No answer. The front wall was too high to climb, so he pushed past some low shrubs and descended along the side. The property ended at the beach, where gentle waves washed across the sand. A second door sat in the middle of the back wall. No bell or buzzer there, either, so he hoisted himself up, put his foot on the knob, and climbed over, past palm trees that rattled overhead. The lights were on in the oval pool. Someone had left a white towel and an old issue of Us magazine by one of the lounge chairs.
It struck Crocker as a strange place for two professional colleagues to spend the night. Seemed more fitting for a romantic vacation.
Doubts started to stalk him. As he peered through the patio window he tried to remember precisely when he had spoken to Holly last and what they had discussed. There wasn’t much to see—modern living room furniture, a vase filled with peacock feathers, a fireplace that opened to both sides of the house.
The patio door wasn’t locked, so he slid it open and stepped in.
Saw a light and heard murmuring voices from inside.
This was starting to remind him of a movie scene where the husband returns home unexpectedly to find another man sleeping with his wife.
Holly would never do that.
Right?
He followed the light and voices up two steps and stopped. His heart seemed to be beating in his throat.
He tried to prepare himself. Took a deep breath.
What if I find them together? What will I do then?
He blocked out these thoughts and concentrated instead on the sounds: a rumble of waves crashing in the background, the low murmur of voices from the room. Bracing himself, he entered. The light came from a lamp on the far side of the bed. The sheets and coverlet had been pulled aside but the bed was empty. The murmuring sound was coming from a television on the opposite wall. He looked for signs of Holly and saw an open lipstick on the dresser alongside the white-handled brush she always carried in her purse, a pair of her running shoes on the floor.
She’s still here!
Where?
Turning, he crossed along the front of the house through a long kitchen and dining area to a hallway on the far end. The bathroom door was open, the toilet inside running.
One door at the end of the hall; another behind him. He opened the one ahead and entered, let his eyes adjust to the darkness. The place was a mess—clothes, men’s shoes, and papers strewn across the floor, the sheets pulled off a bed, a chair turned over. The dresser drawers emptied.
Crocker pulled aside the curtains so the moonlight streamed in and quickly confirmed that there was no one in the room.
His heart beating wildly, he spun and doubled back to the front of the house. Alarms were going off in his head.
A faint bluish light spilled out the bottom of the door. He clenched his fists and entered.
The first thing he noticed was the light from the desk lamp filling the small rectangular room with strange shadows. Next, his eyes focused on a single bed. In the folds of the covers Crocker saw a shiny object he identified as a six-inch kitchen knife.
Then he noticed a pool of blood on the floor near the desk. Stepping past the bed, he saw a man’s body lying facedown. The back of his head had been blasted off, indicating an exit wound.
Instinctively, Crocker felt for an artery on his neck to confirm that he was dead. No pulse.
Lifting the body under the shoulders, he turned it over carefully.
It didn’t resemble Brian Shaw or anyone else he recognized. Poor fellow looked to be a local—dark skin, hair, and eyes, a couple of days’ growth of beard.
Crocker set the body back down, relieved and unsettled—relieved that his worst fears hadn’t been confirmed, unsettled because he realized that something equally terrible had happened. A man had been killed, and Holly and Brian were missing.
He wanted to run and find her but had no idea where to go.
He also felt violated.
Nobody touches my wife and gets away with it. No one!
The whoop-whoop-whoop of the helicopter blades still echoed in his head as he sat in a comfortable leather chair in Ambassador Saltzman’s office. Air-conditioned air tickled his nose. He wanted to sneeze but caught himself. The ambassador sat behind his desk speaking into a cordless phone.
Crocker had remained in Sirte the previous night with a group of Canadian soldiers who worked the scene. Canucks, they called themselves. Good guys who loved the North African weather but missed their girlfriends back home. All the female residents of the city were hiding, they reported as they gathered evidence from the house, searched the area, and set up local roadblocks, all in a frenzy.
They’d come up with practically nothing. The deceased man in the house turned out to be the caretaker, a Libyan engineering student named Ali ak-Riyyad, twenty-one years old. The owners had fled to Morocco before the war and hadn’t returned. When friends and family members weren’t using the place, they rented it to visitors.