"You're officially in what's called the 'eyewall' of a hurricane," Willowmore continued. "If the eye of the storm passes south, it'll get real calm for a moment, then the winds will reverse direction with equal force and hit you again. Just so you're ready for that, if you're determined to stay.''
Brookman returned, massaging his hands, which he had thawed out in hot water. "You got a sister here, too?"
It startled Art more than it should have. "Sister?"
"Yeah, she peeked out of the bedroom." Brookman was pointedly circumspect about how he expressed his next thought. "She looked, uh, a little banged up." The blackhanded accusation of his tone was still too clear.
"My wife," said Art, and the men swapped another dubious glance. "We had a little trouble battening down," said Art. To hesitate was to perforate his own lie. "You probably saw how the garage door got all bent out of shape. The edge flew up and nailed her. I asked her not to stay for this, but-" He shrugged. "She got a shiner."
"We can get her to a hospital," said Willowmore.
"No, she took a sleeping pill. She'll be okay. I might get a little banged up myself, before the night's done with us."
"You have a gun on the kitchen counter for a reason?" said Willowmore.
"Call me overzealous." Art worked up a placating smile that took effort to sustain. "You never know who'll come pounding on your door in the middle of something like this. That it was you guys just proves I don't really have much to worry about, apart from Mother Nature kicking my butt."
"What happened to the window?" Brookman was inspecting the gouges from the inside of the Plexiglas.
"Pine-tree branch," said Art. "Flew out of nowhere and splintered apart before I could get the shutters down."
"Think it's a good idea to be drinking so much?" said Willow-more, who had not missed the crowd of beer bottles on the kitchen counter.
"Those are mostly out of the recycling bin," said Art. "Better stacked up in here than flying around out there, right? But I'll confess one or two of those dead boys is mine; I needed to calm down a bit when the storm really started to bite." He hoped this minor admission might shield some of the bigger falsehoods.
Willowmore's gaze moved to the longneck bottles, gathered like a crowd at a traffic accident. His expression remained maddeningly neutral. "There's broken glass on the floor and a dent in the refrigerator door like somebody threw one of those bottles at it. Aren't you afraid your dog will get hurt?"
"I was just cleaning that up when you knocked."
A crash from the garage turned all their heads. Brookman's hand flew down to his holstered.45.
"Let me make sure my generator's not about to fly away," said Art, already moving.
Willowmore rose. "You need a hand?"
"Just sit tight. I've got coffee in two minutes."
Luckily, the men did not tailgate him into the kitchen. His shoes crunched slivers of glass as he cracked the garage door for a look-see. Bryan was still taped to the rack, as left. Wind stirred loose paper and caused the plastic sheet beneath him to flap. The dented portion of the outer door had sprung loose from the position into which Art had locked it. It would have to wait.
"Good thing you've got a generator going," said Brookman, staring at the dark fireplace. "That wind would blow a wood fire right into your face; come landsliding right down your chimney."
"Yeah, the flue has got a compression seal on it so it can't be blown open." Art's heartbeat was redlining. If they checked the garage, it was adios. If they walked outside and peered through the resprung door, ditto. The wind lashing in through the breach was fearful enough. What if it revived Bryan?
He detoured down the hall and checked the guest bedroom. Suzanne was not in it. His heart pistoned, straining like the transmission of a car whose accelerator and brake are both floored.
"Problem?" said Willowmore's voice.
Just leave. Just die,
Art thought, hurrying past the bathroom and checking his own bedroom.
Just stop bugging me
. Suzanne had awakened and plodded, zombiatically, to the bigger bed, where she was now curled up, unmoving. She had become upright exactly long enough for Brookman to spot her.
"No," Art said, teeth clenched. "Just checking on my honey." Fleeting thought: He could bring his nosy good-cop, bad-cop guests their coffee, and shoot one in the back of the head while the other was mulling over cream or sugar. Problem solved. He imagined blotting blood spray off the tabletop; out of the carpet nap. Willowmore first. Get the smug prick while he was on the upswing of another prying, accusatory question. Brookman would hesitate at the sight of his ranking superior getting unplugged. That delay would cost him his future, because Art's weapon could speak again while Brookman's was still holstered. It could all be over in fewer than five seconds. But for the bodies, everything would be back to normal.
