end.
He had killed before, but certainly not on such a vast and impersonal
scale. He had always had a reason to kill–if not a personal one, then
one supplied by whoever had hired him. This time the sheer number and
complete anonymity of the murdered people managed to prick even his
hardened conscience. He had not stayed around to see who had boarded
the aircraft. He had been paid to do a job and he had done it. He
would use the vast sums now at his disposal to forget how he had earned
that money. He figured it would not take him all that long.
He sat down in front of the small mirror resting on the table in the
bedroom. The wig changed his curly dark hair to a wavy blond.
A new suit, far removed in its sleek elegance from the clothing he had
just discarded, was hanging on the door. He cupped his hand and bent
his head low as he concentrated on inserting the contact lenses that
would change his low-key brown eyes to a startling blue.
He rose back up to check the effect in the mirror and felt the elongated
muzzle of the Sig P229 placed directly against the base of his skull.
With the sharpened perception that accompanies panic, he noticed how the
attached suppressor almost doubled the barrel length of the compact 9mm.
His absolute shock lasted barely a second as he felt the cold metal
against his skin, saw the dark eyes staring at him in the mirror’s
reflection, the mouth set in a firm line. His own countenance often
held a similar look right before a kill. Taking the life of another
human being had always been a serious business to him. Now, in the
mirror he watched, mesmerized, as another face went through his very own
signature ritual. Then he watched with growing surprise as the features
of the person about to kill him next turned to anger and then moved to
unadulterated loathing, emotions he had never felt in the midst of an
execution. The victim’s eyes grew wide as he focused on the finger
tightening on the trigger. His mouth moved to say something, probably
an expletive; however, the words were not formed in time, as the round
exploded into his brain. He jerked backward from the impact and then
collapsed forward onto the little table. The killer tossed his limp
body face down in the small crevice between the bed and the wall and
emptied the remaining eleven shots from the Sig’s magazine into the dead
man’s upper torso. Although the victim’s heart was no longer pumping,
dime-sized drops of dark blood appeared at each point of entrance, like
the sprout of tiny oil wells. The auto pistol landed next to the body.
The shooter walked calmly from the room, stopping only to perform two
tasks. First, he scooped up the leather bag containing the dead man’s
new identity. Second, out in the hallway he hit the HVAC switch on the
wall and turned the air-conditioning on full blast. Ten seconds later
the front door of the apartment opened and closed. The apartment was
silent. In the bedroom, the beige carpet was fast becoming an ugly
shade of crimson. The balance in the offshore bank account would be
reduced to zero and closed within the hour, its owner no longer
requiring use of the funds.
It was barely seven in the morning. Darkness still reigned outside.
Sitting at the kitchen table, wearing her battered old house-robe,
Sidney Archer slowly closed her eyes and once again tried to pretend
this was all a nightmare and her husband was still alive and would be
walking through the front door. He would have a smile on his face, a
present under his arm for his daughter and a long, soothing kiss for his
wife.
When she opened her eyes, nothing had changed. Sidney looked at her
watch. Amy would be awake soon. Sidney had just gotten off the phone
with her parents. They would be at their daughter’s house at nine to
drive the little girl to their home in Hanover, Virginia, where she was
going to stay for a few days while Sidney tried to make some sense of