Blood Double by Neil McMahon

Author:Neil McMahon [McMahon, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062030016
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2002-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

14

Northwest of San Rafael, on the back roads he knew well, Monks stepped harder on the gas. Traffic had dropped off to nothing by the time he got to Tocqueville Road. He pulled into a turnout a half mile short of his driveway and eased the car behind a screen of brush. From here, he knew the terrain well.

He stepped through the wire fence along the road and stood unmoving for three or four minutes, tuning his eyes and ears to the night. Crickets chirped in steady rhythm. A tree frog sang its heart out, trying to win a ladylove. Farther away, an owl hooted. The smooth sinuous trunks of the madrones glistened with the damp and moved with the night breeze, seeming to twist like huge snakes.

Monks began to walk, following a deer trail down to the creek that ran behind his place, then picking his way along its rocks. The creek was dry most of the year, but right now it was running swiftly from spring rains. In years past, he had spent many hours down here, sitting with a book while the kids played, until they were old enough to handle the dangers of fast water in floods and the occasional rattlesnake. Not much had changed.

He found the path back up the bank that would take him onto his own property. When the woods began to thin, he moved one slow step at a time.

Ahead through the foliage, he spotted a glimmer of light.

Monks checked his location and placed the light carefully, grasping at the thought that he might be turned around and it was a neighbor’s. But it had to be from his own house.

He was certain that he had not left any lights on.

He stood motionless for a full minute, grappling with consequences. Smart money was to turn back.

But this had gone past smart money. He took out the Beretta and walked on in careful silence. When he reached the edge of the woods, he saw a car parked in the drive, a newish, midsized sedan. He had never seen it before.

What kind of assassin would advertise his presence?

Monks listened hard through the surrounding woods, fearful now that the display was intended to lull him, that someone else was waiting hidden. The night creatures’ sounds continued, reassuring but no guarantee.

Then a hard thunk and a blur of motion dropped him to a crouch, the pistol rising. Breath stopped, he waited.

There was more movement: Someone on the deck was rising awkwardly from a chair, body pulling itself up with what sounded like labored cursing. A man stood and lumbered toward the kitchen, letting out a wedge of light as he opened the door. Something glimmered on the deck railing, and Monks realized that that was what had thunked:

A beer bottle, set down hard.

Monks heard the refrigerator open and close. The man reappeared in the house doorway. He was good-sized, well dressed but disheveled, and was holding a fresh bottle of Monks’s private stock of Moretti beer.

Monks’s scalp bristled with mystical awe.

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