Except that, "normally," Art still had bodies to deal with, not dead ones, not yet.
Brookman blew on his coffee mug; Willowmore took a mouthful of the scalding fresh liquid without changing expression. Some guys liked it really hot.
"That's good," said Willowmore, taking another gulp fast on the wake of the first. "You sure you're not in some kind of trouble here?"
Art's pleasant expression felt as petrified as a pasted-on papier-mache masque. "Not unless my house can't take the storm, which would be a disaster for me in another direction. Can't say the same if anybody stayed in those houses to the south. If anybody's there, by now, they're hurting. Me, I'm sort of obligated to stay."
Willowmore did not rise to Art's bait, but Brookman did. "Sir? Maybe we should check them other houses?"
"Not in our purview," said the captain. "We're only here because this is right next to our jetty." He sighed heavily and massaged his knees with his hands. "So, you two are… married, am I correct?"
"Very observant, Captain," said Art.
Willowmore nodded as though an entire questionnaire had been filled out in his brain. "And both of you choose to stay here for the duration of the storm?"
"Yes. For the house. It can take it."
"Then you won't mind if the lady in the other room tells us that for herself, would you?"
Brookman interjected, "They don't need a ride out, maybe somebody down there still does." He turned to Art. "How far?"
"Two more places, a half mile and about a quarter mile down-beach. I don't think there's anyone there; they've been dark since before the storm." His brain was warning him not to embellish too much-too many separate lies to keep track of. But if he mentioned any of the occupants, there would come a fresh salvo of questions.
"Perhaps you want to stay for this show," said Willowmore, as though Art had left the room. Obviously the captain had run the figures in his head and the magic words
wife abuser
had plopped out of his calculator.
Which was stupid. These men weren't police. Their affiliation regardless, they did not have the right to come into Art's house and start enforcing orders… unless they suspected bad shit, and Willowmore was wearing a face that said things had begun to stink, just a bit. Art realized his own reaction to these men was as primitive as any knee-jerk macho-tude Bryan could have frothed forth. Combat imperatives were blinding him. He had invited these guys in; now he had to invite them to leave.
"Sweetie…?"
Suzanne was peering from the corner of the hallway, smothered in Art's big terry bathrobe, barefoot, a clean washrag, held to the injured side of her face. Her good eye squinted against the light. Art's heart nearly speed-stopped.
Brookman bolted to his feet in atavistic politeness, or fright, or something. "Missus."
"Ma'am.'' Willowmore eyeballed her carefully.
"I'm Suzanne," she said thickly, with a slight lisp imparted by her inflated lip and jarred dentition.
"You shouldn't be up," said Art, rising to meet her.
"I heard all this talking. Honey, I need a pain pill." She chose her words delicately, aware they might be mangled on the way out. "Did Art tell you how the damned door jumped up and kissed me? Ow." She tried a smile; made it halfway before the pain canceled it. "Seen my watch anywhere?"
The watch was on the nightstand, a bulky skin-diver-style chronometer. Art had stripped it off her wrist before he dunked her.
"Just a minute, guys," Art said as he guided Suzanne back to the bedroom. Blitz looked up from his sleeping place near the foot of the bed. He'd been with Suzanne all along. Sitting sentry, something the dog had never done when strangers were on the premises… with a single lifetime exception. If Lorelle had been in the bedroom, the dog would have stayed with her. The dog was acting as though Suzanne had, in one day, earned a rank equivalent to his departed mistress. When Art and Suzanne came in together, Blitz responded as if to a telepathic command, and automatically loped back to the living room to plop down near the windows and play interim host. Hello.
Art pushed the bedroom door mostly shut. "How long have you been with us?"
