Target Response (12 page)

She piled up a stack of dirty plates and silverware and carried them away, exiting into the kitchen via a swinging door in the wall behind Jules. She returned, cleared off the rest of the plates.

“I think we’re ready for coffee and dessert,” Jules said.

“You can bring out the coffee and dessert now, Margit,” echoed Pyne, the butler.

“Yes, Mr. Pyne, sir.”

The table was cleared; cake plates, cups, and saucers were laid out. Margit brought out a large silver urn, rich coffee aroma wafting from it. She moved around the table, filling the diners’ coffee cups. Another server with cream and sugar was set out. Olcott pushed back his chair, crossed to a sideboard.

“Allow me, sir,” Pyne offered.

“Quite all right, Pyne, it’s no trouble,” Olcott said. He picked up a cut-crystal decanter containing a quantity of golden-brown liquid and carried it to the table, set it at his place. He sat down, removed the decanter’s teardrop-shaped faceted stopper, and poured the liquid into his empty coffee cup, filling it to the brim.

“Have some coffee with your brandy, Olcott,” Lillian said mockingly.

He shook his head. “No, thanks—dilutes the stuff. Why waste perfectly good brandy by cutting it?”

“Perhaps someone else would like some. Our guest, say.”

“None for me, thanks. I’m good,” Steve said.

Presently the sated diners sat leaning back in their chairs, sighing, replete.

“We’re not quite done yet. I understand Bertha, our cook, has something special for us all,” Jules Moray said.

“I’ll get her, Mr. Jules.”

“Thank you, Pyne.”

Pyne went through the swinging door into the kitchen. A moment later, Bertha emerged carrying a silver platter with a rounded cover in both hands.

“In honor of your visit, Steve,” Jules said.

“Well…thanks,” Steve said. He was full and didn’t want to eat anything else, but he supposed that in the interests of sociability he’d have to go along with whatever they had planned.

Middle-aged Bertha, built like a prison matron, had short dark hair, black button eyes, and a pug nose in a moon face with a double chin. Red spots of color shone in her apple cheeks. She wore a white bib apron over a short-sleeved black dress uniform. Her arms were thicker than Steve’s.

She circled around the back of Jules’s chair and moved down the table, pausing when she stood between Brett and Steve.

“This is for you, Steve,” Skye said, all traces of her diffident manner during dinner having vanished. She was bright-eyed and enthusiastic.

“What is it?” Steve asked.

“It’s a surprise. Specialty of the house,” said Skye.

Bertha, good-naturedly beaming, eyes twinkling, set the warming dish–covered platter down on the table.

The Moray family leaned forward in their seats, animated by an air of expectancy. Bertha’s hand was poised on the ringed handle on top of the silver half globe. She lifted the top, exposing what lay beneath on the platter:

A gun.

Skye suddenly rose out of her seat, gripping the sharp-edged steak knife she’d palmed earlier and savagely stabbing downward with it, impaling Steve’s left hand and pinning it to the table.

The attack came without warning. Steve was distracted by the revelation of the gun under the warming dish, and the diversion created a split-second window of vulnerability that Skye took advantage of.

Her stroke fell hard, straight, and true. The sharp, slim blade pierced the back of Steve’s left hand, driving through flesh, blood, and bone. Several inches of the point emerged from his palm, penetrating several inches deep into the wooden tabletop.

Steve roared with shock and pain. And outrage.

Brett nimbly picked up the gun from the platter, pointing it at Steve’s head.

“Keep still—you’ll live longer,” he said. “Not much longer,” he added.

Steve sat rigid, upright in his high-backed chair. His face was frozen in a snarl. That was no mean feat for him because the IED bomb blast in Somalia had disfigured his face, requiring extensive plastic surgery and skin grafts to restore it. The face changers had re-formed his face into a presentable if grim visage but the surgery and skin grafts had left his features largely incapable of expression, except in the case of moments of extreme emotional upheaval.

Such as now.

A circle of red blood expanded outward from under his left hand, soaking into the white linen tablecloth.

Steve’s eyes were glazed, pain-stricken orbs. Veins stood out on his forehead and neck like snakes. He broke into a cold sweat. Breath hissed through clenched teeth; knotted muscles worked at the hinges of his jaws.

