you do. Robert, you know me. I’m an honest person. I don’t consort with any criminals. I’ve never even represented any. I went into a general civil firm right out of law school and, when I had some experience, moved to Santa Barbara to open an office with a specialty I liked. You’re one of my best clients. I have no reason to harm you.”

Mallon said quietly, “Stop it. I’m giving you a chance to tell me the truth. Don’t you understand what that’s worth?”