Point of Balance by J.G. Jurado

Author:J.G. Jurado
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

Kate

The long wait was excruciating.

Kate marked time with her back against the shed wall and her gun aimed at the door, and ran over events, again and again, wondering whether she had been wrong to get caught in a trap like that. Waiting there troubled her all the more. To go uphill to the street without knowing whether anybody else was lying in wait would be madness. She thought of answering David’s text but didn’t want to take her eye off the ball for a second.

With no warning, there was a rasping noise, a smoker’s cough. Then a voice could be heard on the other side of the door, speaking in English this time. Kate stuck her ear to the shed wall and could make out the housebreaker’s every word.

“No, couldn’t call before. No, cell not work. Yes, understand. Company problem. I tell you, phone is crap.”

Silence.

“I tell you we look all over. Dejan and my brother look in neighborhood, no suspicious car, van, nothing.”

Silence.

“Yes, yes, understand. Search house all over again. But nobody here. I know because I set blind trap, hair stuck to outside door. Hair fall if door open, but hair still there. See?”

More silence.

“Yes, remember Istanbul. No my fault.”

Silence again, longer this time.

“Your money,” the intruder said in a very tense voice.

They’ll turn the place over again. If they see the open padlock, in they come. I can shoot down the first one, but the others won’t be so stupid. They’ll fire through the shed walls, like shooting fish in a barrel. This flimsy plastic wouldn’t stop a gnat.

But Kate could do nothing except wait, with her finger on the trigger.

Outside, the drizzle became an all-out downpour. The raindrops crashed onto the shed roof like ball bearings falling into a beach bucket. Kate thought she heard a car start up a couple of times but couldn’t be sure.

Nobody entered the shed and no more sounds could be heard in the yard. Time drifted away in the choking darkness, which made her think of Julia and the hell she must be suffering. She waited for two seemingly eternal hours, feeling useless and powerless. She realized that all her training, all the bravado she showed, her stalwart stance—all that depended on how others saw her. She was Secret Service Special Agent Robson. Telling suspects that put the fear of God in them, not solely because she was a strong woman with a gun but because she was the face of the beast. To touch her was like pulling on Superman’s cape or spitting into the wind. Nobody messes with the Secret Service.

Even so, acting under cover and out of fear, she was no more than the victim’s frightened relative. She began to wonder whether going along with David wasn’t crazy.

Finally, she decided the trespassers could not possibly still be in the house. She stood up, her muscles cramped after hours spent on her haunches. She stretched her arms and legs several times before she stepped out. She had to loosen up if she was to hit the street as quickly as possible.

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