No other sound escaped him after that initial howl of rage and pain.

The others seated at the table reacted in various ways according to their natures.

Skye’s yellow-gold eyes glittered. Red dots of color glowed in her cheeks. Her lips were parted; strong, shiny, upper front teeth nibbled on that ripe lower lip.

“Sorry, Steve,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “I forgot to tell you—my real passion is for killing.”

“A family tradition,” Olcott said.

Brett lazily wagged the gun barrel at Steve Ireland. “Don’t reach for that gun holstered in the small of your back, sport. Not if you want to keep that other hand intact for a while longer.”

Steve sat stock-still, statuelike. So they knew about his ace-in-the-hole gun! Whoever these Morays were, whatever their purpose, they had done their homework.

Olcott, radiating boozy good cheer, arched an eyebrow. His index and middle fingers formed a V, the tips of which stroked his mustache, smoothing it down.

Lillian’s smooth, bronzed face was immobile, her eyes narrow horizontal slits. Her lips pressed together, forming a taut horizontal line. Her chest rose and fell with slow, deep breaths.

Jules rested his forearms on the table’s edge and leaned forward, surveying the situation. His expression was one of superficial geniality below which lurked avid, lip-smacking sadistic interest.

Teela seemed lazily fascinated, a cat contemplating the opening foredoomed struggles of a mouse in its clutches.

Brett was all business, intent, eyes narrowed. He rested the elbow of his gun hand on the table, careful to avoid bumping the nearby silver coffee urn. His hand was steady and unwavering as he held the gun pointed at Steve’s head.

“Search him and relieve him of his hardware, Bertha,” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Brett,” Bertha said.

“Careful not to get between him and the gun,” he cautioned.

“Yes, sir.”

Bertha set the now-empty platter and rounded top down on the table. She went around the back of Steve’s chair, approaching him from the left side, looming over him. Her meaty hands ran over his shoulders, patting him down, frisking him.

Every jarring movement that disturbed his pierced, pinned left arm sent pain waves rocketing through Steve, traveling up his arm to detonate inside his skull.

Bertha smoothed her palms along his sides, under his arms, continuing to frisk him. She grabbed a handful of Steve’s sweater and the shirt underneath at the middle of his waist behind his back, lifted it up, baring his lower back.

Clipped to the belt in a holster pressed to the small of his back was a .32 semiautomatic pistol.

Steve never left home without it.

It would have been hard to find for someone initially unaware of it. That was why it made a good hole gun for tight spots like this.

But not when the opposition had been tipped off to it, as they must have been.

Earlier when he’d had sex with Skye in the woods, it had taken some careful juggling and sleight of hand to fold the top of his jeans over his gun and holster to conceal them as he took his pants down to his ankles and then put it to the girl. He thought he’d done it rather well and she hadn’t noticed it—a wrong guess apparently, he realized now.

Bertha took the gun from him, circled the table, and placed the holstered piece flat on the white linen–covered tabletop between Brett and Teela.

Returning, she bent over, running her hands along Steve’s denim-clad legs, feeling for concealed weapons, finding none. She looked into the tops of his boots but no weapons were concealed there.

“He’s clean, Mr. Brett,” she said, straightening up and stepping away from Steve.

“You think so?” Skye asked.

“Yes, Miss Skye,” Bertha said.

Skye shook her head. “Steve’s more than a shooter, he’s an artist with the blade, too. Or so I’ve been told. Let me prove it to you. Observe,” she said.

Skye patted the back of Steve’s knife-pierced hand in a gesture of mock sympathy. She gripped his wrist with one hand and with the other rolled his left sleeve back to the elbow, baring his forearm.

Steve exerted iron self-control to keep from crying out in pain. He could take it; he’d endured worse—for months at a time, during his painful convalescence in the hospital throughout a lengthy recovery. He’d be damned before giving his captors the satisfaction of seeing him suffer, he vowed.

A pair of thin tan leather straps encircled his left forearm, one several inches above the wrist and the other up close to and below the elbow. The straps secured a leather sheath to the inside of Steve’s forearm.

The sheath contained a blade worn hilt downward.

So—the Morays knew about the throwing knife he also habitually wore strapped to the inside of his left forearm, Steve thought. He couldn’t see how Skye could have known about that without outside information. The .32 was one thing; it was possible that she might have glimpsed it during their wild, frantic coupling in the woods—though he doubted it. But he was sure that the knife had remained undercover.

