Dean Koontz - Blood risk

"I think his shoulder's broken," Shirillo said, looking up from the wounded gunman.

"He's not dead?"

"You didn't mean him to be, did you?" the kid asked.

"No," Tucker said. "But a silenced pistol can kick off the mark, even if it's been well machined."

"He's bleeding," Shirillo said. "But it's not arterial blood, and it won't kill him."

"What now?" Harris asked.

Tucker knelt and looked at the gunman's wound, peeled back his eyelids, felt for and found the rapid beat of his heart. "He'll come to before long, but he'll be in shock. He won't be any threat if we leave him behind."

"He could sound a warning," Harris said.

Shirillo said, "He's not going to have the strength for that, even if he's thinking clearly enough to try it."

"We could gag him."

"And maybe kill him if the gag triggers convulsions," Tucker said. "No. We'll just take him inside with us and tuck him in a closet and hope for the best."

Shirillo nodded, still cool, much cooler than Tucker would have expected him to be at a time like this, and he went back to the window, finished applying the masking tape to the center pane, cut a circle of glass, lifted that out of the way, reached in and carefully felt around with his fingers. "Wires," he said. "An alarm."

"Know the type?" Tucker whispered.

"Maybe. Flashlight, please."

Tucker took that out of his windbreaker pocket and handed it over.

Shirillo flicked the light on and directed it through the hole he had cut in the window glass, angled the beam left and right, grunted softly as if confirming something he already thought to be true, flicked the light off and returned it to Tucker.

"Well?"

"I know it."

"Built in?"

"No. The wire loops through two brass guide rings screwed into the base of the window. When I lift the window, I stretch the wire and trip the alarm-if I'm stupid."

"You aren't stupid," Harris said.

"Thanks. I needed your reassurance."

Tucker said, "How long to finish with it-two or three minutes?"

"Less."

"Go on, then."

Working more quickly than Tucker himself would have been able to, Shirillo taped and cut another pane in the bottom row of the window segments, lifted that out of the way and, using the special tools in his pouch, reached inside and worked the guide rings free of the wood. That done, the wire would lie in place on the sill no matter how high the window was lifted. Finished, he returned the tools to his pouch, belted that around his waist beneath his jacket. Reaching through the window with both hands, he freed the latch and carefully slid the whole works up high enough for a man to pass under it. The frame was a tight fit, and the window remained open.

"You first," Tucker said.

Shirillo hunched and went inside.

"Help me with him," Tucker said, indicating the wounded man who was still unconscious on the promenade floor.

He and Harris put their guns down and lifted the guard, worked the man through the window and into the darkened room, where Shirillo helped settle him gently to the floor. They had to work more carefully and take more time with the man than they would have if he'd been dead. But that was okay. That was fine. At least there wouldn't be any nightmares this way.

"Now you," Tucker said.

Harris handed his Thompson through the open window and went in quickly after it, as if he would be unable to function if the weapon were out of his hands and out of sight for more than a brief moment. He had to twist himself around painfully to force his bulk through that narrow frame, but he didn't protest, made no sound at all.

Tucker picked up the circles of glass that had been cut from the window panes, peeled the tape off the window around the holes and passed these through to Shirillo, then looked around to see if they'd left any other trace of their work here.

Blood.

He studied the pattern of the blood on the promenade floor where the wounded man had lain. There was not much of it, because the blood had come in a thick trickle rather than a spurt, and the guard's clothes had absorbed most of it. Already, what little blood there was had begun to darken and dry. Even if someone passed this way-and that seemed unlikely if this was the wounded man's patrol sector-he might not properly interpret the stain. In any case, there was nothing to be done about it.

He looked around the fog-shrouded front lawn one last time, at the hoary shrubbery, the mist that laced the big trees, the grass made colorless by the dim house lights.

Nothing.

He listened to the night.

Silence.

Except for the wounded man, no one else had discovered them. Now their chances were pretty good. They would finish the job properly. He felt it, beyond intellect, beyond reason. Success was theirs. Almost. Unless Merle Bachman had talked, in which case they were all blown.

He followed Harris through the window and into the house, closed the window behind himself.

"It's a library, friends," Pete Harris said as Tucker let the flashlight play across the big, comfortable reading chairs, an outsized oak desk and hundreds of shelved books.

"A cultured crook," Shirillo said.

Tucker moved cautiously about the room until he was sure that it was clear. He located a closet and helped Shirillo move the unconscious wounded guard into it.

"No turning back from here on out," Harris said.

"Too right," Tucker said.

Cautiously they opened the main library door and filed into the dimly lighted first-floor corridor, closed the door after them. Across the hall another door opened on steps that led down into darkness.

"Basement," Shirillo explained.

"What's there?"

"Swimming pool, sauna, gymnasium."

"This the only entrance?"

"Yeah. Nobody down there at this hour anyway, not in the dark. It's safe enough."

Tucker stared down into the blackness, then shook his head. "Check it anyway," he said.

Shirillo didn't argue. He took the flashlight and went down to the basement, out of sight.

The silence in the house was oppressive, deep and still enough to touch and, in their present state of mind, subtly false, as if they were being witched every moment and had been prepared for.

Not three minutes after Shirillo reached the bottom of the cellar steps, Harris deserted his post from which he had been covering the corridor, went to the open cellar door and looked down into the inkiness. His face was red, beaded with perspiration, and he was trembling slightly. He said, "Come on, friend."

"Take it easy."

"Where is he?"

"Give him a few more minutes."

Harris turned back to the open corridor, obviously unhappy with the waiting, both the machine gun and the pistol raised from his sides. Tucker hoped no one would come upon them accidentally, because Harris couldn't be trusted to use the silenced pistol first. He'd open with the big Thompson, out of habit, out of need, out of fear. He'd ruin any element of surprise.

Two minutes later, as Shirillo had promised, he returned. "No one down there," he said.

Harris smiled and used the back of his pistol hand to wipe the perspiration from his face. He wondered if he was sweating only because he was scared, or because he was rapidly becoming physically exhausted as well. God, he felt old. He felt much older than he really was. This wouldn't be the last job now, with the money gone, but the next one would have to be.

"Let's hustle," Tucker said. He was afraid that if they remained still for much longer, he'd be unable to maintain the composure he was known for. All they needed to louse up this operation was both he and Harris quaking in their boots and only the green kid with any nerve left.

Quickly they opened doors on both sides of the corridor and ascertained that all the rooms beyond were deserted. Past the front entrance to the house and the main staircase, past the foyer with its eagle-print wallpaper, in the other ground-floor wing where the lighted rooms lay, they were almost certain to find things more difficult than this.