Khan (Bowen Boys, #2)(46)
Tony looked around the room again, this time not looking to see if he knew anyone, but if they recognized him from the drawing. He was the man in the drawing. Including the scar on his lip he’d gotten when he was a child. He threw money on the bar and backed to the door. No one turned, no one said anything, but he moved as if every eye in the place were on him. As soon as he stepped out, he took off running. He ran until he couldn’t run any longer.
They thought he was the murderer. That he’d killed four people. Who would have told them such a thing? Who was this lying witness that was working to get him framed for something he’d not done? Terrified out of his mind, he tried to think. His head was pounding and he reached into his pocket and touched the gun with his left hand while his right wrapped around the knife. With a sudden clarity that calmed him, he knew what he had to do. He needed to find Monica and kill her.
He smiled. Yes, that’s what he had to do. And he started thinking of how to find her as if the information was there all the time just waiting for him to be calm enough to use it. Walking into the street again, he spotted his car. He knew now that he was on the perfect course. Why else would he find what he needed when he needed it?
Before getting in, he gathered all the trash from the interior. Every fast food bag, box, and napkin, every empty water bottle, cup, and cap. The coffee that had ended up in his car somehow was tossed away too, as were the extra things of aspirin and other headache remedies that had never worked. When he emptied the car of all trash, he folded the three blankets he’d acquired somehow and put them neatly on the seat. Taking out the mats, he shook each of them, including the ones in the front. When he was satisfied with his results, he got in, started the car, and waited for the warmth from the heater to penetrate his frozen body. By the time he pulled into traffic, he had it all worked out.
His first stop was to find a hotel. He didn’t get the most expensive this time, but he did want one that had a lobby. Using the driver’s license in his pocket that sort of looked like him, he handed it to the clerk. He didn’t have any idea where it had come from, but now he didn’t worry. He had a plan.
He loved lobbies in hotels with their shops and people coming and going. He got a room on the seventeenth floor and told the clerk that his luggage was coming later; he had a servant coming to bring it to him. After being shown his room, he left again. He had things to do.
He stopped at Wal-Mart and purchased some cheap jeans and some other things he needed. Underwear, socks, and t-shirts. He also picked up shampoo, soap, and a single piece of luggage. When he paid cash for these things, he realized that whatever he did, he had to do it quickly. He was down to his last hundred and forty dollars. Moving to the car again, he loaded everything in his luggage and went to the hardware store.
Here he purchased rope, pliers, tape, and nails. He wasn’t sure what he needed them for, but when he’d walked by them, he had felt the need to pick them up. By the time he’d loaded these things into his case, he was down to less than a hundred dollars. Time to play.
It took him ten minutes of watching the CIA building to see the woman he was after. He didn’t follow her directly home and had lost her twice. The only reason he had been able to figure out where she lived at all was because he’d taken a left when there had been a road barricaded off and had seen her car pull into a gated area. When he drove by the place slowly, he saw the big gate and realized it wasn’t a gated community like where his parents lived, but a single residence. He pulled over his car down the street and walked to the gate. He slipped into the yard across the street from the big house and knocked on the door.
He looked around the neighborhood and saw that it was sparse when it came to houses. When the elderly woman opened the door, he pulled his gun up and shot her in the forehead. As she tumbled back, he stepped over her and dragged her lifeless body into the house with him. Closing the door, he left the woman lying where she was and went to the living room to spy on the gate just in front of him.
“Now we wait.” He got up a few minutes later and got the meal that had been cooking in the microwave. He thanked the dead woman and ate it sitting in front of the window. Drinking the unopened bottle of water he’d found on the counter, he settled in to wait for Monica to come out. Two hours later, a limo pulled out.
Finding the old lady’s keys, he went to the garage and got into her vehicle. He was pulling out when a second car came out of the gate. He could see that this one held who he was looking for and she was alone. Alone, he supposed, if you didn’t count the dark sedan behind her. He didn’t care. He had a plan.
~~~
Monica pulled into the dry cleaners ten minutes before they closed. The lady had told her that she had found something in her pocket and wanted to know if Monica could come and get it. She thought it had value, and as they had no safe, she wanted to make sure it was returned. It was the necklace that Khan had given her.
“One day,” Monica mumbled to herself. “I have it one day and I lose it. Or nearly so. Damn it.”
She didn’t tell anyone where she was going except the guard on her tail. She had to tell him because, while she was embarrassed, she wasn’t stupid. Besides, she was a little afraid after last night. She shivered while she drove and turned up the heat. She wondered if she’d ever be warm again.
The woman that had been killed last night had been another look alike. But this time, he’d taken his time with killing her. After who they all knew was Tony had tied her to a chair, he’d cut off all her hair. And not, the police had said, with a pair of scissors. He’d peeled her hair from her scalp as if he was scalping her.