I held position in the Hortensia bush. Waiting for the guy to get comfortable, and move out from behind the tree. After a minute, he started from the tree towards the house, scurrying like a crab. I took a breath and put him in my sights, leading a little to compensate for the slow speed of the bullet. I triggered a three-round burst, which sounded about as loud as rainfall tinkling on a tin roof. The guy dropped. I held him in the sights and waited for a twenty count. No movement, no nothing. I thumbed the selector to single shot and put a round into his head. Kaplunk. The pink mist kicked off in the rain. I got down alongside the stone wall and picked the four ejected casings out of the wet dirt, tucked them into my back pocket.

When I looked up, I saw that something had changed. It wasn’t obvious, it was like one of those picture puzzles, where you’ve got to find what’s different in the landscape. It started as a feeling, and then it narrowed down to a certainty. There was a light on in the house that hadn’t been on before. It was coming from the doorway of the room where I’d left Nazari.

I looked at the windows of the room where she had been sitting, and besides the new light, all I saw was dark. The rain started coming down hard, and felt great, warm and comfortable. I needed to move and get to the house. To do that, I’d either have to go all the way around, keeping against the cover of the wall, or straight across and risk being out in the open. I chose the fastest route and charged like a maniac across the lawn.

Ten seconds later I was glued to Brumaire’s limestone wall, hugging the facade next to the big window on the south side of the house. I figured that she must have seen me crossing over from the stone wall perimeter, so I peeked into the room. Nothing. Dark room, pool table, empty chair. No sign of her. The door to the hallway was open.

The big French windows were vintage classics. These weren’t PVC storm windows for hard winters, they were solid wood and glass windows for mild weather, with snow perhaps once per year. The windows were two-piece, single glazed, framed in oak that had withstood rain, wind, heat and cold for thirty, forty years.

The twin window panels were fastened on the inside by vertical iron bars. I forced the sharpened screwdriver straight through the seam between panels. I was able to pretty quickly dig out enough space to push the screwdriver through. Two holes like that and I had some leverage to twist the knob enough that the iron bars eased out of their stone crevices.