Tucson, Arizona
January

Ace Feiker got out of his car a distance from the back wall of the property, and that put him half a city block from the house. It was just an estimate, because up here on the hills above Tucson there were no blocks. He walked along the empty road. The soundless steps of his black sneakers were long and fast because of the mood he was in. He felt like an ace. His mother had named him Asa, a name from the Bible, but it got shortened along the way, and Ace suited him better anyway.

The nights of killings always made him feel especially energetic. There was a feeling at the start like stage fright, with his heart beating and his lungs craving more air. But then, when the job began, he felt smart and slick and on his way to another win.

He had to be conscious of the passage of time. This was the rich part of Tucson, in the hills north of the city, not far from the big hotels with three golf courses and seven swimming pools, and parking a normal little car—not even new—on the road at night might make someone curious. The servants at big houses and the hotel workers usually parked somewhere on the property.

Ace reached the back wall of the yard, hoisted himself up to the top of the stucco wall, and rolled over it into the hedge, which took his weight like the arms of a mother and bent to release him gently onto the lawn.

Ace knelt where he was, staying motionless while he studied the large residence. The area closest to him was the tennis court. Its tall, evenly spaced lights were safely turned off tonight. In the moonlight he could see that the white markings on the court were bright, and the net was tightly strung, as though somebody in the Omaransky family cared about tennis.

Beyond the court and closer to the house was the pool. Ace could appreciate the pool, because in spite of its size, which was crazy in a place like southern Arizona, the expert landscaping around it made it seem, if not natural, at least a part of the real world, not like the ones with fake rocks and Las Vegas–style waterfalls. The pool house looked like a smaller version of the house—modern, but with a Mexican influence. He moved his eyes along the house’s walls, studying every opening to decide which one would be his way in. He adjusted the sling of his FN FAL assault rifle so the weapon was strapped comfortably across his back, and then he stood and walked toward the house.

He liked the skills and methods of his profession—finding his way to the target, executing the kill in a way that wouldn’t leave him covered in blood spatter and didn’t make so much noise that everybody in the neighborhood woke up and called the police. He hated leaving witnesses alive, but even more, he hated killing four or five extra people free. It was always best to find the easiest way into the building, do the work quietly, and then leave by the same route without opening extra doors or touching anything twice.

He had taken this job only because the money was good. The man who wanted it done had some strong reason to hate Omaransky, but didn’t say what it was. He swore it wasn’t the kind of thing where everybody would say, “Omaransky’s dead? Then Thompson must be behind it.” Thompson just hated Omaransky, and could obviously afford to have him killed. So he would be.

Ace went straight to the French doors that led from the pool area to the interior. These French doors were even dumber than most. They were just like the house—everything was the most expensive, with the doors set into a rounded alcove and equipped with a hardened steel precision lock and bolt. Everything had to be made and fitted by hand. But a French door was just a woodwork grid of twelve or fifteen small rectangles of glass, or “lights” as the people who sold them would say.

Ace took out his pocketknife, flicked the blade open, and proceeded to slice its sharp edge through the caulk around the sheet of glass beside the door handle. Then he stuck his suction cup to the glass, inserted the point of the blade under the edge, wiggled it around a bit to wedge it in deeper, and popped the sheet out of its wooden frame. He turned the sheet of glass at an angle to fit it out through the frame, and examined it. Typical. It was the best safety glass, the kind you could hit with a hammer and not break. But you didn’t need to hit it with a hammer.

He reached through the empty frame, found the knob that opened the dead bolt, and then found the doorknob.

He was in. He closed the door slowly and carefully. He was in a room that had few furnishings. There were a dozen chrome, steel, and leather chairs, a giant abstract painting that took up most of a wall, three glass-top tables, a polished wooden bench. He didn’t care much for midcentury modern, and it seemed stupid for rich people to spend money on things that weren’t even comfortable.

He reminded himself it was time to get his job done. He reached into his shoulder bag, took out the suppressor, and screwed it onto the muzzle of the rifle, then charged the weapon to put a round in the chamber.

There was an audible click, but it seemed to come from two places at once. He saw from a change in the light that something behind him was moving to cut off the dim moonlight from the French door, so he went low, spun, and fired a short burst in that direction. But then he realized he was firing under steel slats coming down over the French doors like a curtain. It was too late to get out that way. He spun toward the other door that led deeper into the house and realized there was a curtain of steel slats coming down to cover that door too. Security shutters.

He fired, this time at the steel, but his bullets ricocheted back into the room, hitting the polished concrete floor, the walls, the ceiling while he crouched on the floor waiting for them to stop.

A male voice came to him through a speaker set into the ceiling. “Don’t bother trying to get out. You can’t.”

Ace yelled, “Who are you?”

The voice said, “We’re from the security company. We installed the steel shutter system. We’ve done a lot of the houses around here.”

A female voice that seemed a few feet farther from the microphone said, “Boss, how much fentanyl gas is safe to pipe into a room that size?”

The male voice said, “Just use the one-liter aerosol. You remember what happened in that Russian theater when the police tried to rescue the hostages.”

“No I don’t,” the female said. Her voice sounded confused.

“They used too much and a hundred and thirty hostages died. You can always add more if he doesn’t go down right away.”

“Hold it!” Ace shouted. “Stop! Don’t put any of that shit in here. I won’t shoot.”

“If you want to surrender, you can put your weapons on the floor in the corner of the room, and then back away to the opposite corner and lie down. If you go near them again, you’ll still go quietly. It’s up to you how it happens.”

“I’m doing it,” Ace shouted. He got up and went to the far corner of the room, where he put his rifle, his knife, and his shoulder bag on the floor.

In the control room on the second floor of the house Dick Stahl and Diane Hines watched the man on the security monitor. Diane switched off the microphone they had been using and gave Stahl a kiss on the cheek.

“What’s that for?”

“I’m just happy. I never thought the security business would be this much fun.”

“Here’s the best part—calling the cops to come pick him up for us,” Stahl said. He reached for his cell phone.

THE END