Don Winslow - The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

Of course, if you want to leave him and run away with me and live happily ever after, that’s another story.

“It’s not insurance. You have been very nice.”

Right. She’s not buying it. She’s still scared for him, and she’s ready to give it up to get a little added protection. Where does a painter learn about that?

“Really, Lan. No thanks.”

But please don’t ask again, Lan, because I think I’m out of no-thank-yous.

She looked confused for the smallest part of a second, then smiled and shrugged. The robe came off her shoulders with the shrug and she gave him another long look, a think-about-what-you’re-passing-up pose, and it shook him. Backlit by the light coming through the picture window, she looked unreal, unearthly-divorced from the mundane world of reality, and jobs to do, and boring ethics. She became part of a magical evening, of a different kind of life-a world in which he wanted to lose himself, float with her in the mirror mists. He told himself to get up, get out, but she froze him in place, held him in the whirlpool, trapped him in the vortex.

He leaned over to splash some water on his face and barely heard the whine of the bullet that just missed his head and smacked into the wall of the house.

He sank into the water.

Terror has a way of clearing the mind.

You can cloud the brain with exotic booze and plain old-fashioned lust, but then shoot a little terror at it, and it will clean right up. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing.

So Neal was already thinking hard as he sank under the water. It was noisy down there, with the filters and bubblers and all, but he could hear Li Lan’s footsteps running, not walking away, and he could hear a car pull out of the driveway and screech down the street. He figured it was either his hosts or his would-be executioners, or both at the same time.

He was in no hurry to surface, though, just in case the shooter still had an eye to the crosshairs and was waiting for him. It took an act of great will for Neal to let himself rise to the surface, dead-man’s-float style, and show the back of his head on the water. He lay there holding his breath and trying not to think about that second bullet smashing into his skull, spattering bone, blood, and brains.

He hadn’t heard the bullet leave the gun, so it must have been silenced, but he sure as hell had heard it smack the wall. You can’t silence that. So he didn’t think the shooter would hang around too long, or even come check on the body. But you never knew… the shooter could be moving on him now, coming up slowly and carefully, with a pistol this time, to deliver the coup de grace. Neal knew he’d never hear him in the noise of the hot tub, never hear the shot that would kill him.

He lay as still in the water as he could, hoping that if the shooter was still there, he was watching him through the scope of a rifle from a distance, where he wouldn’t be able to see if there was blood in the water or not. He held his breath, trying for one more minute, just one more minute, and then he’d make the break.

She set me up, he thought as pain started to shoot through his lungs. Literally set me up. Put me on my feet, up nice and straight where I’d be a perfect target and she’d be safe. But why? I guess I’ll have to find her and ask her.

He sank his head back under the water and then lunged up, diving for the edge of the pool. He rolled twice in the direction the shot had come from and pressed himself against the fence. Forcing himself to count slowly to five, he caught his breath and then scrambled on all fours to the sliding glass door, reached up to open it, and dove behind the sofa.

His skin pricked with the pins and needles of fear.

The house was quiet. Of course it would be, wouldn’t it, he thought, if someone were waiting with a gun. While I crouch here, naked and dripping and just wanting to lie down and cry. Okay, okay, get on with it. Get dry, get some clothes on, and get going. First things first. Let’s make sure we’re all alone in the house.

The first couple of steps were the hardest. He straightened up and walked past the big picture window. He checked behind the breakfast bar, then walked down the hallway and looked into the bedrooms and the baths. He was alone in the house. Where had all his new little friends gone? Off somewhere waiting for all the nasty blood to drain out of the filter system? Pretty damn smart, shooting him in a hot tub. So little to clean up.

They were so damn confident they had left his clothes right there in the guest bedroom where he had shucked them. His vinyl bag also. That struck him as odd. Why hadn’t they taken his belongings along with them and dumped them? Maybe they were waiting to get rid of them along with his corpse.

He checked his bag. They had clearly gone through it, but hadn’t taken anything. All his nice burglar stuff, his book, even the two grand in cash were all there. Strange, but true.

He took a towel from the bathroom rack and dried himself. Now what would Graham tell me to do in this situation, he asked himself. Easy. He’d tell me to get the fuck out of here, lay low, and call in for help. “No job is so important,” the gremlin had told him more than once, “it’s worth dying for. Believe me, son, the client wouldn’t do it for you.” None of the usual jokes or insults, just a straightforward command: Save your ass.

So, according to the Gospel According to Graham, Book One, Chapter One, Verse One, he should waste no time and haul his butt out of there. But he was beginning to get past the fear into something else: anger. He was starting to get goddamned good and pissed off that they had tried to kill him-would have killed him if he hadn’t leaned over to splash a little water on his face-and he wanted to get a little of his own back. They had made the worst kind of fool of him, set him up in the worst kind of way. Betrayed him.

The absurdity hit him. How could they betray me, he thought? It would be like Christ pulling a pistol on Judas after the kiss.

Nevertheless, he was angry. And scared. Someone had tried to kill him and he didn’t know why and that was a dangerous situation. He put on the black sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes he had packed in the bag, then smeared some black greasepaint on his face. If they were out there somewhere wanting to put a bullet in him, he could at least make it a little harder on them. Then he opened the window and threw his bag out, put both hands on the top of the sill, and swung through, falling gently into some shrubs. It took him ten minutes to find just the right tree, a tall, thick cedar with a low-hanging limb. He hauled himself up on the limb and climbed as high as his fear of heights would let him: about another ten feet.

His perch gave him a nice view of the Kendall household, which was what he wanted. He especially wanted to see what would happen when someone came to dispose of a body that had disposed of itself.

Three hours is a long time on surveillance, but particularly long when you’re literally up a tree. Neal cursed everyone he could think of, starting with Joe Graham, the Man, Levine, Pendleton, the Kendalls, and concluding with one Li Lan, a true artist in every sense of the word. She painted some pretty pictures, all right.

He was still thinking about her when the car-a dumb Saab, naturally-pulled into the driveway, and the Kendalls got out. If they were shaken up with guilt, or hyped with blood lust, or even enervated from a rather special evening, they showed no signs of it. Olivia went straight into the house as Tom went around to the deck. Neal watched as he pulled the blue plastic cover over the tub and then turned the lights out. If there was supposed to be a dead Neal Carey in there, this guy sure didn’t know about it.