Could be—must be—that someone had tipped the Morays to his operational dossier. The pistol hidden in the small of his back and the throwing knife strapped to his left arm were secrets known only to a few besides himself, a very few; and of those few most were dead—except for the ones on his side.

The ones supposed to be on his side.

Did the Dog Team have a traitor hidden in its ranks? Hard to believe, but that’s what the facts seemed to indicate.

Skye’s strong, slim fingers undid a catch at the top of the sheath, opening it. She gripped the hilt between thumb and forefinger and pulled it out.

It was a long, slim, stiletto-like metal blade, gleaming with a mirrorlike finish that caught the light from the chandelier overhead, sending scintillant rays and gleams a-beaming. It was a flat blade resembling a die-cut pattern, its edges wickedly sharp, its point lancetlike.

“A pretty toy,” Skye said, fascinatedly handling the toy.

“Like you, dear,” Brett murmured.

Steve’s masklike face betrayed nothing: no apprehension, relief, guile. Nothing but the strain of having his hand pierced and pinned to the table by a knife.

“That boy carries a lot of hardware,” Olcott said.

“He’s defanged now,” said Jules.

A certain keyed-up tension seemed to go out of the Morays at this announcement. They were sure of their prey now, ready to relax and savor the enjoyment of the cat-and-mouse.

Skye balanced the midpoint of the flat of the blade on the tip of her finger, where it hung evened out like the scales of justice. “Perfectly balanced—a throwing knife,” she said.

She gripped it, letting the blade protrude point first from the top of her fist. Eyeing Steve speculatively.

“Ahem,” Jules said. “A little restraint, Skye, if you please. Hold in check your well-known proclivity for infliction.”

“Why?” she asked.

“We’re not done with our guest yet. He may be able to elucidate certain points of information vital to the successful completion of our current assignment.”

Lillian barked a curt, mirthless laugh. “He won’t talk,” she said.

“No?” Skye said.

“They all talk under the treatment,” Olcott opined.

“Not all,” Lillian said. “This one won’t. He’s a stiff-necked bastard. You can tell just by looking at him. He’d rather die than give you the satisfaction. He’ll make you kill him.”

“We’ll see,” Skye said.

“He’s tough,” Teela said admiringly. “That’s good. The tougher they are, the sweeter the sport. And it lasts all the longer.”

Olcutt reached for the decanter, refilling his cup. “Sorry I can’t offer you any, young fella, but you know how it is,” he said to Steve.

“No. How is it?” Steve said. He took a deep breath and used it to keep speaking. “You people must have me confused with someone else,” he said in a rush.

Agony underlay his words, rasping in the timbre of his voice. His stiff face was frozen, except for his glittering eyes.

Jules tut-tutted. “Mistaken? Hardly. You’re Steve Ireland, the man we want. Captain Steve Ireland, United States Army, of the higher echelon’s elite Dog Team assassination squad.”

Steve didn’t bother trying to deny it.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Jules smiled gently, laugh lines creasing around watery green eyes. “I suppose we owe you some sort of an explanation, under the circumstances. In a sense you could say that we’re rivals of yours. Professional rivals. Seeing as how we’re all in the same line of work.”

“Only we don’t stooge for the Pentagon,” Brett said, “or any other government agency.”

“Who do you stooge for?” Steve fired back.

“We’ll ask the questions,” Brett retorted.

Jules chuckled. “For now, call us…the Dogcatchers.”

That drew knowing smiles and chuckles from his fellow family members around the table.

“Talk sense. Say what you mean,” Steve said.

Jules shook his head in mock sadness. “I could almost admire your stubbornness if it weren’t all so unnecessary. But that’s the code, eh? Never give in, admit to nothing. Deny, deny, deny. But the time for dissembling is over, Steve. The noose hangs high. You’re already one of the last of a dying breed. Most of the others of your team have already met their fate. The Dog Team, that is—now defunct.”

“Never heard of it,” Steve said.

“That’s very good. But pointless. You see, we know who you are and what you are. And there’ll be no last-minute reprieves. No cavalry riding in in the nick of time to save the fort,” Jules said.