"Please, later." When Art heard her say this, he saw how much she had dressed up her voice for the guests. Despite all recent craziness, he felt a surge of protective sympathy for her. Talking hurt. Speaking coherently hurt more. She had to take frequent short breaths to push the words out. "Later. All later. Right now I need some Percodans. I feel like my head's been ripped off."
She was able to tip back a couple of Vicodin and draw enough water for two swallows with a straw. She said, "later," one more time, then put her head back on the pillows, every movement an effort, every effort a minor agony.
"Thanks, Art." It was distant, feeble; he might have only imagined her saying that. It sounded like
thang-sard
.
***
When he returned to the living room he saw Willowmore with his eye to the kitchen-door peephole, leaning forward with his hands clasped behind his back as though in aesthetic appreciation of some impenetrable artwork. Terror jarred Art's bones. He froze in place, blanching, and tried not to collapse to his knees. His tongue inflated spitlessly, and it was suddenly hard to breathe.
Blitz had posted himself exactly between the two men, his gaze sweeping left to right, his stance rigid.
"That the garage?" said Willowmore, not looking at Art.
The Heckler-Koch was still on the kitchen counter right behind the captain. For a fast reach, it might as well have been on top of Mount Diablo, which was out past the Berkeley Hills, and could be seen from San Francisco on a clear day. Part of Art's conscience backhanded him for not murdering the two navy men when he had the drop on them. Now the option had evaporated, and Art envisioned his immediate destiny as an ugly tell-all or a pointless physical struggle, or both.
Uh-what was the question?
"Yes." Art tried to tamp down his own capering panic.
"So, your generator is out there?"
"Yes." Art had to clear his throat. Something was not right.
"Runs off gas?" Willowmore finally looked at him.
"Yes. If there's no juice, it can buy me a day."
"How much one of those things cost, if you don't mind my asking?''
"You can get different efficiencies and different capacities. Starting at a couple hundred." The closer Art got to Willowmore, babbling, the better chance he had at the gun.
"Nice thing to have."
Art nodded.
"Coffee sure is good,'' said Brookman from the sofa. Blitz shifted position to move nearer the corporal as Art got closer to Willowmore.
"Thanks.''
"I hate to sound like a broken record," said Willowmore, "but are you sure there's nothing we can help you with? You seem a little… I can't really find the word…''
"Stressed-out," Brookman chimed in, as though cued.
"I mean, apart from the obvious-the storm and all?" Willowmore's voice had gone folksy but he had this really off-putting way of not blinking when he was firing off a direct inquiry.
You mean, apart from the hostage in my garage?
Art put his eye to the peephole. Maybe the farp blew over the Bry-Guy. Maybe, if he was no longer squirming, he was indistinct in the glass of the security viewport. Maybe he had crawled under the Jeep to croak. Maybe…
"Nothing else wrong, except I'm worried about the storm." The dog's alert attitude was starting to annoy him. Squirrelly behavior might lose the game, not that Art was excelling in the poker-face department today, either. He ordered Blitz to sit in German, too sharply. The dog cast a narrowed glance at Art, as if to ask, Are you sure?
"You're sure about that, now?" It was Willowmore, not the dog, who had spoken. Art's gut plunged. Was somebody reading his mind?
"Why do you ask?"
Willowmore half shrugged. "Because when you came back out from talking to your partner, there-your wife-you looked kind of like you'd just seen a booger."
Every time the storm lashed the house and rattled some extremity, Blitz's ears came up. Then he'd raise his head, nervously. Then he'd plunk it back down in defeat. He hated bad weather. It was un-doggish.
Art was trying to think of something else useless to say, another line that would buy him a breath of time, as he checked the peephole himself.
Bryan was no longer strapped to the utility rack in the garage. He was absent from the view at all angles. Even the shreds of duct tape that had held him were in plain sight and clear focus. The tarp on which he had bled had been folded double by the wind and stuffed up against one side of the Jeep. He had either wormed between the cars, or was on the far side of the Jaguar, or-